Otherwise, it's an excellent article, with extensive quotes from editors Gordon Van Gelder and Sheila Williams, and web-savvy author John Scalzi. The article at first asks if it's the web that's killing the print magazines, but it seems to conclude that the problem of disappearing readership runs deeper than that. Certainly, the comments that follow the post suggest that many former subscribers are no longer interested in subscribing, no matter what format the stories are offered in. Scalzi calls it the AOL syndrome—focusing only on retaining existing subscribers instead of trying to bring in brand new subscribers. Certainly, the web offers competition. And e-readers offer some hope. Both Asimov's and Analog are offered on the Kindle. Interestingly (considering that Analog is beloved by "hard science fiction" readers), when listed in order of "best selling" on the Kindle, Asimov's is 12th out of 18 and Analog is 17th. So maybe the hard-core geeks don't have Kindles because they're reading fiction on their Blackberries?
The vanishing point of short fiction?
Otherwise, it's an excellent article, with extensive quotes from editors Gordon Van Gelder and Sheila Williams, and web-savvy author John Scalzi. The article at first asks if it's the web that's killing the print magazines, but it seems to conclude that the problem of disappearing readership runs deeper than that. Certainly, the comments that follow the post suggest that many former subscribers are no longer interested in subscribing, no matter what format the stories are offered in. Scalzi calls it the AOL syndrome—focusing only on retaining existing subscribers instead of trying to bring in brand new subscribers. Certainly, the web offers competition. And e-readers offer some hope. Both Asimov's and Analog are offered on the Kindle. Interestingly (considering that Analog is beloved by "hard science fiction" readers), when listed in order of "best selling" on the Kindle, Asimov's is 12th out of 18 and Analog is 17th. So maybe the hard-core geeks don't have Kindles because they're reading fiction on their Blackberries?
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Balticon 50!
So, it's been a while. But Balticon celebrated it's 50th anniversary, so I wanted to post some photos. First, here's grandmaster Larry…
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Balticon 2013
With my husband still recovering from surgery, we did a very abbreviated Balticon this year, only one day. In fact, I went to exactly one panel,…
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Con weekend redux
This year the Nebulas were a local event (see last week's post) and so I ended up with "cons" on back-to-back weekends. I went to…
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