For those who write and read fantasy short fiction, here is a note from the publisher: A Farewell Note from the Publisher (Realms of Fantasy)
Yeah, I saw this on Twitter earlier. A lot of people are annoyed (especially because some people had called that it would die again). Has there been any word on what's happening with outstanding subscription monies?
I thought RoF was pretty good, but you have to wonder if they'd sell more if they published more stories of the sort that seem to be popular in Fantasy. Right now urban fantasy sells well, and you could find a little of that in RoF. High/Epic Fantasy seems to me to have been a mainstay of the genre for decades, but you rarely (if ever) saw such a story in RoF. I know a few people who read a lot of Fantasy, including anthologies, but just didn't like the stories in RoF. I liked them for the most part, but I can't remember the last time I found a truly compelling story in its pages.
I think that the way the economy is at the moment, would definitely have contributed to the failure of this publishing house. Sad to see another place fall, but even bigger houses are having difficulties with the way the economy is.
Futurismic has folded too, recently. It's not a good time for short genre fiction publishers, at the moment
I agree with Torana. I believe the principal factor is the brutal economy. Many businesses are still struggling and failing. Although the economy is on a recovery trend in the United States, it is not across the board. The public still has low confidence, and are not rushing to buy luxury items, the advertising of which is the principal sourse of income for periodicals. Oddly enough, the publishing industry as a whole seems to be doing well. People are continuing to purchase books, probably because they are inexpensive entertainment.
Yeah, the publishing industry as a whole is doing well, but that's fairly limited to the big, mainstream publishers. The smaller, independent presses which add the more obscure flavour to the industry are suffering. My worry is that whilst the mainstream houses will survive and probably even prosper, a lot of the more niche publishers won't be nearly so lucky. Which is bad news for writers, really.
On the other hand, it will create an entrepreneurial vacuum that will be filled by new startup publishing houses. In the long term, that kind of turnaround is healthy for the industry.
Yes, I think the large publishers are doing well, including in the Fantasy genre. But the types of stories that are doing well in the genre are exactly the sort of stories that you'd rarely see in the pages of RoF. One can't help but wonder if they'd have been able to stick it out if they chose stories that appealed to the broadest segment of the Fantasy audience, or whether they'd have gone under regardless.
I'm not really surprised that the small houses are closing their doors, when you have places like Leisure firing everyone and going from mass paperback market, to ebooks and POD. I mean, seriously! WTF!? Problem is, that places like Leisure (from what I've heard from other authors) is that not only is the economy to blame, but shelf space is becoming impossible to find as the whole Twilight thing, has really caused major problems for anything other than vampire garbage to make it to the shelves. I mean, for a place that sells, Brian Keene, Gord Rollo,Richard Laymon, Graham Masterton, Jeff Strand, Jack Ketchum, Douglass Clegg, and many more named authors, is having problems, they how the heck are the small presses meant to hold up? I'm going to miss those beautiful Leisure books coming in every other week filling my shelves. Oh how good they look. So it ISN'T just limited to the smaller houses, the bigger houses are having troubles as well, because shelf space has become a major issue. Over here, all you see as far as the eye can see is Vampires. They are the newest and greatest drug on the market, sod anything else! link with Dorchester news to go digital- http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2010/08/06/dorchester-moving-to-trade-and-digital/ They have been around since 1971, making Dorchester the oldest independent mass market publisher in America and things have gone belly up for them. It doesn't show a lot of hope for any small places at all if things really are getting that bad. Here is Brian Keene's blog on the issue http://www.briankeene.com/?p=4544 I know a small press who has had to lay off some of the titles they were going to be publishing in the next 12 months, simply because they couldn't afford to take the risk of putting them out there and their publishing house crumbling like the rest. How much worse can the publishing industry get? What future is there for the paper back? It's a sad, sad time for books, it really is. Definitely NOT a time you want to be a struggling writer, that's for sure.
Well, as a new development, a buyer has apparently been found. Realms of Fantasy, it seems, won't be dying quite yet: http://sfscope.com/2010/11/once-again-realms-of-fantasy-i.html
