Challenging times for UK genre magazines
There’s something afoot this side of Christmas: dark skies over real-world book retailing, and a black vein of change for UK genre magazines.
Maybe this change can be referred to as evolution, or as some might say, a devolution. But would anyone go so far as to think of the developing situation as an opportunity?
The future of the Borders book chain is looking less than rosy. This affects me on both a professional and a personal level. I for one will miss that particular quirky retail experience. There was always the possibility of finding something new and interesting on the genre shelves, and the magazine section, well, I’d regularly hotfoot it down to pick up the latest issues of HorrorHound, Fangoria, The Darkside, Rue Morgue and Death Ray, have a flick through Interzone (as I’m a horror boy and subscribe to Black Static), and generally nose about the imported titles until I sniffed out something new. That small high street pleasure is denied to me now, (and I’m sure there are others out there like me).
Viral marketing, word of mouth
My day job is website design, build and strategy, although I’m not one of those talented designer/coder types – just responsible for the management and strategic approach of such projects. Happily I also get to work with several publishers.
This week a few thoughts of mine are featured in The Bookseller, the trade magazine for the UK publishing industry.
The article is reproduced here, and the paper version also includes a ‘baker’s dozen’ of my viral marketing tips for UK publishers. The cover of this week’s issue is nice and gory, and within the article I managed to sneak in the words ‘vampire’ and ‘zombie’ and namedrop the ongoing Stephen King Under the Dome viral campaign. A tiny victory for the genre…
Download Horror Reanimated 1:Echoes
As the post says, if you go to Horror Reanimated, the blog I run with Joseph D’Lacey and Bill Hussey, you can download a PDF version of the limited edition chapbook we gave away at our readings earlier in the year.
Speculative Fiction Junkie has written a little piece and seems to like it; as does Sharon Ring, who gave it a great review over on Science Fiction and Fantasy Enthusiasts, and Highlander’s Book Reviews.
Let us know what you think!
The Gardener
The Gardener was published in the first issue of Necrography a couple of months back. I’ve just realised I haven’t written anything about it on The Great White Space so here goes.
The eerie illustration is by my friend and conspirator Owen Priestley. This is the colour version of the accompanying illustration – Necrography printed a monochrome version which is pretty effective too. Thanks again to Owen for coming up with something so atmospheric and representative of the story.
Shaldon’s a quaint fishing village on the South West coast of Devon and my parents have a house a little way up the estuary in the hamlet of Ringmore. (I’m writing a series of tales set here and the second story, Low Tides, is forthcoming in All Hallows). As you might envisage, the majority of the residents are quite elderly and there’s always some work going if you take the time to look for it. Read more
Reading Seems Only Right
My piece that won the 2008 British Fantasy Society’s Short Story Competition finally sees the light of day this month – some three and a half years after it was originally written.
I wrote Seems Only Right for entry into the 12th Chiaroscuro short story contest back in 2006, which was won by Gemma Files. Chiaroscuro, or Chizine, is a great online horror and weird fiction magazine sponsored by Leisure Books in the US. There were first, second and third placed stories, and Seems Only Right was given an Honourable Mention along with five others, out of a total of 307 entries, so I was pretty pleased. For a moment; until I realised it wouldn’t be seen by anyone, as only the first 3 stories were published. So near and yet so far!
Social web
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