tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post8271150312144476768..comments2024-03-28T19:52:07.635-04:00Comments on Sweet Freedom: REALMS OF FANTASY folds (again)Todd Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-430948542293952592010-10-18T17:08:53.261-04:002010-10-18T17:08:53.261-04:00Sadly, most of the ugly covers weren't too dif...Sadly, most of the ugly covers weren't too different from conteporary ugly paperback and hardcover covers. REALMS was never as adventurous as FANTASTIC at the latter's best, but also never published anything as bad as, say, Lin Carter's Conan pastiches, as FANTASTIC did during Ted White's decade. It was a solid magazine, but not as exciting as it might've been. I should note that the illustrations for the stories were usually also excellent...only the covers were eyesores. I don't think that that was the best commercial decision at any level.<br /><br />Today, none of the fiction magazines is published by a well-financed publisher with a lot of magazine marketing experience, including Penny Press with the former Dell group. So, as circulations tend to levitate between five and thirty-thousand copies sold, among all the best-selling titles, with the likes of TIN HOUSE and THE PARIS REVIEW and ZOETROPE ALL-STORY being within shouting distance of EQMM, ANALOG and F&SF in sales...F&SF in the '70s could reliably sell about 60K, ANALOG about 80-100K (being published as it was by Conde Nast didn't hurt, even if it was their lowest-circulation item by some distance), and EQMM was somewhere north of 100K...in part because Davis Publications were both experienced fiction-magazine publishers of middling size, and in part because EQMM still had a serious carryover from more fiction-magazine-friendly decades (as ANALOG did and does).Todd Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-25537795216557583042010-10-18T16:22:06.965-04:002010-10-18T16:22:06.965-04:00Ugly covers are a killer that keep people away, th...Ugly covers are a killer that keep people away, though I wonder how many fantasy readers just spend their moola on books instead. However, if there were a mag that actually represented the kind of fantasy that people buy and reviewed same, I think it might do well enough. I'm no mogul so I'm likely wrong, but I never felt much of a desire to buy it -- and they certainly never published me. No, not my sole criteria for buying a magazine -- in fact it usually goes the other way. Wow, I say as I devour a magazine, I really want to appear in the pages of this one. I say that about very few now. There is just too much competition.C. Margery Kempehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15910282257993793334noreply@blogger.com