Look what I found in my inbox as soon as I got home - an email from Hub Magazine:

“The format Hub is changing. As we have not been able to employ a full-time advertising salesperson we have not had the ability to attract a sufficient amount of revenue to keep the magazine going in its existing format. Even though we almost sell out each issue, sales revenue is never enough to cover costs. You may be aware that the cover price of a magazine (for a magazine of our size, at least) is usually a loss-leader. The aim is to attract advertising, and though the subscribers were with us we simply did not have the business acumen sufficient to sell the quantities of advertising needed. Hub was put together by a couple of people with an interest in genre fiction - not by an experienced publishing empire.

Hub will therefore move to an electronic-only format from issue 3.”

I’m kinda chuffed; it adds weight to my earlier assertions about electronic publication as a better potential business model. I’m kinda gutted, because that’s one less dead-tree mag I’ll be receiving (and I do like them, you know).

Furthermore, it’s distracted me from dwelling overlong on the fact that I just got dumped by text-message on the last leg of my journey home. Happy Easter!

The second issue of Hub Magazine shows a marked improvement from the first, in terms of presentation - they’ve reigned in the images embedded in stories, which has made things a lot more readable. Some of the background images still make the text hard to follow, but there’s always a balance of compromise between impact and readability. What is plain is that they’re listening to their readers, which bodes well for the future.

Continue reading “Magazine Review: Hub, Issue #2 (Winter 2007)”

It’s a brave move to launch a print magazine devoted to short genre fiction in a climate where everyone seems to be trumpeting the decline of the scene, and that is exactly what the producers of Hub magazine have decided to do - a paying market for both fiction and non-fiction, in glossy (if small-format) magazine quality (as opposed to small-press chapbook). I’ll leave the debate as to whether they can last the course without trimming back on writer’s fees or magazine quality for those who know the industry better than I, and report from the reader’s perspective. Continue reading “Magazine Review: Hub #1″

Of all the news I expected to encounter this evening, a report of the launch of a new UK sf magazine was the least likely, but that is what I got. Continue reading “The new mag in town”