writing biz

Scalzi on SFWA

February 18, 2008

John Scalzi has a wonderful rant about SFWA and Andrew Burt’s candidacy for president posted on his site. I also like what Charlie Finlay adds in the comments, by describing some of the problems SFWA faces beyond certain candidates themselves. I myself let my SFWA membership lapse this year. It seemed like the organization couldn’t […]

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Science Fiction Magazines Part IV – Starting from Scratch

November 9, 2007

Okay, I can’t seem to stop thinking about this, so I’m going to beat the dead horse one last time. In the first three posts about Science Fiction magazines:Why Are the “Big Three” Dying?, Marketing in Meatspace, and Online Marketing, I wasn’t explicit about why I was focusing on marketing for the magazines rather than […]

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Science Fiction Magazines Part III – Online Marketing

November 1, 2007

My sense of the online sphere is that it remains a place of opportunity rather than threat for a print magazine. Over time, this may change, but the internet provides the best place to attract pre-qualified subscribers, to build a relationship with them, and then to convert them to paying subscribers. Unlike direct mail, this […]

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Science Fiction Magazines Part II – Marketing In Meatspace

November 1, 2007

More than anything – more than changing demographics, or the advent of new technologies, or the rise of free content – I have a sense that the loss of sf readers for the “big three” markets is actually a failure of marketing and core circulation management practices, not of the sf market as a whole. […]

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Science Fiction Magazines Part I – Why are the “Big Three” Dying?

October 31, 2007

There’s been a fair amount of talk about the die-off in the short fiction magazine markets. Interestingly, this is often played as indicating their loss of relevance either generationally (sf market is aging) or else technologically (The internet is where it’s at! All else will crumble and fall before it!) or else in the business […]

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latest fan mail

May 22, 2007

I had the pleasure of receiving this bit of fan mail today: From: Tony Stanley Subject: re: the people of sand and slag ——————————————— fuck you I’ve responded to him, asking him if this is a proposition or an editorial comment, but haven’t heard back yet.

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