Star Wars books for Lucasfilm. Paula Guran stepped down as editor of Juno Books and became senior editor at Prime Books. Chris Schluep left his position as senior editor at Ballantine/Del Rey to join Amazon.com Books as a senior editor. Phyllis Grann retired as senior editor of Doubleday after a forty-year career in publishing. DongWon Song left his position at Orbit US; Tom Bouman joined Orbit US as an acquiring editor. John Helfers left his position as senior editor at Techno Books after sixteen years in that position. John Prebich left Dorchester as CEO, replaced by Robert Anthony. Linda K. Zecher has been hired as president, CEO, and director of Houghton Miffllin Hartcourt. Gillian Redfearn has been promoted to editorial director at Gollancz. Tricia Pasternak was named senior editor at Del Rey. Jessica Wade was promoted to senior editor at NAL. David Rosenthal was named president of the general imprint at Penguin Group. Allison Lorentzen joined Penguin Books as an editor. Michael Rowley has been hired as editorial director for SF/Fantasy at Ebury Publishing.
* * * There were relatively few changes in the professional print magazine market. Realms of Fantasy died for the third time in three years, perhaps for good this time (since they obviously have a dedicated readership, but not one large enough to support the expense of a print edition, I really don’t understand why they don’t try this one as an online electronic magazine). Weird Tales was sold to Marvin Kaye, who took the unpopular step of dismissing the current staff of the recent Hugo winner and announcing that he was taking the magazine in a nostalgically retro direction, something that few industry insiders thought would work; most are predicting a short life and an early death for this venerable magazine under its new management.
Overall circulation of most of the professional print magazines is slowly creeping up, after years of decline, mostly because of sales of electronic subscriptions to the magazines, as well as sales of individual electronic copies of each issue. The figures are still too small for anything other than the most cautious of optimism, but it may just prove, as I suggested it would years ago, that the Internet will be the saving of the professional SF magazines.
Asimov’s Science Fiction had a very strong year as well, perhaps strong enough to earn Sheila Williams her second Hugo in a row. Excellent fiction by Paul McAuley, Kij Johnson, Michael Swanwick, Elizabeth Bear, Tom Purdom, Ian R. MacLeod, and Paul Cornell appeared in Asimov’s this year, as well as much good work by Robert Reed, John Kessel, Mary Robinette Kowal, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Theodora Goss, Allen M. Steel, Nancy Kress, Nancy Fulda, and others; there was a high proportion of SF in the magazine this year, with only some fantasy, most of which was weaker than the SF. For the second year in a row, Asimov’s Science Fiction registered a gain in overall circulation, up 7.3 percent from 21,057 to 22,593. There were 12,469 print subscriptions, and 7,500 electronic subscriptions. Newsstand sales were 2,334, plus 290 digital copies sold on average each month in 2011. Sell-through was 28 percent. Digital editions became available on more platforms in 2011, including the iPad—via Zinio—and the Kindle Fire. Sheila Williams completed her seventh year as Asimov’s editor.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact had a somewhat weak year overall, although it still published strong stories by Alec Nevala-Lee, Sean McMullen, Juliette Wade, Kristine Kathyrn Rusch, Don D’Ammassa, Marissa Lingen, and others. Analog registered a 0.2 percent rise in overall circulation, from 26,493 to 26,440. There were 19,302 print subscriptions, and 4,100 digital subscriptions. Newsstand sales were 2,941; plus 150 digital copies were sold on average in each month of 2011. Sell-through was 30 percent. Stanley Schmidt has been editor there for thirty-two years, and 2011 marked the magazine’s eighty-first anniversary.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction also had a strong year, publishing more SF than they usually do (although they also published a lot of fantasy, most of it better than the fantasy in Asimov’s); excellent stories by Robert Reed, Geoff Ryman, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Chris Lawson, and Peter S. Beagle appeared in F&SF this year, as well as good stuff by James Cambias, Robert Chilson, Karl Bunker, David Marcus, Albert E. Cowdrey, Kali Wallace, Ken Liu, Rick Norwood, and others. F&SF registered a 4.7 percent drop, from an overall circulation of 15,172 to 14,462. Print subscriptions dropped from 10,907 to 10,539. Newsstand sales dropped from 4,265 to 3,923. Sell-through was 38 percent. Figures for either digital subscriptions or digital sales of single issues weren’t available, although Gordon Van Gelder has been quoted as saying “our electronic sales… were strong in our first year on the Kindle.” Gordon Van Gelder is in his fifteenth year as editor, and eleventh year as owner and publisher.
Interzone is technically not a “professional magazine,” by the definition of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), because of its low rates and circulation, but the literary quality of the work published there is so high that it would be ludicrous to omit it. Interzone had a weak year overall, but still published good stories by Jim Hawkins, Lavie Tidhar, Mecurio D. Rivera, Jason Sanford, and others. As far as can be told, as exact circulation figures are not available, circulation there seems to have held steady, in the 3,000-copy range. The editors include publisher Andy Cox and Andy Hedgecock. TTA Press, Interzone’s publisher, also publishes the straight horror or dark suspense magazine Black Static, which is beyond our purview here, but of a similar level of professional quality.
Realms of Fantasy, in what will theoretically be its last full year (see here), ran noteworthy stuff by Richard Parks, Lisa Goldstein, Thea Hutcheson, Alan Smale, and others.
The British magazine Postscripts has reinvented itself as an anthology, and is reviewed as such in the anthology section that follows, but I’ll list the subscription information here, for lack of anywhere else to put it, and because, unlike most other anthology series, you can subscribe to Postscripts.
If you’d like to see lots of good SF and fantasy published every year, the survival of these magazines is essential, and one important way that you can help them survive is by subscribing to them. It’s never been easier to do so, something that these days can be done with just the click of a few buttons, nor has it ever before been possible to subscribe to the magazines in as many different formats, from the traditional print copy arriving by mail to downloads for your desktop or laptop available from places like Fictionwise.com (www.fictionwise.com) and Amazon.com (www.amazon.com), to versions you can read on your Kindle, Nook, or iPad. You can also now subscribe from overseas just as easily as you can from the United States, something formerly difficult to impossible to do.
So in hopes of making it easier for you to subscribe, I’m going to list both the Internet sites where you can subscribe online and the street addresses where you can subscribe by mail for each magazine: Asimov’s web address is www.asimovs.com, and subscribing online might be the easiest thing to do, and there’s also a discounted rate for online subscriptions; its subscription address is Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. The annual subscription rate in the U.S. is $34.97, $44.97 overseas. Analog’s site is at www.analogsf.com; its subscription address is Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. The annual subscription rate in the U.S. is $34.97, $44.97 overseas. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction’s site is at www.sfsite.com/fsf; its subscription address is The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Spilogale, Inc., P.O. Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030, $34.97 for an annual subscription in U.S., $44.97 overseas. Interzone and Black Static can be subscribed to online at www.ttapress.com/onlinestore1.html; the subscription address for both is TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambridge CB6 2LB, England, UK. The price for a twelve-issue subscription is 42.00 Pounds Sterling each, or there is a reduced rate dual subscription offer of 78.00 Pounds Sterling for both magazines for twelve issues; make checks payable to “TTA Press.”
Most of these magazines are also available in various electronic formats through Fictionwise.com, or for the Kindle, the NOOK, and other handheld readers.
