I’ve been meaning to subscribe to Fantasy Magazine pretty much since I heard about it, but this finally made me get around to it. See also.
At only 20 bucks per year, it’s a bargain. I look forward to getting our first issue.
6 thoughts on “Now You”
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While I agree that Fantasy is a good thing, I’m slightly confused. Everything I’ve heard about buying habits — and I freely admit this is basically anecdotal — leads me to believe that it’s men who only buy books by authors of the same gender, whereas women buy books by women, men, and probably superintelligent shades of the colour blue. So while having lots of womens’ names on the cover is a good thing for women writers, I’m slightly surprised it’s being framed as a marketing strategy to women *readers*. I would have thought design and content were more important [*]. Or to put it another way, I’d rather believe that women readers are less conservative than men readers than that they are just as conservative, but don’t usually have the opportunity to demonstrate that fact.
[*] Fantasy does seem to be taking this approach as well; or at least, I assume they assume that the ethereal covers appeal more to women than men. I don’t know if that’s actually true.
I dunno — don’t most men who write romances have to do it under female pseudonyms? There must be some grain of truth to it; and it does send a more welcoming message to see women’s names in the magazine. This isn’t your dad’s genre kind of thing. Maybe it’s in contrast to the male-dominated markets out there?
I suppose you could say that if men only by things by men, then any magazine that predominantly features women writers is pretty much by definition marketed towards women. (I really like Tansy’s comment about the “other Big Three”.) I dunno; maybe I’m just not used to seeing this issue framed in such pragmatic, follow-the-money terms.
Personally, I find “welcoming” kicks in around 30-40% female; “euphoric” happens around 50-60%. But at >60% I start to revert back to “crushing despair” — by the time a magazine reaches 90%, I feel like I’ve been segregated/relegated into the Barbie-pink aisle all over again.
That said, I’ll probably renew my Fantasy subscription this year.
Huh, there really aren’t any SF/F magazines in the 40-60% range, are there?
then any magazine that predominantly features women writers is pretty much by definition marketed towards women.
urrrRRgGhh.
(Yay, despair.)
urrrRRgGhh.
Just to be clear, I didn’t mean this was a good state of affairs …
I can’t find Jed’s last round of stats at the moment, but isn’t SH usually in the 40-60% range?
Here are Jed’s last round of stats. An excerpt:
“From 2000 to 2006, the percentages of original stories we’ve published each year that’ve been by women have gone 29%, 45%, 42%, 52%, 52%, 59%, 67%.”