Black Gate

Neil Clarke’s editorial in the latest issue of Clarkesworld is entitled “The Sad Truth About Short Fiction Reviews.”

The sad truth about short fiction reviews is that the overwhelming majority of them have little-to-no impact on readership. After monitoring the incoming traffic for the online version of this magazine for nine years, I can say that the typical review has a statistically insignificant impact on the readership of a story or issue. The only notable exception to this has been reviews on high traffic sites, like io9 or Tor.com, that focus specifically on a single story. As the number of stories in a review increases, there’s a dramatic drop-off in story readership… Shouldn’t reviews of good stories have the effect of encouraging people to read the story?

In a discussion on his editorial here at Black Gate, Neil elaborated on his thoughts:

A review that doesn’t send new readers is functionally equivalent to emailing your thoughts to the author. Nothing wrong with that, but there are reviews that send the author a message and readers to the story. I’m saying that the we should all aspire to the former and that most reviewers aren’t. That’s the sad truth I was referring to in the title.

Issue #108 of Clarkesworld has seven stories — five new, and two reprints — from Robert Reed, Erica L. Satifka, Bao Shu, Elizabeth Bourne, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Tom Purdom, and Una McCormack.

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Black Gate blogger Derek Kunsken was the first to alert me to the birth of new online market Lackington’s last June. The Ottawa-based magazine is edited by Ranylt Richildis and appears four times a year; it publishes art and speculative fiction between 1,500 – 5,000 words in length. It has produced seven issues, like clockwork, which had me counting on my fingers… have there really been that many quarters since last June?

Anyway, it’s high time I started paying attention to this fine magazine, adding it to our regular magazine coverage, and answering some of your questions. Questions like, “Who the heck is Lackington?” That riddle is answered on their Donate page:

Once upon a time, a British bookseller named James Lackington made books affordable for nearly everyone. It was the late eighteenth century, literacy was on the rise, but books were still a luxury item for many Londoners. Lackington changed that by popularizing the cheap “remainder” and making a tidy profit for himself, in the bargain.

We’ll never make a profit at Lackington’s Magazine. Our principles, in fact, have us in a bind. We want to keep content accessible to everyone, the way Lackington did. But we also want to pay contributors, because we believe creative labour must be compensated. To do so, we rely on donations to buy stories and art. Help keep this project afloat, support creators, and ensure we remain open to anyone with an internet connection.

Lackington invented remaindered books? Seriously, that guy is totally my hero.

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