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Review: Various Types of Online Magazine

2 April 2001

Review: Various Types of Online Magazine

This are just some quick notes on information I've gathered from various magazines, either from their web pages, or from talking to editors/publishers. Unfortunately, I don't have the same types of info for each magazine; not all editors were available to answer questions, and of those that were, not all answered each of my questions.

Especially problematic is the question of figuring out readership -- as you'll see, some magazines count page hits, some count unique visitors, some give their best estimate. Use extreme caution when comparing numbers, remembering that it's often in the magazine's best interest to choose the best possible number to represent their readership. Caveat emptor.

The following list is organized into six categories:

Defunct - magazines that are now dead, but were significant enough that they seemed worth mentioning before passing on to the living ones
Amateur - magazines/sites that don't pay contributors, but publish multiple authors (unlike a single author's website)
Other Genres - magazines that aren't primarily spec fic-related, but which buy speculative fiction as a supplement to their main material
News/Market - magazines that primarily publish genre news or market reports; some of these are semi-pro or pro markets to writers, but because they seem to function differently than the primarily fiction magazines, I've separated them out; overall, they seem more stable than the fiction magazines
Semi-Pro - magazines that pay, but less than 3 cents/word
Pro - magazines that pay at least 3 cents a word (semi-pro and pro are standard categories for specfic writers)

As noted previously, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list. The listings are alphabetical within each category. Unless otherwise specified, the publications are free to the public.

Defunct

Eternity Online: Editor, Steve Algieri. Steve did Pulp Eternity (print semi-pro) and had planned a major online prozine; he had serious health problems and was forced to suspend operations.
Event Horizon: Editor, Ellen Datlow. Event Horizon had 15,000-20,000 unique users/month; I believe it was formed as an adjunct to a graphic design company with Rob Kilheffer, of Century. It was closed for lack of funds.
GalaxyOnline: Publisher, Ben Bova. This magazine, run by Wizards of the Coast, only published two reprints before folding. Publisher Ben Bova resigned in late November 2000, Fiction Editor Rick Wilbur resigned in mid-December; it was closed for lack of funds. A proposed deal to purchase Amazing Stories and put it out on CD-ROM also fell through. Wizards of the Coast was downsized by parent company Hasbro in December.
Infinite Matrix: Editor, Eileen Gunn. The was planned to be funded by a software company; they expected to take a loss on it, but they hoped that it would help them find employees. The project was recently cancelled due to lack of funding.
OMNI Online: Editor, Ellen Datlow. This was the successor to OMNI's print magazine, which was tremendously popular. The site had approximately a million page views/day when the plug was pulled in April of 1998; it was closed by its parent company because it had insufficient ad revenue to pay for full-time staff and other expenses.

Many of these were ambitious projects, done professionally, and would probably have been worthy additions to the field; sadly, funding became a serious issue for them. As we'll see later, that's not just a problem for the prozines. One of the basic questions about e-zines is still: how do people solve the funding issue, given how unlikely it is that they'll be able to charge for their content? I talked a little about this in an earlier editorial.

Some possibilities for addressing this issue follow in the sites below.

Amateur sites

Infinity Plus: Editor, Keith Brooke. This site was started by a few British authors to promote their work; they never expected it to become so large or popular. It's an online reprint site -- they have no schedule but publish close to weekly; they also posts reviews and plan an anthology coming out this summer. It would be a little misleading to call it a magazine -- but it's more than just an author website, since it reprints so many stories, and in such a wide variety. Sites like this may become very important to the field.
Planet Magazine: Editor, Andrew G. McCann. Planet is one of the oldest spec fic magazines online, and perhaps the first to appear in color (preceded by several, including Quanta and InterText, of which the latter is still around). It's still one of the most popular sf magazine sites. They've been quarterly since January 1994, and estimate about 5000 readers per issue.

These are just two of the significant amateur sites; such sites pay nothing to authors, but they often have a loyal readership, and publish some good stories. Many of the sites are quite popular, and clearly, there's some good work being done with amateur sites. The problem, of course, is that many of the amateur sites are not particularly well done, and the trick is finding the good ones. Still, I think more and more good ones will emerge -- spec fic has a long tradition of fine fanzines and other amateur publications, perhaps more so than any other genre.

Other Genres

1000 Delights: This is a members-only site, sex-focused -- like Playboy.
HMS Beagle: And this is a web-based science magazine, publishing literate biology-related sf.

Both of these publications pay pro rates to their writers. These magazines may not impact the genre much directly, but they (and others like them) may well be important markets for writers in the future; since they cater to a difference audience, some of the financial considerations spec fic magazines have to worry about may not apply.

Print Magazines

Interestingly, most of the print magazine sites only have excerpts on their websites, with one notable exception:

DNA Publications: The site for Warren Lapine's group of print magazines. They buy fiction/nonfiction specifically for their website. The site went up roughly four years ago, and publishes monthly; they claim 10,000 unique visitors/month and plan to continue publishing three new features/month.

What's most interesting about this project is what Warren reports -- he's surprised by how few of the visitors actually read the material that they publish online, but notes that he does get a lot of orders for print mags from the site. Apparently they're averaging about $1200/month in orders, and the average order has been going up by about $100/month every month. This is especially interesting when compared to similar news from Baen about how the free books they publish online are driving hardcover sales of the books -- we may be seeing the birth of a functional model for online/print collaboration. But it's important to note that part of the reason that giving away text for free can drive print sales is that screens are currently uncomfortable to read. If you like the beginning of something you find online, you'll be inclined to read the rest later at your leisure, so you may buy the print version. If comfortable e-book readers and/or "digital paper" arrive, this effect may be greatly reduced.

News/Market Info

Dark Matter Chronicles: Editor, Raechel Henderson Moon. This PDF-format magazine, distributed through e-mail only, reviews websites and e-books. It's published twice monthly since February 1999, has roughly 300 subscribers, and is planning to increase its focus on e-books.
Emerald City: Editor, Cheryl Morgan. This publishes reviews and genre news only.
SF Weekly: Editor, Scott Edelman; they're sponsored by SciFi Channel, and currently have 180,000+ registered readers. Publishes a wide variety of nonfiction material.
Speculations: Publisher, Kent Brewster; Editor, Susan Fry. This is a for-pay market magazine that went from print to online. They started the shift with e-mailing a printable version, but they received so many requests for plain text that now they do that format as well. Kent reports that he's very happy with the switch to online, and that while he lost a few subscribers, the decrease in costs has led to an increase in profitability.

The news magazines (tentatively) seem to be doing better than the fiction magazines at staying afloat; the only conclusions I can draw from this is that news readers may be more willing to pay for their news, and that perhaps there are more of them than there are fiction readers (!).

Semi-pro

Chiaroscuro: Editor, Brett A. Savory. This is a quarterly horror magazine, since July 1999; they average between 15,000-20,000 hits/month. They're currently talking to a book publisher about sponsorship.
Dark Planet: Editor, Lucy Snyder. They've been on the web since 1995.
Electric Wine (Diana L. Sharples and James E.M. Rasmussen. This magazine has been bimonthly since November 1999, with approximately 1500-2000 hits/monthly. They're in production on their first print poetry anthology, and are planning at some point in the future to switch to subscription, with downloads and on CD. However, they note that they will always have some free material on-site. They're also planning a best-of anthology as a trade paperback as well as in e-book format.
Fables: Editor, Megan Powell. Fables was started in the summer of 1998, and is affiliated with SilverLake Publishing (part of the Meredith Miller Memorial Project); they publish online quarterly. They believe they get approximately 5000 unique visitors monthly, and plan to stay pretty much as they are for now. If more money comes in, they'll raise rates.
Foxfire: Editor, Megan Powell. This is an interesting complement to Fables, a print/PDF magazine. So far there are only a handful of subscribers, with more interest in the print version than the PDF. The first six issues will only be fiction, though they may add poetry or reviews in the future.
Jackhammer: Editor, Raechel Henderson Moon. Jackhammer was founded in December 1997, and was weekly for three years. They now use a voting system to decide which stories to keep online. They're a web magazine, but present stories in PDF format, rather than HTML; they also have one print issue. In February 2001, they reported 7100 page views; in six months, they plan to evaluate the new publication model and see how readers are responding to it.

Many of the semi-pros are currently suffering some funding difficulties, due to the cutbacks in ad revenue across the net. But since their costs are often quite low, it seems likely that several will survive online, even if the publishers end up primarily supporting them out of pocket. (Many of the current print fanzines have similar (or higher) costs and are published entirely out of the publisher's pocket.)

Pro

Cyber Age Adventures: Editor, Frank Fradella. This magazine publishes only superhero stories. They were founded January 1999, and publish online monthly, plus several print anthologies annually. They estimate roughly 30,000 visitors monthly, and are currently releasing a superhero tarot deck. They're also planning a role-playing game, photographs of characters, and full-length original novels.
Deep Outside SFFH: Editor, Brian Callahan. They first appeared as "Outside" in April of 1998; they offer downloads as well as online reading.
FearsMag: Editor, Edward Ross Flynn. They offer some free samples and a for-pay members' section; they've been publishing weekly since June 2000, and estimate a core audience of 25,000 readers. They hope to expand into PDF, ebooks, WAP, XML, etc.
Gothic.net: Editor, Darren McKeeman. They estimate 1500 people a day stopping by the front page, with roughly 9500 readers on their mailing list. They've expanded into erotica and are working on a print anthology. With the drying up of ad money recently, they're reporting funding concerns.
SciFiction: Editor, Ellen Datlow, sponsored by SciFi Channel. Currently Sci Fiction pays the best rates in the business (print or online), at 20 cents/word. They publish new fiction weekly, a reprint of a classic every two weeks, and novellas published in installments. Note: Ellen doesn't consider it an online magazine because they're part of a larger site (this may also apply to SF Weekly above). She's not currently tracking stats.
Speculon: Editor, Tim Cooper. Founded August 2000, Speculon publishes eight times/year; they estimate 2500 hits/issue, and are funded privately.
Strange Horizons, Editor: Mary Anne Mohanraj. Founded September 2000, Strange Horizons publishes weekly. We're currently estimating roughly 3000 readers monthly, and are donor-funded.
Would That It Were: Editor, Don F. Muchow. The magazine publishes alternative history set in 1830-1930; they were founded April 2000, publishing quarterly. They're suffering funding concerns, and are considering merging with one or more zines of similar interest and perhaps pooling resources and/or streamlining operations.

There are clearly several different business models being attempted for the prozines; it's impossible to tell at this point which will be the most successful. I can only wish them all luck.

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