"Gardner Dozois - The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

magazine, which has existed in one form or another (with occasional breaks in
conti-nuity) since 1926. (On the other hand, I've said that before, only to watch the
magazine rise from the ashes again, so we'll just have to wait and see, and hope that
Amazing Stories can somehow pull off the Lazarus trick one more time. That
probably wouldn't be the way to bet it, though.)

The other big change in the magazine market this year is potentially positive: late in
the year, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was bought by its current
editor, Gordon Van Gelder, from its longtime owner and publisher, Edward L.
Ferman. If Gordon can cope with the extra work and problems that will come with
assuming the role of publisher as well, and if he has deep enough pockets to weather
any financial setbacks that might be caused by the transition, then this might well
give F&SF a new lease on lifeтАФthe Fermans were getting near retirement age, and
there has been speculation as to what would happen to the magazine when they did
retire. Without someone like Gordon willing to assume the stewardship of the
magazine, a big job, it might well have died. Now it has a decent chance of surviving,
for as long as Gordon can keep it going, anyway.

The news in the rest of the magazine market was no more cheerful than it has been
for the last several years. Overall sales were down almost everywhere, with Asimov's
Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy &
Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy reaching all-time lows (sales were down
across the entire range of the magazine market, in fact, far beyond genre
bound-ariesтАФit shows up more noticeably with the genre magazines because their
initial audience bases were lower to begin with). Asimov's Science Fiction registered
a 12.3 per cent loss in overall circulation in 2000, 3,348 in subscriptions, and 1,062
in newsstand sales. Analog Science Fiction & Fact registered a 7.5 per cent loss in
overall circulation in 2000, 1461 in subscriptions, and 2,435 in newsstand sales. The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction registered an 8.1 per cent loss in overall
circulation, 1,294 in subscriptions, and 1,360 in newsstand sales. Realms of
Fantasy registered a 12.1 per cent loss in overall circu-lation, rising 2,313 in
subscriptions, but dropping by 7,157 in newsstand sales. As it has for several years,
now, Interzone held steady at a circulation of about 4,000 copies, more or less
evenly split between subscriptions and newsstand sales.

I've mentioned before that these figures probably look worse than they actually are.
Most of the subscriptions that have been lost, to date, are not of the core
subscribers who regularly renew their subscriptions at full rate, the most profitable
subscribers for a magazine, but rather Publishers Clearing House-style cut-rate
stamp-sheet subscriptions, which can actually cost more to fulfil than they actually
bring in in revenue. The good news, then, is that the core subscribers who do remain
seem loyal, dedicated and, according to surveys, enthusiastic about the product that
they're receiving. Helping also to keep the digest-size or near-digest-size magazines
(Asimov's, Analog, F&SF) profitable in spite of declining circulation is the fact that
they're so cheap to produce in the first place that you don't have to sell very many of
them to make a profit, the advantage that has kept digest-size magazines alive for
decades when more expensive-to-produce magazines, which need to sell a far
greater number of copies in order to be profitable, have faltered and died.
Nevertheless, this continued decline in circulation is distressing and, if the slide
continues long enough, must ultimately threaten the existence of these magazines;