Pathfinder 1E Paizo: What the Heck? (Amazing and Undefeated???)

[WizarDru]

I just noticed this article on Sci-Fi Wire (echoed at SciFi Weekly) indicating that Amazing Stories is being cancelled and Undefeated might also be? The Paizo forums indicate that no one is in the office over the holidays...but has anyone heard anything about this? I just signed up for an Amazing subscription two weeks ago, when I reupped my Dragon subscription. And I really like Undefeated, being the only gamer-centric boardgame magazine that I know of. Has this been discussed prior to this? I didn't see anything about it on gamingreport.com, either. How can something be cancelled for being "Unexpectedly successful"?


Here's the meat of it:

Amazing Stories Goes On Hiatus

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eff Berkwits, editor-in-chief of the reinvented Amazing Stories magazine, denied to SCI FI Wire Internet rumors that it has closed after starting back up in September, but admitted that the monthly magazine will take a break from publishing. "Amazing Stories has not been shut down," Berkwits said in an interview. "It is going on hiatus. The next issue that will be coming out will be number 608, which has a street date of Jan. 4. That one will be coming out as scheduled and as planned. Beyond that, things are somewhat up in the air."

Rumors are circulating on the Web that Paizo Publishing has ceased publication of Amazing Stories, which was first published in 1926 and was resurrected this year as a broad-based entertainment publication featuring a mix of fiction and reviews and previews of movies, TV, DVDs, books, comics and story-driven electronic games, as well as interviews with the creators of these stories. Paizo, which also publishes the special-interest gaming and entertainment magazines Dragon, Dungeon and Undefeated, appointed Berkwits, a journalist and SF writer, to the position of editor-in-chief at Amazing Stories in October; the upcoming January magazine is his first.

"Part of what's happened is that the magazine ... has been, ... and I don't know how else to say it, unexpectedly successful," Berkwits said. "And there have been some other opportunities that have come up that the publisher is exploring that would allow us to potentially expand and improve upon the magazine. So rather than move ahead at this point, the publisher has opted to go into what will hopefully be a very brief hiatus and move ahead from there." Berkwits said that the upcoming 82-page issue, with Jennifer Garner on the cover, would be the last for a while. Amazing Stories currently employs Berkwits and associate editor Vic Wertz as its only permanent staff, Berkwits said.

"There are ... plans for future issues sort of in the works," Berkwits said. "But we just had to take kind of a breather at this point. I would say by mid to late January, there should be a much better idea of where things are going and what is happening."

Berkwits was not aware of plans for Undefeated, a gaming magazine that is also rumored to be closing. Officials at Paizo did not return calls."[/font]

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Well, I don't see why they need to keep publishing Undefeated, since they keep cluttering up Dragon with all those D&D Miniatures articles anyway.

 

[Mark]

There's a tad more info here -

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=111717

 

[Psion]

Well, I don't see why they need to keep publishing Undefeated, since they keep cluttering up Dragon with all those D&D Miniatures articles anyway.

My thoughts exactly...

I thought undefeated was the magazine that was supposed to have games you win in it.

 

[WizarDru]

My thoughts exactly...

I thought undefeated was the magazine that was supposed to have games you win in it.

It does. That Dragon has had minis articles in it is irrelevant to Undefeated's quality, whatever you think of it. I like Undefeated for giving good, concise reviews to games like Attack Vector, Memoir '44, Ticket to Ride, Lunch Money, Puerto Rico and so forth...something it does quite well, IMHO.

 

[takyris]

While I am definitely bummed, I don't want to totally dismiss what the editor is saying out of hand. I'm sure that he's putting a happy spin on whatever's going on, but it is possible for too much success to hurt a publisher. If demand for a magazine outstrips their capability to supply it, they have to either spend a lot more money to get their supply up on short notice or admit that they're sold out and some people who want their stuff can't get it -- both of which hurt the magazine.

I also know that it's been really tough to find Amazing on magazine racks, and that almost all the sales of the magazine have come from people signing up with subscriptions. This'd seem wonderful, but if I'm remembering a talk at WorldCon correctly, most magazine publishers would rather that people buy a magazine every month off the rack instead of signing up for a subscription, because they make more money off the rack. If they have a special introductory deal (which they did, I think) on their subscriptions, and a lot of people signed up, and that's the only money coming in because they had trouble getting on magazine racks, then it's possible that the success of having a ton of people sign up for subscriptions ended up making Paizo take a loss.

Sorry if I'm not saying that well. I know just enough economics to know that I don't understand economics, but that was what I heard at the convention from a bunch of magazine publishers -- "We ended up going out of business because so many people who bought us off the rack subscribed... and stopped buying us off the rack." That may have something to do with it.

Or, possibly, Tacky's mystic curse strikes again, and publishing my fiction has caused the magazine to fold... :\

 

[WayneLigon]

Maybe it's more like 'There is some Major Deal cooking and I can't say any more about it because of (1) NDA's or (2) it might not happen at all and I don't want to change expectations about the magazine'. The hiatus could be the result of some requirement of The Thing under discussion.

 

[JoeGKushner]

It does. That Dragon has had minis articles in it is irrelevant to Undefeated's quality, whatever you think of it. I like Undefeated for giving good, concise reviews to games like Attack Vector, Memoir '44, Ticket to Ride, Lunch Money, Puerto Rico and so forth...something it does quite well, IMHO.

And to me, that makes it a perfect fit for the miniature game as opposed to the Dragon Magazine which is a RPG magazine. Heck, if you're going to put mini stuff in there, put in some Warhammer articles. I'd love to see some material about using Warhammer in D&D similiar to the Silicon Sorcery bits.

 

[Sammael]

Subscriptions shoudl generally be better for a company than customers who buy the magazine off the rack. Why?

1. Circulation. It is much easier to plan circulation when most of your customers are subscribers. That way, you don't end up with a bunch of unsold copies.

2. Predictive income. Subscription money, though possibly smaller than income from magazine stores, is certain, and paid in advance. That counts a lot in just about every industry.

3. Fewer middlemen. If the magazine company isn't a distributor, they have to sign a distribution contract. That's it. Postage costs are nowhere as great as other costs related to transportation and storing. That, and the magazine store doesn't get a share of your profit.

So, with these three points in mind, I don't see how "too much success" can be a bad thing in magazine publishing.

 

[takyris]

Sammael, as I mentioned, I don't understand the economics. What I do understand is that I was at a panel, and a whole bunch of magazine editors and publishers said the same thing. Off-the-rack is better for them than subscriptions are. Especially if you didn't think you were going to have that many subscriptions and put the initial one-year subscription rate low enough that you'd be taking a loss on it. (I don't know if they did that, but I do know that magazines aren't expected to be profitable in their first year of publication, and there's a lot of "do this at a loss in order to build readership" at first.) If they got a lot more signups than they wanted, that little loss would get big.

But fundamentally, as I said, I don't know the particulars, and I don't know the economics. I just know what a bunch of magazine publishers said themselves, and was guessing that their "rack, not mailbox" mantra might have something to do with Amazing's situation, given that Amazing was having trouble getting onto bookshelves.