INTRODUCTION:

A State of the Short SF Field in 2016

Neil Clarke

 

I’ve spent most of my life working in technology. It’s a field where if you aren’t always moving forward, then you’re falling behind. I never really thought of it as preparation for work as an editor, but in the case of this series, it certainly has been. Keeping up with all the new science fiction stories published each month can be like drinking from a firehose sometimes. Taking time off—even just a month—can be overwhelming in terms of recovery, so you have no choice but to keep forging ahead.

I seldom know which stories will make the final cut until the very end, so throughout the year, I add the potential candidates to a spreadsheet. I also call upon a few friends and editors to give me some of their recommendations, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. I’ll give those stories a second chance if they aren’t already on the list.

In November and December, I reread all the stories on the list and select the best of them for inclusion in this anthology. Sometimes, you can’t get everything you want. Last year, for example, two of the stories were unavailable due to contractual restrictions. That didn’t happen this time around. Instead, I had a different problem: the list was longer. As far as problems go, a stronger year of stories is a good one to have. That said, I found it interesting that some of the usual suspects—award-winners and perennial best-of list writers—weren’t responsible for this shift. I’ll take that as a promising sign for the future.

Last year, most of my introduction reviewed how the short fiction field had changed in the past decade and included a few concerns about the financial sustainability of the magazine market in its current configuration. One of the more personally concerning models was the method of annually funding magazines through crowdfunding campaigns. Some might confuse this with a subscription drive, but the base premise is actually quite different. It’s more like an annual Sword of Damocles hanging over the future of publication. The fear of losing the venue often inspires the more passionate readers to give well in excess of what a subscription would normally cost. This allows markets with a less-than-sufficient subscriber base to continue their existence or spend more than their subscriber base would normally permit. It’s great that these markets can get this support, but for reasons I mentioned last year, I have my concerns about its long-term viability.

To get a better sense of how this and some other issues were perceived, I conducted a survey of over a thousand short fiction readers. Of everything I asked about in that survey, this topic generated the most polarized and passionate responses. In the end, it broke down into three groups with the two ends expressing varying degrees of hostility. The largest group, occupying the middle, was more prone to support magazines in a more traditional sense: subscriptions or encouraging friends to read it. The next largest group included a significant number of people who once supported these—or similar—efforts, but were now offended by the repeated requests, often described as irresponsible. There was also concern that this behavior could impact the ability for future projects to get a start this way. The smallest group was in total support of this business model and downright offended that anyone would dare question its legitimacy. A significant percentage of the comments for this group appeared to indicate that they had significant skin in the game, quite often as writers.

The breakdown of the survey leads me to believe this model will be in place for at least a few more years, but not without consequences. Although there is significant push against the model, the latter group should be sufficient to keep a small publication alive, at least for the near future. The demographics of that group is something to be concerned about, but in the end, I think a follow-up survey is necessary to more adequately gauge the long-term effect this will have on that segment of the field.

Another item I mentioned last year was that the print magazines were reinvigorated by the digital explosion. In covering the anthologies, I pointed to a broken print distribution system, but I didn’t explicitly call your attention to how that impacts the print magazines. Unlike the anthologies, print magazines have two forms of distribution in that format: newsstand—which is similar to the book distribution—and subscription—which isn’t.

If you ever wondered why we don’t have more genre print magazines, the answer can be found in the production and distribution issues. Printing, shipping, and storage costs for print books and magazines are significant expenses, and with magazines, unsold newsstand copies are typically destroyed. In some ways, it’s almost worth thinking of magazine newsstand sales as a marketing expense. They don’t generate a lot of revenue, but it gets your product in front of readers and from there you hope they convert into subscribers.

Print subscriptions carry their own baggage, though: postage costs. As more and more people have shifted to email and electronic bill pay, the USPS has had to cover declining revenue and increasing costs—pensions, insurance, etc.—through mandated annual postage rate increases. Even at the discounted rates for magazines—which require a high enough number of subscribers—the increases can add up to a significant expense, and that leads us to the biggest market news of 2016 . . .

At the end of 2016, Asimov’s and Analog, both published by Dell Magazines, announced that they will be switching from a monthly to a bimonthly schedule in 2017. The issues will be bigger, and there will be no reduction in the amount of fiction published. The official explanation—an attempt to keep subscription prices in check—is completely in line with modern postal reality. It’s been well known that the increasing costs of printing and shipping have been causing problems across the industry for years. In fact, F&SF made a similar move back in 2009.

This change is not a reason to worry about the fates of these two magazines. Asimov’s and Analog continue to have the leading print readerships and have built a healthy digital subscription footprint. If anything, this will likely lead to more opportunities for these magazines to include novellas, a segment of the market that has been making a resurgence for the last few years. One need look no further than Tor.com’s success to see this in action.

The bad news is what it says about the state of the print magazine market. At this point, I can’t name a single monthly science fiction magazine with national print distribution. (Yes, technically, both magazines were publishing ten issues/year for a while now, but that always felt close enough.) This marks the end of an era that stretches back to the very first science fiction magazines. If these two magazines can’t make it financially viable to publish at the going rate on a monthly print schedule, it seems highly unlikely that anyone else can.

The costs of printing and shipping will continue to rise, so while their subscription rates can held down for now, it’s only a matter of time before market pressures force an increase. This raises a concern I expressed last year: Is the field as a whole undervaluing its products?

Despite some of the controversy, crowdfunding has demonstrated that a segment of our community believes magazines are worth considerably more than the going rate, but would there be broad enough support for a more modest increase? In terms of percentages, a jump from $2.99 to $3.99 would seem like a lot, but one could argue that the increased price is reasonable when compared to other forms of entertainment or even the typical cost of a single cup of good coffee. From there, I think there is room to argue that the field has done itself a disservice. By aiming low, we—yes, I know I’m part of this problem—have created a reality where a low price is considered generous.

Overall readership for short fiction appears to be growing, but not at a rate to sustain increasing costs and resource competition in the form of new markets. Last year, I suggested that the near future will bring with it a market contraction that will help address some of this. I still believe that to be quite likely, but it also seems like the lower rates may have greased the wheels and set us on this path. I’m beginning to think that a course correction, in the form of slightly higher subscription rates, is not only likely but quite possibly necessary for the continued health of the field.

The elephant in the room is most certainly free online magazines and their impact on the sense of perceived value—see, I told you I was complicit. It’s well known that the majority of people who read online fiction or podcast don’t contribute to its financial stability. The actual supporting rate tends to fall somewhere below 10 percent. In many ways, the free online edition is the digital equivalent to what the print magazines gain from newsstand sales: marketing with the hope of creating subscribers.

The end result is that many of these markets have what can be described as a pay-for-convenience model. It might mean that the magazine is free to read or listen to online, but if you want the nicely formatted ebook edition, automatic monthly delivery, or even some extra content, you have to pay. This might even be combined with services like Patreon, which provides readers an ability to make monthly pledges. Like Kickstarter—but never-ending—this system includes goals and rewards that can provide further incentives to get readers to pay for the magazine. In fact, this service is now being used by an increasing number of authors as an alternate source of income from traditional publishing.

Here at the beginning of 2017, financial issues still remain the biggest hurdle for the business end of short fiction—and I haven’t even touched upon the poor pay rates for authors. Still, things are nothing like they were a decade ago. There are significant and complicated issues still left to be resolved, but that the field is still moving forward and trying new things is a reason to be optimistic. It will be bumpy at times, but it’s not in crisis.

I’d like to end this year with some special call-outs. As expected, my categories evolve to meet the needs of that year:

Author to Watch

It feels a bit weird to be singling out an author who has been publishing stories for a few years—particularly one that I’ve worked with for the last two—but this year he’s been on fire both in terms of quantity and quality. In 2016, Rich Larson had a string of fantastic stories appear in Interzone, F&SF, Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and several other places. One of the more difficult aspects of compiling this year’s list was determining which of Rich’s stories would be included. In the end, I took two. Track down the others. You won’t be disappointed.

Service to Authors

It’s been in place for a few years now, but The Grinder (thegrinder.diaboli-calplots.com) has become an invaluable resource for short fiction authors. The purpose: to provide information to authors about the wide array of venues that are willing to consider their stories. The site includes submission-tracking options and almost every detail an author needs to make a well-informed decision: response times, pay rates, genre, etc. Through The Grinder, David Steffen and his team have played an important role in the short fiction ecosystem, and have done so as a labor of love. Thank you.

Impact on International Science Fiction

As readers of Clarkesworld Magazine already know, I’ve long had an interest in international science fiction, particularly works in translation. In recent years, there have been increasing opportunities to read some of these works. Although the number of translations in this volume is down from last year, the availability of smart and interesting translated works continues to rise.

Additionally, Ken Liu has made a tremendous impact in this area. He’s been a leading advocate of Chinese science fiction, and twice now, works he has translated have gone on to win the Hugo Award. This year, Tor Books published his anthology Invisible Planets, which featured an incredible array of Chinese stories and essays. This is a book well worth having on your shelves and I’d personally like to thank Ken for this and all his other efforts in the field. Well done!

Thanks for reading. See you next year!