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Gardner Dozois Plea - subscribe to SF Magazines to save the genre

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SFTV_troy

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Feb 14, 2011, 12:41:48 PM2/14/11
to
"The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
lots of good SF and fantasy published - one important way you can help
is by *subscribing* to them. It's never been easier to do, with a few
clicks of your button... and receive the traditional print format by
mail, or downloads to your Kindle or computer... you can now subscribe
from Overseas just as easily as from the United States, something
formerly difficult or impossible."

fictionwise.com or amazon.com
Search for Asimovs Magazine


Ahasuerus

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Feb 14, 2011, 2:49:31 PM2/14/11
to
On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
> lots of good SF and fantasy published [snip]

Looking at the lists of Hugo- and Locus-nominated short fiction for
2010 (http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Hugo2010.html and
http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Locus2010.html), I wonder how
strong that link is even for short fiction these days. And the novel
market seems to be pretty much completely unrelated.

Louann Miller

unread,
Feb 14, 2011, 3:28:24 PM2/14/11
to
Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> wrote in news:19583db3-1c1d-4c8d-a70c-
9d9dbc...@o7g2000prn.googlegroups.com:

All the other genres seem to manage without (much of) a short story arm.

Cryptoengineer

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Feb 14, 2011, 4:28:55 PM2/14/11
to
On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

I've seriously considered doing this; maybe I finally will.

Which format returns a greater profit to the magazine?
For Analog, a year is $35 hardcopy, vs $4/issue at fictionwise
(etexts),
and $3.39/issue for 'club members' (unclear which club).

I'd expect the etext to be more profitable, but fictionwise must be
taking a cut.

Any suggestions what format will work best on an Android phone?
I'd like to be able to resize and reflow the text, so it would be easy
to read.

pt

Scott Lurndal

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Feb 14, 2011, 5:07:21 PM2/14/11
to
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> writes:
>"The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
>lots of good SF and fantasy published

This statement presupposes that access to good SF and Fantasy requires
a publisher at all. Perhaps as a gatekeeper, but the internet will
likely kill most of the traditional publishing business.

When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
to decide what is (or is not) readable?

scott

Wayne Throop

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Feb 14, 2011, 5:13:43 PM2/14/11
to
: sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
: When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper

: to decide what is (or is not) readable?

Oooh, oooh, I know this one! "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.


Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw

Captain Infinity

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Feb 14, 2011, 5:58:25 PM2/14/11
to
Once Upon A Time,

Troy "My invisible girlfriend says I'm the BEST" Heagy wrote:

>"The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
>lots of good SF and fantasy published - one important way you can help
>is by *subscribing* to them. It's never been easier to do, with a few
>clicks of your button... and receive the traditional print format by
>mail, or downloads to your Kindle or computer... you can now subscribe
>from Overseas just as easily as from the United States, something
>formerly difficult or impossible."

I'M CLICKING MY BUTTON!! I'M CLICKING MY BUTTON TO SAVE THE FUTURE!!


**
Captain Infinity

Professor Bubba

unread,
Feb 14, 2011, 6:42:16 PM2/14/11
to
In article <tIh6p.61258$mV4....@news.usenetserver.com>, Scott Lurndal
<sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote:


They used to complain that the magazines were being strangled by
Mafia-controlled distribution. Now it's the readers' fault for not
buying print subscriptions. I wonder what'll be next.

Louann Miller

unread,
Feb 14, 2011, 8:55:55 PM2/14/11
to
thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote in news:12977...@sheol.org:

>: sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>: When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
>: to decide what is (or is not) readable?
>
> Oooh, oooh, I know this one! "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
> swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.

(raises a toast to Wayne)

I've had an SF mag subscription. "X words per month of whatever the editors
like" didn't really suit me. I'm not saying they let actual bad stuff
through, but I didn't get to pick and choose the way I do buying books one
at a time. Nature of the format.

Mike Ash

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Feb 14, 2011, 9:21:29 PM2/14/11
to
In article
<8d61c93b-3f0c-44c9...@w7g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
Cryptoengineer <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've seriously considered doing this; maybe I finally will.
>
> Which format returns a greater profit to the magazine?
> For Analog, a year is $35 hardcopy, vs $4/issue at fictionwise
> (etexts),
> and $3.39/issue for 'club members' (unclear which club).
>
> I'd expect the etext to be more profitable, but fictionwise must be
> taking a cut.

According to a random web page I found, Fictionwise gets 50%:

http://moirarogers.com/blog/archives/1996

This is kind of sad, and I don't see what Fictionwise is doing that
makes them deserve $2/issue, but there you have it.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

Matt Hughes

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Feb 14, 2011, 10:56:07 PM2/14/11
to
On Feb 15, 11:07 am, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

>
> When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
> to decide what is (or is not) readable?

Someone who doesn't have time to read through the huge mass of posted
drek to identify the less than five per cent that won't cause your
eyeballs to try to escape from your head.

Matt Hughes
http://www.archonate.com

David DeLaney

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Feb 15, 2011, 7:08:21 AM2/15/11
to
On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:13:43 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>: When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
>: to decide what is (or is not) readable?
>
>Oooh, oooh, I know this one! "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
>swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.

Canonical link to the Making Light _Slushkiller_ thread from 2004 goes here:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html

(Remember, kids, of all the bad horrible unreadable books you've seen put out
by a standard publishing company [*], those are from the TOP 5%, or less, of
the SUBMISSIONS they get. And even then, that top 5% gets winnowed quite a lot,
because they don't have the time or money to massage all of even that small
fraction into publishability.)

Dave "[*] vanity presses, especially the chock-full-of-scam ones, do not count;
in standard publishing, the COMPANY pays the AUTHOR" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

Michael Stemper

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Feb 15, 2011, 5:47:52 PM2/15/11
to
In article <12977...@sheol.org>, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) writes:
>: sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)

>: When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
>: to decide what is (or is not) readable?
>
>Oooh, oooh, I know this one! "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
>swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.

Please add me to your list.

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
COFFEE.SYS not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Michael Stemper

unread,
Feb 15, 2011, 5:51:11 PM2/15/11
to

Wasn't Thor Power Tools in there somewhere?

SFTV_troy

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Feb 15, 2011, 6:06:28 PM2/15/11
to
On Feb 14, 2:49 pm, Ahasuerus <ahasue...@email.com> wrote:
> On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
> > lots of good SF and fantasy published [snip]
>
> Looking at the lists of Hugo- and Locus-nominated short
> fiction for 2010, I wonder how strong that

> link is even for short fiction these days. And the novel
> market seems to be pretty much completely unrelated.


A lot of novel authors learn their skills in the short story area, or
else take short stories and then expand them into novel length. If
the short story market died out, it would affect novels as well with
fewer authors attaining that level.

And I'm not sure why you think magazines are not relevant to the
awards? I see Asimovs listed multiple times, plus Footprints,
Clarkesworld Magazine, Interzone, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and
Analog appears several times too. Plus e-magazines which also depend
on subscriptions to survive.

Without these, the awards would have nothing to nominate in the short
story and novelette categories.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 15, 2011, 6:09:26 PM2/15/11
to
On Feb 14, 5:07 pm, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
> >"The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
> >lots of good SF and fantasy published
>
> This statement presupposes that access to good SF and
> Fantasy requires a publisher at all.   Perhaps as a gatekeeper...

You answered your own question. You ever read fanfiction? Well I'm
sure you have, but in my opinion 99.99% of it is crap, and the editors
at the pro-magazines filter out that nonsense and only feed me the
truly good material. (And even then, some of it is not the great.)


SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 15, 2011, 6:28:00 PM2/15/11
to
On Feb 14, 6:42 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:

>
> They used to complain that the magazines were being strangled by
> Mafia-controlled distribution.  Now it's the readers' fault for not
> buying print subscriptions.  I wonder what'll be next.

In this case I think the complaint has merit. Asimov's SF has lost
almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
From 45,100
- to 16,600

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 15, 2011, 6:40:13 PM2/15/11
to
On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:06:28 -0800 (PST), SFTV_troy
<SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote in
<news:f6dd1e3f-6929-46c0...@k17g2000pre.googlegroups.com>
in
rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:

> On Feb 14, 2:49 pm, Ahasuerus <ahasue...@email.com> wrote:

>> On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>>> "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd
>>> like to see lots of good SF and fantasy published
>>> [snip]

>> Looking at the lists of Hugo- and Locus-nominated short
>> fiction for 2010, I wonder how strong that link is even
>> for short fiction these days. And the novel market seems
>> to be pretty much completely unrelated.

> A lot of novel authors learn their skills in the short
> story area, or else take short stories and then expand
> them into novel length. If the short story market died
> out, it would affect novels as well with fewer authors
> attaining that level.

This is by no means clear, since there are already more
people writing readable and even very good novels than can
get them published. For that matter, it's not clear to what
extent your first statement is actually true; certainly
there are many novel writers who learn their skills writing
novels.

[...]

Brian

Louann Miller

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Feb 15, 2011, 6:50:58 PM2/15/11
to
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:6b29e056-a7f9-482a-9742-
b0cd50...@i39g2000prd.googlegroups.com:

> In this case I think the complaint has merit. Asimov's SF has lost
> almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
> From 45,100
> - to 16,600

Since 2010 (and here it is only February 2011) or since 2000? I'm guessing
the latter.


Ahasuerus

unread,
Feb 15, 2011, 9:28:38 PM2/15/11
to

Granted, in a world with thousands of genre books appearing every
year, most people (Harriet Klausner excepted) will want a quick and
reasonably reliable way of telling whether a given book will be worth
their time and money.

However, the term "gatekeeper" has connotations that may no longer
apply in a looser, more free-wheeling marketplace. I am thinking that
"brands" may be a better term to describe what editors, reviewers and
publishers bring to the table. I also find the concept of "virtual
parties" centered around blogs, publisher sites, webzines, online
libraries, review sites, personal sites, bookstores (e.g. Amazon.com),
etc useful. Heck, Baen even has a virtual bar going! :-)

Ahasuerus

unread,
Feb 15, 2011, 9:08:33 PM2/15/11
to
On Feb 15, 6:06 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 14, 2:49 pm, Ahasuerus <ahasue...@email.com> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
> > > lots of good SF and fantasy published [snip]
>
> > Looking at the lists of Hugo- and Locus-nominated short
> > fiction for 2010, I wonder how strong that
> > link is even for short fiction these days. And the novel
> > market seems to be pretty much completely unrelated.
>
> A lot of novel authors learn their skills in the short story area, or
> else take short stories and then expand them into novel length.  If
> the short story market died out, it would affect novels as well with
> fewer authors attaining that level.

It was probably true in the 1930s/1940s and even 1950s when magazines
dominated the genre and writers typically progressed from short
stories to novellas to serials, which were eventually published as
novels. However, some time ca. 1960, presumably during the famous
"death of science fiction" episode, novels and short fiction began to
part ways. Pretty soon you could become a major SF novelist without
publishing a single SF short story, e.g. see Delany's career between
1962 and 1966 -- http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?22 -- although
serializations were still relatively lucrative.

Fast forward to 2010 and although there is still some overlap between
novels and short SF, it's not anywhere as important as it used to be.
Some novelists write short fiction on the side and some don't, but I
see no indication that an appreciable number of would-be novelists
would fail to get published if traditional genre magazines were to
disappear -- see the examples of other genres provided by Louann
previously. And it's not like there are no other places where you can
get your short SF published today -- see below.

> And I'm not sure why you think magazines are not relevant to the
> awards?  I see Asimovs listed multiple times, plus Footprints,
> Clarkesworld Magazine, Interzone, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and
> Analog appears several times too.  Plus e-magazines which also depend
> on subscriptions to survive.
>
> Without these, the awards would have nothing to nominate in the short
> story and novelette categories.

As I wrote the other day, "of the top 15 worked nominated in the "Best
Novelette" category by Locus voters (http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/
Db/Locus2010.html) *none* originally appeared in a traditional genre
magazine."

Professor Bubba

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Feb 15, 2011, 10:42:00 PM2/15/11
to
In article <ijf00v$tmg$2...@news.eternal-september.org>, Michael Stemper
<mste...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote:


Now there's a blast from the past. The Thor Power Tools decision
dramatically affected book publishing (effectively, it killed the
backlist because it changed U.S. tax rules concerning inventory), but
Thor really didn't have anything to do with magazine publishing.
Magazines either sell or don't sell within a fairly brief period, and
then unsold magazines are returned and pulped. That was standard
practice both before and after Thor.

That's not to say that the magazines didn't blame Thor for their
problems, though.

Quadibloc

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Feb 15, 2011, 10:47:52 PM2/15/11
to
On Feb 15, 4:06 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> A lot of novel authors learn their skills in the short story area, or
> else take short stories and then expand them into novel length.  If
> the short story market died out, it would affect novels as well with
> fewer authors attaining that level.

I've seen it claimed - for example, by Canadian author Pierre Berton -
that writing a publishable short story is much more difficult than
writing a publishable novel, because the shorter length means that
every word has to be finely crafted.

This would imply that pulp novels are more critical to the survival of
SF than magazines with short stories.

John Savard

Professor Bubba

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Feb 15, 2011, 10:53:04 PM2/15/11
to
In article
<6b29e056-a7f9-482a...@i39g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote:


Given those figures (and you mean the previous decade, right?), then it
seems self-evident that people aren't buying the magazine. However, I
think there's a difference between Fred Pohl complaining 40 years ago
that he can't sell more copies of Galaxy and If on newsstands because
the Mafia won't distribute them, and Asimov's complaining now that it
isn't selling magazines because ... because people aren't buying them?

The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me. Back in the day,
around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month, even
with the Mafia. Thirty years later, sales are down by only 10%. Then,
blammo. Either Asimov's really, really began to suck, or everybody
went online and got busy doing things other than reading old-school
magazines.

I have to admit that my own sf magazine-reading days are well behind
me. I haven't even seen one for sale around here in many years.

Cryptoengineer

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 12:17:35 AM2/16/11
to
On Feb 14, 5:13 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:
> : sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
> : When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
> : to decide what is (or is not) readable?
>
> Oooh, oooh, I know this one!  "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
> swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.

Yup - without a gatekeeper, you're reading the slushpile.

Enjoy.

pt

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 12:24:20 AM2/16/11
to
On 2/15/11 10:47 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Feb 15, 4:06 pm, SFTV_troy<SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> A lot of novel authors learn their skills in the short story area, or
>> else take short stories and then expand them into novel length. If
>> the short story market died out, it would affect novels as well with
>> fewer authors attaining that level.
>
> I've seen it claimed - for example, by Canadian author Pierre Berton -
> that writing a publishable short story is much more difficult than
> writing a publishable novel, because the shorter length means that
> every word has to be finely crafted.

It's not true, though. Some people just naturally write short length
stories, others long, and others seem to be able to do any length. Me,
my natural story lengths run from novelette up. I've almost never
written anything shorter (except a few gag pieces,most of them here).

And on the main subject... alas, I see no point in subscribing to
magazines. 90% stuff I don't want to read and 10% I do is not a
cost-effective way to spend my money.

--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

Matt Hughes

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Feb 16, 2011, 1:53:02 AM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 6:24 pm, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"

<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> On 2/15/11 10:47 PM, Quadibloc wrote:

> > I've seen it claimed - for example, by Canadian author Pierre Berton -
> > that writing a publishable short story is much more difficult than
> > writing a publishable novel, because the shorter length means that
> > every word has to be finely crafted.
>
>         It's not true, though. Some people just naturally write short length
> stories, others long, and others seem to be able to do any length. Me,
> my natural story lengths run from novelette up. I've almost never
> written anything shorter (except a few gag pieces,most of them here).

Novels certainly take longer.

I was never drawn to short story writing until I'd sold four novels
and it occurred to me that an appearance or two in the serial mags
would boost my profile and lead to more buyers of the books, which I
considered (and still do) my best area of competence.

Now, having sold more than thirty stories of varying lengths to the
major mags and a few anthologies, I can look back and determine
whether the strategy worked. And the answer is, not so much. I have
heard from fans who bought my novels after reading me in the serials,
but becoming for a while a regular in F&SF (twenty appearances in six
years) certainly didn't make my career take off.

That being said, I mean to go back to writing shorts this year and
would be very happy to be published in F&SF again. Economics be
damned, it's just a kick to be in a magazine that's older than I am
and that has published so many of the great names of the genre, people
like Vance and Kornbluth and Kuttner who were gods to me forty-odd
years ago..

I think it would be a shame on the sf community if they were let to
fade into oblivion.

Matt Hughes
http://www.archonate.com

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 6:50:36 AM2/16/11
to
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Feb 15, 4:06�pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> A lot of novel authors learn their skills in the short story area, or
>> else take short stories and then expand them into novel length. �If
>> the short story market died out, it would affect novels as well with
>> fewer authors attaining that level.
>
>I've seen it claimed - for example, by Canadian author Pierre Berton -
>that writing a publishable short story is much more difficult than
>writing a publishable novel, because the shorter length means that
>every word has to be finely crafted.

Try imagining a novel in which every word has been finely crafted.

It seems to me that these days novels are sold with an eye toward
profit rather than quality. Perhaps the old days were no different
from these days.

--
Magic: [Noun] A real-world metaphysical praxis which works reliably in
the hands of a practioner and which by definition cannot be understood
by the non-practitioner because gaining the necessary understanding
of-itself makes one a practitioner. [Verb] Specific applications of a
magical praxis which result in otherwise inexplicable modifications
of physical reality.

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 7:00:31 AM2/16/11
to

I hardly ever pick up a book of short-stories without having thought
it was a novel and immediately putting it back on the shelf. The
potential value of short story anthologies to me is that each may
introduce some blindingly new concept, and frankly most of the
blindingly new concepts that can be introduced in a short story were
introduced decades ago.

Magazines are financed primarily through advertising, which fights
against content that is "finely crafted" and supports content that is
trendy and quickly produced.

As the owner of a woodstove I find that the several phone books we
receive each year are more than sufficient in terms of tinder.

Walter Bushell

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 8:32:09 AM2/16/11
to
In article
<e4c9ab68-5ab6-48b6...@r21g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
Cryptoengineer <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:

Considering what does get published and how many books never make it out
of the slush pile . . . .

And there is that editing function.

--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?

trag

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 11:51:04 AM2/16/11
to
On Feb 14, 1:49 pm, Ahasuerus <ahasue...@email.com> wrote:
> On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
> > lots of good SF and fantasy published [snip]
>
> Looking at the lists of Hugo- and Locus-nominated short fiction for
> 2010 (http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Hugo2010.htmlandhttp://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Locus2010.html), I wonder how

> strong that link is even for short fiction these days. And the novel
> market seems to be pretty much completely unrelated.

If you read any of the mags, you'd know that many, if not most, new
novel authors get their legs in those magazines before they ever get a
novel published.

The magazines are a nice way to sample writing you might not
ordinarily think to choose and as you identify favorite authors in
the mags, you can look for their novels. The mags are an excellent
tool for the reader and authors alike.

trag

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 11:55:42 AM2/16/11
to
On Feb 15, 9:53 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:
> In article
> <6b29e056-a7f9-482a-9742-b0cd508a6...@i39g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,

>
> SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 14, 6:42 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:
>
> > > They used to complain that the magazines were being strangled by
> > > Mafia-controlled distribution.  Now it's the readers' fault for not
> > > buying print subscriptions.  I wonder what'll be next.
>
> > In this case I think the complaint has merit.  Asimov's SF has lost
> > almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
> > From 45,100
> > - to 16,600
>
> Given those figures (and you mean the previous decade, right?), then it
> seems self-evident that people aren't buying the magazine.  However, I
> think there's a difference between Fred Pohl complaining 40 years ago
> that he can't sell more copies of Galaxy and If on newsstands because
> the Mafia won't distribute them, and Asimov's complaining now that it
> isn't selling magazines because ... because people aren't buying them?
>
> The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me.  Back in the day,
> around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month, even
> with the Mafia.  Thirty years later, sales are down by only 10%.  Then,
> blammo.  Either Asimov's really, really began to suck, or everybody
> went online and got busy doing things other than reading old-school
> magazines.

At some point all the SF magazines disappeared from the grocery store
check out line and were replaced with crap for stupid people. When
did that happen? There are probably a lot of kids who got there
start with the mags, if not the entire genre of SF, because they saw
an interesting cover on an SF mag in a grocery store checkout line.

Lloyd Parsons

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 12:02:58 PM2/16/11
to
In article
<5963204d-49ad-448a...@n11g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
trag <tr...@io.com> wrote:

Yes, they were the way to get these new authors stories to the reader.

But today, you can get them from a slew of places online in ebook form
for free (most often), or a pittance.

--
Lloyd


trag

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 12:13:55 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 11:02 am, Lloyd Parsons <lloydpars...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article
> <5963204d-49ad-448a-8f33-4175e6ac6...@n11g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,

>
>
>
>  trag <t...@io.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 14, 1:49 pm, Ahasuerus <ahasue...@email.com> wrote:
> > > On Feb 14, 12:41 pm, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
> > > > lots of good SF and fantasy published [snip]
>
> > > Looking at the lists of Hugo- and Locus-nominated short fiction for
> > > 2010
> > > (http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Hugo2010.htmlandhttp://www.locusm...

> > > /SFAwards/Db/Locus2010.html), I wonder how
> > > strong that link is even for short fiction these days. And the novel
> > > market seems to be pretty much completely unrelated.
>
> > If you read any of the mags, you'd know that many, if not most, new
> > novel authors get their legs in those magazines before they ever get a
> > novel published.
>
> > The magazines are a nice way to sample writing you might not
> > ordinarily think to choose and as  you identify favorite authors in
> > the mags, you can look for their novels.    The mags are an excellent
> > tool for the reader and authors alike.
>
> Yes, they were the way to get these new authors stories to the reader.
>
> But today, you can get them from a slew of places online in ebook form
> for free (most often), or a pittance.

See posts regarding being insulated from slush pile above.

I have no interest in wading through on-line slush piles.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 12:41:57 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 15, 10:53 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>
wrote:

> SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > In this case I think the complaint has merit.  Asimov's SF has lost
> > almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
> > From 45,100
> > - to 16,600
>
> The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me.  Back in the day,
> around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month

Well that's not right. In 1990, Asimov's was selling over 100,000
copies per month, and therefore it was probably much higher in 1970.
But even if it held flat, that means they lost approximately half
their audience in the (nifty) nineties and another half in the 2000s.


>  Either Asimov's really, really began to suck, or everybody
> went online and got busy doing things other than reading old-school
> magazines.

The whole newspaper/magazine industry is in bad shape. In the 90s
people started *watching* SF instead of reading it (Sci-Fi Channel and
syndicated shows like Trek, Xena). And now in the 2000s it's the
internet that is the cause, because things can be acquired for free
(news is published on the web; SF stories also get published there).
No need to pay for it.

IMHO.


SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 12:58:54 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 1:53 am, Matt Hughes <archon...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Novels certainly take longer..... I have heard from fans

> who bought my novels after reading me in the serials, but
> becoming for a while a regular in F&SF (twenty appearances
> in six years) certainly didn't make my career take off.
>
> That being said, I mean to go back to writing shorts this year and
> would be very happy to be published in F&SF again.  Economics be
> damned, it's just a kick to be in a magazine that's older than I am
> and that has published so many of the great names of the genre, people
> like Vance and Kornbluth and Kuttner who were gods to me forty-odd
> years ago..
>
> I think it would be a shame on the sf community if they were let to
> fade into oblivion.
>
> Matt Hughes http://www.archonate.com


Agreed.

"Novels take longer." And from the reader's viewpoint, I prefer short
stories over novels. I can digest a story in 40-to-50 minutes and if
it's junk, then no great loss. Similarly I prefer the anthology
series Outer Limits over a continuing "novel" like Lost (what a waste
of time that was).

Novels are too big of an investment for me, unless it's an author I
discovered in the magazines and I'm willing to take the risk of a week-
long investment, or a favorite short story that has been extended
(like the Nightfall novelization).

I too think it would be a shame if the magazines died out, and took
the SF short story format with them. I'd lose my favorite form of
written entertainment.

Lloyd Parsons

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 1:32:50 PM2/16/11
to
In article
<06a7f9e4-130f-4a8f...@s3g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>,
trag <tr...@io.com> wrote:

Then don't. I don't care much about how you prefer to get your reading
material. But for me, I don't buy paper much anymore. I find it very
pleasurable to read on my Nook or iPad.

The free books both new and classic, just add to the enjoyment. Some of
the new authors looking for an audience, are very good. Some suck and a
lot in between.

--
Lloyd


Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 1:51:58 PM2/16/11
to
trag <tr...@io.com> wrote:

>If you read any of the [SF] mags, you'd know that many, if not most, new


>novel authors get their legs in those magazines before they ever get a
>novel published.

That's been the assertion of the SF community for decades - but as
several have shown in this thread, that assertion doesn't hold water.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Jerry Brown

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 1:53:55 PM2/16/11
to
On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:41:57 -0800 (PST), SFTV_troy
<SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Feb 15, 10:53�pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>
>wrote:
>> SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> > In this case I think the complaint has merit. �Asimov's SF has lost
>> > almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
>> > From 45,100
>> > - to 16,600
>>
>> The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me. �Back in the day,
>> around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month
>
>Well that's not right. In 1990, Asimov's was selling over 100,000
>copies per month, and therefore it was probably much higher in 1970.

Actually it was selling zero copies a month in 1970. It didn't managed
to improve on this until 1977.

Jerry Brown
--
A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

<http://www.jwbrown.co.uk>

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 1:54:45 PM2/16/11
to
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Well that's not right. In 1990, Asimov's was selling over 100,000
>copies per month, and therefore it was probably much higher in 1970.
>But even if it held flat, that means they lost approximately half
>their audience in the (nifty) nineties and another half in the 2000s.

Asimov's didn't begin pulication until 1977.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 4:40:22 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 1:53 pm, Jerry Brown

<je...@jwbrown.co.uk.RemoveThisBitToReply> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:41:57 -0800 (PST), SFTV_troy
>
> <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Feb 15, 10:53 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>
> >wrote:
> >> SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> > In this case I think the complaint has merit. Asimov's SF has lost
> >> > almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
> >> > From 45,100
> >> > - to 16,600
>
> >> The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me. Back in the day,
> >> around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month
>
> >Well that's not right.  In 1990, Asimov's was selling over 100,000
> >copies per month, and therefore it was probably much higher in 1970.
>
> Actually it was selling zero copies a month in 1970. It didn't managed
> to improve on this until 1977.


Ooops. I knew that but got caught-up in the debate.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 4:46:40 PM2/16/11
to
[corrected post]

On Feb 15, 10:53 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>
wrote:

> SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > In this case I think the complaint has merit. Asimov's SF has lost
> > almost 70% of its readership since the start of the decade.
> > From 45,100
> > - to 16,600

> The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me. Back in the day,


> around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month,

> even with the Mafia.Thirty years later sales are down by only 10%.

Well that's not right. In 1990, Asimov's was selling over 100,000

copies per month[,] which means they lost approximately half their
audience by 2000, not just 10%.

> Either Asimov's really, really began to suck, or everybody
> went online and got busy doing things other than reading
> old-school magazines.

The whole newspaper/magazine industry is in bad shape. In the 90s

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:14:04 PM2/16/11
to
On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:50:36 -0700, "Norm D. Plumber"
<nom-de...@non.com> wrote in
<news:scenl698johas89oq...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:

[...]

> Try imagining a novel in which every word has been finely
> crafted.

I've a number of novels on my shelves that come pretty
damned close to that.

[...]

Brian

Joseph Nebus

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:16:24 PM2/16/11
to

>trag <tr...@io.com> wrote:

>>If you read any of the [SF] mags, you'd know that many, if not most, new
>>novel authors get their legs in those magazines before they ever get a
>>novel published.

>That's been the assertion of the SF community for decades - but as
>several have shown in this thread, that assertion doesn't hold water.

Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
dull magazines may be I'll do my part! I just today bought copies of
both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders [1].

--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Which is on the hit list. I didn't ask the cashier if she knew.

Brenda Clough

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:21:04 PM2/16/11
to

I have written some.

Brenda
--
My latest novel SPEAK TO OUR DESIRES is available exclusively from Book
View Cafe.
http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Brenda-Clough/Novels/Speak-to-Our-Desires-Chapter-01

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:25:52 PM2/16/11
to
On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:51:04 -0800 (PST), trag <tr...@io.com>
wrote in
<news:5963204d-49ad-448a...@n11g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>
in
rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:

[...]

> The magazines are a nice way to sample writing you might
> not ordinarily think to choose and as you identify
> favorite authors in the mags, you can look for their

> novels. [...]

I never found that to be the case even back in the late 60s,
70s, and early 80s when I was reading them regularly. The
main virtue of the magazines was that they gave me a steady
diet of inexpensive reading at a time when my budget for
books was considerably more limited than it is now.

Brian

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:28:09 PM2/16/11
to
On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:55:42 -0800 (PST), trag <tr...@io.com>
wrote in
<news:30f72161-08f3-4cf8...@p16g2000vbo.googlegroups.com>
in
rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:

[...]

> At some point all the SF magazines disappeared from the
> grocery store check out line and were replaced with crap

> for stupid people. When did that happen? [...]

I'm 62, and I've never seen sf magazines at a grocery store
checkout line.

Brian

Ahasuerus

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:40:18 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 10:16 pm, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
> In <4d5f1c70.304702...@news.supernews.com> fairwa...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) writes:

>
> >trag <t...@io.com> wrote:
> >>If you read any of the [SF] mags, you'd know that many, if not most, new
> >>novel authors get their legs in those magazines before they ever get a
> >>novel published.
> >That's been the assertion of the SF community for decades - but as
> >several have shown in this thread, that assertion doesn't hold water.
>
>         Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
> dull magazines may be I'll do my part!  I just today bought copies of
> both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders [1].

For some reason, the old adage "if you subsidize something, you get
more of it" comes to mind :) but if you think that it's worth doing,
you may want to consider subscribing rather than buying copies
locally. The former reportedly has greater impact on the magazine's
long term prospects.

Quadibloc

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:51:09 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 15, 8:42 pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:

> Now there's a blast from the past.  The Thor Power Tools decision
> dramatically affected book publishing (effectively, it killed the
> backlist because it changed U.S. tax rules concerning inventory), but
> Thor really didn't have anything to do with magazine publishing.
> Magazines either sell or don't sell within a fairly brief period, and
> then unsold magazines are returned and pulped.  That was standard
> practice both before and after Thor.

After reading this, I did a search, and found:

http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/thor.htm

While the income tax code could be amended to allow inventory to be
valued at sale value at expected sale date, a company whose inventory
is in equilibrium would lose nothing by deducting its losses in the
year they take place instead of ahead of time. Profits from the
"loophole" this eliminated would only exist prior to equilibrium being
reached.

Demand for the backlist is likely to be affected by the saturation of
the used-book market. Why spend lots of money buying a new copy of an
old book, when second-hand copies are available cheaply if one is
willing to wait a while to find one?

So I suspect that TPT was part of the equation; another part was our
increasing distance from the paper drives of World War II, and other
effects leading to lots of used books accumulating; and another part
is the higher price of new paper because of greater demand and smaller
forests.

While trees are being planted at the same rate they're being cut down,
thanks to government regulation or public-relations response to
ecology pressure... when you're cutting down 100-year-old trees, you
only have equilibrium if you planted trees, 100 years ago, at the same
rate you're cutting them down now. Didn't happen, so our forests are
shrinking, and younger trees have to be used to meet our demands.

John Savard

Quadibloc

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:54:59 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 9:55 am, trag <t...@io.com> wrote:

> At some point all the SF magazines disappeared from the grocery store
> check out line and were replaced with crap for stupid people.   When
> did that happen?   There are probably a lot of kids who got there
> start with the mags, if not the entire genre of SF, because they saw
> an interesting cover on an SF mag in a grocery store checkout line.

I still see SF magazines on magazine stands. Not just in my city's ONE
tobacco store, foreign-magazine-and-newspaper importing store (for a
while we had two, and before that, the one we had was downtown, now it
isn't)... but in the newsstands of chain bookstores (Coles and its
relatives, Indigo and Chapters).

But as for supermarkets... the digest-sized SF magazines left probably
sometime during the 1970s. Science Fiction Age may have been around in
the early 1980s, and there was also OMNI. But those would have been
more difficult markets for a writer to crack (these were both
glossies).

John Savard

Quadibloc

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 10:57:07 PM2/16/11
to
On Feb 16, 8:54 pm, I wrote:

> But as for supermarkets... the digest-sized SF magazines left probably
> sometime during the 1970s. Science Fiction Age may have been around in
> the early 1980s, and there was also OMNI. But those would have been
> more difficult markets for a writer to crack (these were both
> glossies).

Just checked... OMNI ceased publication in 1995, and Science Fiction
Age lasted until 2000.

John Savard

Professor Bubba

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 11:10:36 PM2/16/11
to
In article <1fdfzt5wjukzt$.8gpgsudd...@40tude.net>, Brian M. Scott
<b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:


Neither have I, and I'm almost that old.

solarr

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 11:11:36 PM2/16/11
to
Hi Joseph,

On Feb 16, 9:16 pm, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:

>         Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
> dull magazines may be I'll do my part!  I just today bought copies of
> both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders [1].

And now Borders itself has declared bankruptcy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/media/17borders.html

=:-O

-/< /\ />-

Ted Nolan <tednolan>

unread,
Feb 16, 2011, 11:50:40 PM2/16/11
to
In article <160220112310364110%bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>,

Analog was in the magazine stand in the *foyer* in front of the checkouts
at Colonial Grocery in the 1970s. It was serializing "Children of Dune"
at the time. I had been wanting to subscribe to either Analog or Galaxy,
and the chance of finding that issue made it Analog.

I never saw a copy in the "TV Guide"/"Family Circle"/"Archie's Fun Digest"
slots at the ckeckout itself.

Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

Heike Svensson

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 1:33:51 AM2/17/11
to

Fortunately, the fine folks at Digg/Reddit/Stumbleupon/etc. have
generally done that for you.

Heike Svensson

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 1:38:43 AM2/17/11
to
On 14/02/2011 6:42 PM, Professor Bubba wrote:
> They used to complain that the magazines were being strangled by
> Mafia-controlled distribution. Now it's the readers' fault for not
> buying print subscriptions. I wonder what'll be next.

File sharing?

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 3:35:31 AM2/17/11
to
nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:

> Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
>dull magazines may be I'll do my part! I just today bought copies of

>both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders.

The irony there is just incredible...

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:08:23 AM2/17/11
to
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

I think that I've a few that come close, maybe.

It seems to me that most novels in which every word has been finely
crafted tend to be found under "classic literature", if they're ever
published at all.

But a lot of work that ends up in the "classic" bin, such as much of
Dickens' stuff, was originally cranked out to make a living. From
what I recall of Dickens, he was knocking out serial installments once
a week, or on that order; I find it difficult to believe that there
was much editing done there, I think he was walking the high wire
without a net.

Which maybe is getting away from the point. People who become really
skilled at something do it by smashing their thumbs and cutting
fingers and creating some junk until they actually learn what they're
doing and master their craft, then they can fly like the Dickens. The
idea that those potential Masters should be held back by beancounting
editors so some publishing company can maximize its profits is one
that I find offensive; let them screw up because that's how they'll
grow, the real learning doesn't begin until the training wheels come
off.

Of course in the software industry there's the concept of "good-enough
software" which is another term for "crap people will buy anyway" and
I'd assume that there's some other name for it in the publishing
industry.

--
Magic: A metaphysical praxis that results in otherwise inexplicable
modifications of the world-state and cannot be understood by the
non-practitioner since the necessary understanding of-itself makes
one a practitioner.

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:10:23 AM2/17/11
to
Brenda Clough <Brenda...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On 2/16/2011 10:14 PM, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:50:36 -0700, "Norm D. Plumber"
>> <nom-de...@non.com> wrote in
>> <news:scenl698johas89oq...@4ax.com> in
>> rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Try imagining a novel in which every word has been finely
>>> crafted.
>>
>> I've a number of novels on my shelves that come pretty
>> damned close to that.
>>
>
>I have written some.
>
>Brenda

I hope you've had better success with that than I have, I tend to get
wrapped up in wording and forget the plot, then fix the plot and screw
up the wording, and go around and around until time for "file delete".

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:11:56 AM2/17/11
to
solarr <sol...@aol.com> wrote:

Just don't forget that bankruptcy means "we ain't paying our debts" it
doesn't mean "we're closing the business".

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:21:29 AM2/17/11
to
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>The
>main virtue of the magazines was that they gave me a steady
>diet of inexpensive reading at a time when my budget for
>books was considerably more limited than it is now.

Likewise, in my case it was during the '50s when I was a kid with no
income whose school library was very limited and what I could lay my
hands on was mostly what my folks left on the coffee table.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:23:18 AM2/17/11
to
On Feb 17, 7:08 am, "Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de-pl...@non.com> wrote:

>
>
> idea that those potential Masters should be held back by beancounting
> editors so some publishing company can maximize its profits is one
> that I find offensive; let them screw up because that's how they'll
> grow, the real learning doesn't begin until the training wheels come
> off.


Valid point but where would Dickens be if he had not magazines &
newspapers to publish his stories? If they had been driven into non-
existence? Dickens would have had zero opportunity to hone his
skills.

That's what will happen today if fiction magazines go bankrupt.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:25:15 AM2/17/11
to
On Feb 17, 1:33 am, Heike Svensson

Unfortunately they have lousy taste. 99% of the stuff I find on those
sites is a waste of my time. (Normally I'd say 'my money' but since
it's free, that's not the case here.)

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:25:35 AM2/17/11
to
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

I have, but it was long enough ago that I can't say when or where it
was... late '50s early '60s era, someplace we lived there was a small
grocery that had basically a magazine stand in one corner... the
concept of "checkout line" wasn't really applicable there, what with
one cash register and a dozen or so customers per hour.

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 7:38:53 AM2/17/11
to
On Feb 17, 7:11 am, "Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de-pl...@non.com> wrote:
> solarr <sol...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Hi Joseph,
>
> >On Feb 16, 9:16 pm, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
>
> >>         Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
> >> dull magazines may be I'll do my part!  I just today bought copies of
> >> both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders [1].
>
> >And now Borders itself has declared bankruptcy!
>
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/media/17borders.html
>
> Just don't forget that bankruptcy means "we ain't paying our debts" it
> doesn't mean "we're closing the business".


Unless you're Commodore Computers or Circuit City or Montgomery Wards,
where the bankruptcy judge decided they were not viable and closed the
businesses.

BTW you can blame me (and others like me) for bookstores' demise.
I've always preferred to do things online - first listening to music
via download in the 80s, then switching from Borders to Amazon in
1994.


Cryptoengineer

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 8:01:38 AM2/17/11
to
On Feb 17, 7:38 am, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> BTW you can blame me (and others like me) for bookstores' demise.
> I've always preferred to do things online - first listening to music
> via download in the 80s, then switching from Borders to Amazon in
> 1994.

Really? What did you use (for online music)? MP3 wasn't standardized
until 1994, and Napster was 1999. In 1990 you had FTP, along with
Archie, etal.

Circa 1990, while corporate sites had T1s, most home users were still
on dialup. Transfer off a corporate site would have involved 1.44
Mbyte floppies.

I did know some people who were working on electronic music back then,
but that's not digital audio.

pt

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 9:36:34 AM2/17/11
to
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote:

In Dickens' time there was no internet.

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 10:37:11 AM2/17/11
to
SFTV_troy wrote:

Nobody's talking about all fiction magazines going bankrupt. Only
about PRINT magazines.

--
Dan Goodman
dsgood at LJ, DW, IJ, FB, Tw____

Mike Ash

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 12:13:23 PM2/17/11
to
In article
<87054cdf-6aa6-45e6...@k17g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> wrote:

The internet didn't exist in Dickens's day. There will still be plenty
of places to practice the short story craft even if all print magazines
explode.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 12:48:45 PM2/17/11
to
"Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de...@non.com> wrote:

>Which maybe is getting away from the point. People who become really
>skilled at something do it by smashing their thumbs and cutting
>fingers and creating some junk until they actually learn what they're
>doing and master their craft, then they can fly like the Dickens. The
>idea that those potential Masters should be held back by beancounting
>editors so some publishing company can maximize its profits is one
>that I find offensive

Keep in mind two things:

1 - That's the way it's been since time immemorial. Contrary to
popular belief, beancounters and management aren't new.

2 - The ability to craft shorts may or may not be related to the
ability to craft novels. (And probably isn't.) The connection was
probably tighter back in the day when novel plots were simpler and
novels far shorter.

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 12:50:22 PM2/17/11
to
"Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de...@non.com> wrote:

>solarr <sol...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi Joseph,
>>
>>On Feb 16, 9:16�pm, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
>>
>>> � � � � Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
>>> dull magazines may be I'll do my part! �I just today bought copies of
>>> both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders [1].
>>
>>And now Borders itself has declared bankruptcy!
>>
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/media/17borders.html
>
>Just don't forget that bankruptcy means "we ain't paying our debts" it
>doesn't mean "we're closing the business".

Actually it can mean either - depending on the kind of bankruptcy
filed for.

Michael Stemper

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 1:05:34 PM2/17/11
to
In article <150220112242006947%bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> writes:
>In article <ijf00v$tmg$2...@news.eternal-september.org>, Michael Stemper <mste...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote:

>> In article <140220111842166065%bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid>, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> writes:

>> >They used to complain that the magazines were being strangled by
>> >Mafia-controlled distribution. Now it's the readers' fault for not
>> >buying print subscriptions. I wonder what'll be next.
>>

>> Wasn't Thor Power Tools in there somewhere?


>
>Now there's a blast from the past. The Thor Power Tools decision
>dramatically affected book publishing (effectively, it killed the
>backlist because it changed U.S. tax rules concerning inventory), but
>Thor really didn't have anything to do with magazine publishing.

Sorry, I missed the part about "magazines" and was thinking of
publishing in general.

>That's not to say that the magazines didn't blame Thor for their
>problems, though.

Wouldn't be surprising.

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
If it's "tourist season", where do I get my license?

Michael Stemper

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 1:14:04 PM2/17/11
to
In article <30f72161-08f3-4cf8...@p16g2000vbo.googlegroups.com>, trag <tr...@io.com> writes:
>On Feb 15, 9:53=A0pm, Professor Bubba <bu...@nowhere.edu.invalid> wrote:

>> The 45,000 figure from 2000 is interesting to me. =A0Back in the day,
>> around 1970, standard sales were around 50,000 copies a month, even
>> with the Mafia. =A0Thirty years later, sales are down by only 10%. =A0The=
>n,
>> blammo. =A0Either Asimov's really, really began to suck, or everybody
>> went online and got busy doing things other than reading old-school
>> magazines.


>
>At some point all the SF magazines disappeared from the grocery store
>check out line and were replaced with crap for stupid people.

As others have reported, I never saw an SF magazine in a grocery
store. I never saw an SF magazine, period, until I went off to
college in 1971. There was a convenience store near my end of
campus that carried a few, sporadically.

> There are probably a lot of kids who got there
>start with the mags, if not the entire genre of SF, because they saw

>an interesting cover on an SF mag in a grocery store checkout line.

I wasn't one of them. After the library, I moved right to picking up
MMPB at the various wire racks around town.

Default User

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 1:36:08 PM2/17/11
to
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:1fdfzt5wjukzt$.8gpgsudd880x.dlg@40tude.net...

> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:55:42 -0800 (PST), trag <tr...@io.com>
> wrote in
> <news:30f72161-08f3-4cf8...@p16g2000vbo.googlegroups.com>
> in
> rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:
>
> [...]
>
>> At some point all the SF magazines disappeared from the
>> grocery store check out line and were replaced with crap
>> for stupid people. When did that happen? [...]
>
> I'm 62, and I've never seen sf magazines at a grocery store
> checkout line.

Not there, but in the magazine sections of grocery and drugstores.

Brian
--
Day 742 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project
Current music playing: None.


Walter Bushell

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 1:59:39 PM2/17/11
to
In article <4d5f5ed8....@news.supernews.com>,
fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:

> 2 - The ability to craft shorts may or may not be related to the
> ability to craft novels. (And probably isn't.) The connection was
> probably tighter back in the day when novel plots were simpler and
> novels far shorter.

Oh it definitely is. One must, in either case, be able to handle the
language. Most would be writers never make it out of the slush pile. At
the higher levels, much less so, of course.

--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?

SFTV_troy

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 2:27:38 PM2/17/11
to
On Feb 17, 8:01 am, Cryptoengineer <petert...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 7:38 am, SFTV_troy <SFTV_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > BTW you can blame me (and others like me) for bookstores' demise.
> > I've always preferred to do things online - first listening to music
> > via download in the 80s, then switching from Borders to Amazon
> > in 1994.
>
> Really? What did you use (for online music)?

SIDs for Commodore=64 and MODs for Commodore Amiga. There are still
extensive archives for both of them:

http://amp.dascene.net/links.php
http://www.lemon64.com/music/


> Circa 1990, while corporate sites had T1s, most home users were still
> on dialup. Transfer off a corporate site would have involved 1.44
> Mbyte floppies.

Wow. Waaay wrong. 80s BBSes had hard disk drives. And obviously
things were much smaller. An Amiga could record an entire 4 minute
song, in 8-bit, inside a megabyte.

More than that: The amiga could do the entire Space Ace game, in
digital video, also in a megabyte. It could hold nearly 1 minute of
video in RAM, before having to pause and load the next video/scene.

trag

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 2:45:56 PM2/17/11
to
On Feb 16, 9:28 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:55:42 -0800 (PST), trag <t...@io.com>

> wrote in
> <news:30f72161-08f3-4cf8...@p16g2000vbo.googlegroups.com>
> in
> rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.tv.scifi.channel:
>
> [...]
>
> > At some point all the SF magazines disappeared from the
> > grocery store check out line and were replaced with crap
> > for stupid people.   When did that happen?   [...]
>
> I'm 62, and I've never seen sf magazines at a grocery store
> checkout line.

Probably a regional difference.

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 2:47:04 PM2/17/11
to
Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:

>In article <4d5f5ed8....@news.supernews.com>,
> fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
>
>> 2 - The ability to craft shorts may or may not be related to the
>> ability to craft novels. (And probably isn't.) The connection was
>> probably tighter back in the day when novel plots were simpler and
>> novels far shorter.
>
>Oh it definitely is.

[[Citation Needed]] Seriously, folks keep claiming that but seem
curiously unable to provide any support for the notion.

>One must, in either case, be able to handle the language. Most would be
>writers never make it out of the slush pile. At the higher levels, much
>less so, of course.

A non sequitur unrelated to the subject of my post.

Norm D. Plumber

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 3:09:23 PM2/17/11
to
fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:

>"Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de...@non.com> wrote:
>
>>Which maybe is getting away from the point. People who become really
>>skilled at something do it by smashing their thumbs and cutting
>>fingers and creating some junk until they actually learn what they're
>>doing and master their craft, then they can fly like the Dickens. The
>>idea that those potential Masters should be held back by beancounting
>>editors so some publishing company can maximize its profits is one
>>that I find offensive
>
>Keep in mind two things:
>
>1 - That's the way it's been since time immemorial. Contrary to
>popular belief, beancounters and management aren't new.

Indeed, they're just as stupid as ever, only with greater efficiency.

>2 - The ability to craft shorts may or may not be related to the
>ability to craft novels. (And probably isn't.) The connection was
>probably tighter back in the day when novel plots were simpler and
>novels far shorter.

Agreed.

solarr

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:02:36 PM2/17/11
to
Hi Norm,

On Feb 17, 6:11 am, "Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de-pl...@non.com> wrote:

> solarr <sol...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Hi Joseph,
>
> >On Feb 16, 9:16 pm, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
>
> >>         Well, heck, fallacious as all the reasoning to support buying
> >> dull magazines may be I'll do my part!  I just today bought copies of
> >> both Asimov's and Analog from my local Borders [1].
>
> >And now Borders itself has declared bankruptcy!
>
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/media/17borders.html
>
> Just don't forget that bankruptcy means "we ain't paying our debts" it
> doesn't mean "we're closing the business".

That's true, but I think they *are* actually closing about 30% of
their stores:

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/02/17/borders-bankruptcy-boosts-amazon-apple-google/

QUOTE ON

Borders has indicated that it will close 200 stores, representing
about 30% of its 642 stores in operation. The stores are expected to
close by April 2011.

QUOTE OFF

But, the whole reason I mentioned Borders in the first place to to
emphasize what I see as the theme of this thread. That being the
unstoppable, rapidly changing nature of the business of publishing and
selling magazines and books. ;-)

What with Kindles and iTablets and smart phones, et cetera, ad
infinitum, it wouldn't surprise me if newspapers, magazines and brick
and mortar bookstores all went the way of the dodo. =:-O

Note that I didn't put books themselves on that list. As long as I'm
around books will still have at least one devoted customer - me! ;-)

-/< /\ />-

Lawrence Watt-Evans

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:04:44 PM2/17/11
to
On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:47:04 GMT, fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

>Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <4d5f5ed8....@news.supernews.com>,
>> fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
>>
>>> 2 - The ability to craft shorts may or may not be related to the
>>> ability to craft novels. (And probably isn't.) The connection was
>>> probably tighter back in the day when novel plots were simpler and
>>> novels far shorter.
>>
>>Oh it definitely is.
>
>[[Citation Needed]] Seriously, folks keep claiming that but seem
>curiously unable to provide any support for the notion.
>
>>One must, in either case, be able to handle the language. Most would be
>>writers never make it out of the slush pile. At the higher levels, much
>>less so, of course.
>
>A non sequitur unrelated to the subject of my post.

Well, not entirely. You haven't defined your terms. "The ability to
craft shorts" depends on the ability to write coherent prose and tell
a story with it; so does the ability to craft novels.

You seem to be using "craft" in a much narrower sense, though. I
think what you actually mean is that there is no obvious connection
between the ability to _structure_ a short, and the ability to
structure a novel. As someone who's been reasonably successful at
both, I can agree that these are different skills. I find them to be
related, though, because they both rely on so many of the same
elements. I'd say they're related the way that playing the piano and
playing the guitar are related -- they both call for an understanding
of music, a sense of rhythm, agile fingers, and so on, but the
elements are used differently.

Incidentally, I discovered in the 1990s that there's also a difference
between novels and big fat novels -- the break-point seems to be (at
least for me) somewhere around 150,000 words. The first time I wrote
a novel longer than that I had to develop a bunch of new skills I
hadn't known I'd need.


--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.ethshar.com/TheFinalCalling01.html

Scott Lurndal

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:06:06 PM2/17/11
to
mste...@walkabout.empros.com (Michael Stemper) writes:
>In article <12977...@sheol.org>, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) writes:
>>: sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>
>>: When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
>>: to decide what is (or is not) readable?
>>
>>Oooh, oooh, I know this one! "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
>>swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.
>
>Please add me to your list.


The point is, that rather than one (for pay) gatekeeper, now you have
millions. If Wayne recommends someone elses self-published title, I'll probably
check it out. If the author spams the newsgroup, I'll join the
chorus calling for immoliation.

scott

Scott Lurndal

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:16:27 PM2/17/11
to
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

>While trees are being planted at the same rate they're being cut down,
>thanks to government regulation or public-relations response to
>ecology pressure... when you're cutting down 100-year-old trees, you
>only have equilibrium if you planted trees, 100 years ago, at the same
>rate you're cutting them down now. Didn't happen, so our forests are
>shrinking, and younger trees have to be used to meet our demands.

You don't need nor want 100 year old trees for pulp (save 'em for fine
furniture).

There is more forest coverage in the continental US now than at any time
since the 19th century.

scott

Scott Lurndal

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:18:33 PM2/17/11
to
SFTV_troy <SFTV...@yahoo.com> writes:
>On Feb 14, 5:07=A0pm, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>
>> >"The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
>> >lots of good SF and fantasy published
>>
>> This statement presupposes that access to good SF and
>> Fantasy requires a publisher at all. =A0 Perhaps as a gatekeeper...
>
>You answered your own question. You ever read fanfiction? Well I'm
>sure you have, but in my opinion 99.99% of it is crap, and the editors
>at the pro-magazines filter out that nonsense and only feed me the
>truly good material. (And even then, some of it is not the great.)
>

So why should I accept a recommentation from Baen, but not from
one of the long-time denizens of rec.arts.sf.written? Someone here
recommended HP & the methods of rationality, and I've been enjoying
that. Rather than a handful of gatekeepers, why not a hundred thousand?

scott

Lawrence Watt-Evans

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:34:57 PM2/17/11
to
On 17 Feb 2011 21:18:33 GMT, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

No reason at all -- except then you have the problem of finding
gatekeepers you trust.

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:38:10 PM2/17/11
to
On 2/17/11 4:18 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> SFTV_troy<SFTV...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On Feb 14, 5:07=A0pm, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>>
>>>> "The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
>>>> lots of good SF and fantasy published
>>>
>>> This statement presupposes that access to good SF and
>>> Fantasy requires a publisher at all. =A0 Perhaps as a gatekeeper...
>>
>> You answered your own question. You ever read fanfiction? Well I'm
>> sure you have, but in my opinion 99.99% of it is crap, and the editors
>> at the pro-magazines filter out that nonsense and only feed me the
>> truly good material. (And even then, some of it is not the great.)
>>
>
> So why should I accept a recommentation from Baen, but not from
> one of the long-time denizens of rec.arts.sf.written? Someone here
> recommended HP& the methods of rationality, and I've been enjoying

> that. Rather than a handful of gatekeepers, why not a hundred thousand?

Sure. But then there's the problem of finding which gatekeepers
actually (A) read enough stuff so that they produce a reasonable stream
of recommendations for good stuff, and (B) whose tastes fit yours, and
(C) are consistent enough that you can rely on.

(C) is one of the things that money drives, that ends up making publishers.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

Ted Nolan <tednolan>

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:44:21 PM2/17/11
to
In article <Leg7p.137609$YE5....@news.usenetserver.com>,

I believe it is greater than the 19th, or at least there was an article
in The Atlantic several years ago to that effect. It seems that with
modern transport, it doesn't make sense to farm parts of New England any more,
and the fields have gone back to forest.


Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

Mike Ash

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:50:33 PM2/17/11
to
In article <Jgg7p.137610$YE5....@news.usenetserver.com>,
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

My thoughts exactly. Publishers do not do a particularly good job of
gatekeeping, at least not for me. The books I find interesting are still
an infinitesimal proportion of all the books that are published, or even
all the books that are available in the store. I gave up on stalking
through bookstores to find new stuff to read long ago. Now I read things
written by authors I like, or things recommended by people who like
stuff I like, or things whose reviews make them sound interesting. If
publishers magically evaporated tomorrow and all authors began
self-publishing, I don't think my reading habits would be much affected
at all.

Mike Ash

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 4:57:59 PM2/17/11
to
In article <4d5e7ad3....@news.supernews.com>,
fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:

> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <4d5f5ed8....@news.supernews.com>,
> > fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
> >
> >> 2 - The ability to craft shorts may or may not be related to the
> >> ability to craft novels. (And probably isn't.) The connection was
> >> probably tighter back in the day when novel plots were simpler and
> >> novels far shorter.
> >
> >Oh it definitely is.
>
> [[Citation Needed]] Seriously, folks keep claiming that but seem
> curiously unable to provide any support for the notion.

Why does he need a citation to say that there is a relation, but you
don't need one to say that there probably isn't?

Anyway, it seems to me that there is a simple proof from probability.

I don't know the exact number, but the number of good* SF-writing
authors is small when compared to the general public.

Now, assume that the set of good SF-writing novelists is unrelated to
the set of good SF-writing short story writers, as is you claim is
probable. This implies that the number of people who are good at both is
quite low, roughly the square of the proportion of those who are good at
one. Thus, if 1% of the population consists of good SF writers (and the
real number is undoubtedly much lower) then one would expect 1 in 10,000
people to be good at writing both SF novels and short stories.

Looking at the actual literature, we find a great deal of overlap
between authors who are good at novels and good at short stories.
Certainly there are authors who should really stick to one or the other,
but there are a large number who are good at both. Thus, the two skills
are clearly related, even if not identical.

* You can define "good" almost any way you care to and not hurt the
argument. Define it in terms of popularity, sales, or even personal
taste, it all still works.

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 5:12:31 PM2/17/11
to
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:

The obvious answer: Gatekeepers to evaluate those gatekeepers.

Suzanne Blom

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 5:24:06 PM2/17/11
to
On 2/17/2011 11:50 AM, Derek Lyons wrote:
> "Norm D. Plumber"<nom-de...@non.com> wrote:
>
>> Just don't forget that bankruptcy means "we ain't paying our debts" it
>> doesn't mean "we're closing the business".
>
> Actually it can mean either - depending on the kind of bankruptcy
> filed for.
>
They're going for Chapter 11; they plan to stay in business.

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 5:36:12 PM2/17/11
to
t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan wrote:

Farming in Ulster County, NY took a big hit when the Erie Canal opened.

Ted Nolan <tednolan>

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 5:40:09 PM2/17/11
to
In article <ijk761$odn$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Well, I wish them luck, but what has changed?

It's like the old joke about the farmer who wins the lottery and asked
what he'll do says: "Well, I reckon I'll just keep farming until it's
all gone".

Yes they get out of some bad leases, shed a lot of payroll, stiff
their suppliers and get a capital injection. But..

They still have no Internet strategy. They still have no e-reader.
They still have these huge spaces that used to be filled with CDs that
are generating no revenue for the floor space. How have they done anything
but kick the can down the road a bit?

Lawrence Watt-Evans

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:02:22 PM2/17/11
to
On 17 Feb 2011 22:40:09 GMT, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan
<tednolan>) wrote:

>In article <ijk761$odn$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>Suzanne Blom <bo...@sueblom.net> wrote:
>>On 2/17/2011 11:50 AM, Derek Lyons wrote:
>>> "Norm D. Plumber"<nom-de...@non.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Just don't forget that bankruptcy means "we ain't paying our debts" it
>>>> doesn't mean "we're closing the business".
>>>
>>> Actually it can mean either - depending on the kind of bankruptcy
>>> filed for.
>>>
>>They're going for Chapter 11; they plan to stay in business.
>>
>
>Well, I wish them luck, but what has changed?
>
>It's like the old joke about the farmer who wins the lottery and asked
>what he'll do says: "Well, I reckon I'll just keep farming until it's
>all gone".
>
>Yes they get out of some bad leases, shed a lot of payroll, stiff
>their suppliers and get a capital injection. But..
>
>They still have no Internet strategy. They still have no e-reader.

They bought back borders.com, and they have an e-reader called the
Kobo. Too little, too late, but not as bad as you suggest.

>They still have these huge spaces that used to be filled with CDs that
>are generating no revenue for the floor space. How have they done anything
>but kick the can down the road a bit?

Yeah, I don't think they're going to make it.

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:15:10 PM2/17/11
to
t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:

Re: Borders filing for reorganization vice dissolution.

>They still have no Internet strategy. They still have no e-reader.
>They still have these huge spaces that used to be filled with CDs that
>are generating no revenue for the floor space. How have they done anything
>but kick the can down the road a bit?

Kicking the can down the road buys time to develop those things and
fix the problems. They may or may not spend the time wisely, but it's
foolish to believe it has no benefit.

Myself, I suspect bricks-and-mortar booksellers are going the way of
consumer electronics - there's no room for a #2.

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:17:36 PM2/17/11
to
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

>mste...@walkabout.empros.com (Michael Stemper) writes:
>>In article <12977...@sheol.org>, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) writes:
>>>: sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>>
>>>: When anyone can simply post a PDF on a website, who needs a gatekeeper
>>>: to decide what is (or is not) readable?
>>>
>>>Oooh, oooh, I know this one! "I" do. Since otherwise I'd be
>>>swamped with all the stuff gatekeepers keep outside the gates.
>>
>>Please add me to your list.
>
>
>The point is, that rather than one (for pay) gatekeeper, now you have
>millions.

Which still leaves you with the same problem, except now you're
swamped with gatekeepers rather than with stories.

>If Wayne recommends someone elses self-published title, I'll probably
>check it out. If the author spams the newsgroup, I'll join the
>chorus calling for immoliation.

Which covers the trailing edges of the bell curve nicely... But the
middle is still going to swamp you.

Ted Nolan <tednolan>

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:21:37 PM2/17/11
to
In article <64arl65lg38vrvntk...@reader80.eternal-september.org>,

Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>On 17 Feb 2011 22:40:09 GMT, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan
><tednolan>) wrote:
>
>>Well, I wish them luck, but what has changed?
>>
>>They still have no Internet strategy. They still have no e-reader.
>
>They bought back borders.com, and they have an e-reader called the
>Kobo. Too little, too late, but not as bad as you suggest.

Hmm. Interesting. The last two times I was in a Borders (there
are none in SC) in May & July of last year, I didn't see anything
about e-readers. Of course I wasn't looking for one, so I may have
had blinders on, but it's impossible to miss them at B&N or BAM.
I did figure they had a working web site by now, but that ship has
not only sailed, it's arrived and docked at Amazon and B&N..

>
>>They still have these huge spaces that used to be filled with CDs that
>>are generating no revenue for the floor space. How have they done anything
>>but kick the can down the road a bit?
>
>Yeah, I don't think they're going to make it.
>

I don't either, but it just seems perverse that BAM seems to be doing OK
and Borders, which I considered easily the best of the Big 3 has been
stuck on stupid for 10+ years..

Ted

Derek Lyons

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:21:55 PM2/17/11
to
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

>Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
>
>>While trees are being planted at the same rate they're being cut down,
>>thanks to government regulation or public-relations response to
>>ecology pressure... when you're cutting down 100-year-old trees, you
>>only have equilibrium if you planted trees, 100 years ago, at the same
>>rate you're cutting them down now. Didn't happen, so our forests are
>>shrinking, and younger trees have to be used to meet our demands.
>
>You don't need nor want 100 year old trees for pulp (save 'em for fine
>furniture).

You mostly don't want the kind of trees they're cutting (regardless of
age) for pulp (softwoods, mostly pines and firs) for fine furniture
anways. Traditionally, they were mostly used for flooring,
construction timbers, and utilitarian furniture.

Ted Nolan <tednolan>

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:23:52 PM2/17/11
to
In article <4d5eab43....@news.supernews.com>,

Derek Lyons <fair...@gmail.com> wrote:
>t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
>Re: Borders filing for reorganization vice dissolution.
>
>>They still have no Internet strategy. They still have no e-reader.
>>They still have these huge spaces that used to be filled with CDs that
>>are generating no revenue for the floor space. How have they done anything
>>but kick the can down the road a bit?
>
>Kicking the can down the road buys time to develop those things and
>fix the problems. They may or may not spend the time wisely, but it's
>foolish to believe it has no benefit.

Sure. And if ktc keeps you employed for an extra year, that's worthwhile
in itself from a employee pov..

Ted

Heike Svensson

unread,
Feb 17, 2011, 6:33:37 PM2/17/11
to
On 17/02/2011 7:25 AM, SFTV_troy wrote:
> On Feb 17, 1:33 am, Heike Svensson
>> On 16/02/2011 12:13 PM, trag wrote:
>>> I have no interest in wading through on-line slush piles.
>>
>> Fortunately, the fine folks at Digg/Reddit/Stumbleupon/etc.
>> have generally done that for you.
>
> Unfortunately they have lousy taste. 99% of the stuff I find on those
> sites is a waste of my time. (Normally I'd say 'my money' but since
> it's free, that's not the case here.)

Then you find an online community whose tastes better match yours.

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