On the female side of the ledger, whenever I read a story in Analog and recommend it to my wife, 95% of the time,she also enjoys it. The main exceptions are when the story is too spooky or if it has too depressing an ending. (OTOH, I also am not keen on spooky stories and depressing stories — only my tolerance level is higher than hers.)

Going by my sister and her friends as an example, they probably do grow out of this in general as they become older teens, not that ‘McCaffrey’s Fantasy Magazine’ wouldn’t have some crossover appeal, perhaps.

As for stereotypical teenage girls and slightly holder can you wangle the Dolly/Cosmo style into tech/music/media/fantasy/SF for theirs?

One is about getting kids hooked on reading, which I think has to happen at a fairly young age. And the other is how to market to segments of kids who may be amenable to reading, but remain unconvinced that you have anything to offer them.

I don’t have any illusions that something like _Armored Magazine_ would be interesting to every boy, or every gamer, etc. But it would at least not be directly in conflict with what they’re interested in. For a magazine for girls/young women, I wonder if Andrea’s comment could be dead on – strangely stereotypical, but still important. Maybe unicorns sell. So you can’t really fight that, if you want to talk to the demographic. Looking at something like _Fantasy Magazine_, which definitely looks like its aimed at a female demographic gives one a sense of a design that might work, but I wonder how focused the content also has to be.

My feelings in general about short story magazines is that I, as a reader, am always unsure of the experience I’m about to get from a short story. With a book, I have all sorts of indicators of what I’m going to get(the cover, the blurb text, the back cover description), but with a magazine short story I’m always a little on edge. It’s very much the Tom Hanks box of chocolates metaphor, and if I only like the caramel-filled chocolates, reading a short story magazine is full of possibly unwelcome surprises.

So, for the _Armored_ idea, one of the things I’d look to do is to create a consistent range of experience within the fiction – hence adventure, big guns, and things getting blown up. So what’s the focus for girls? Maybe the age splits are bad for the girls and there isn’t as much overlap, maybe tweens want one thing, and teen girls want another and college age young women want something else, but I’m wondering what they might be looking for in terms of a reliable and pleasurable reading experience.

Woman on front sticking her foot in bad guy’s face while protecting cowering boyfriend?

I’ve got the first book of Moon’s series on my shelf, and I’ve put it on my required reading list for grad school for next term. Yes, my program is THAT cool. ;)

Now, I’ll admit I’m behind again on my F&SF reading, and I’ll also admit that I’ve seen several stories during the course of my two-year subscription that are “targeted to women” though I’d say instead that your stories target literary readers more than anything, because your stories tend not to be big and flashy in terms of action.

But one thing F&SF is not targeted at, and that’s TEENAGED girls, and that’s the crux of my question. ;) But like you, save for Paolo’s excellent idea of his point-and-shoot mag (which really only targets boys), I don’t know how one would market SF to teens. It’s hard, because like you, Scott Westerfield’s the only YA SF writer I can think of (and he’s one I need to read, dang it).

It’s a very perplexing question. ;)

Andrea:

I agree they’d have to be approached at more impressionable ages, and in my mind, the best way to do that would be through the visual mediums, unless there’s a market for SF children’s books. Now THAT could be fun… ;)