HUGO AWARD-WINNING SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE
A Rocket to Clarkesworld and Other Tales
Last month, Clarkesworld Magazine won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Like many people, I had to watch the Hugo ceremony from the comfort of my home. Worldcon was in Australia this year, and while I would have loved to have been there, my day job and the sheer expense of traveling halfway around the world kept me home. The time difference meant having to get up at 6AM on a weekend, sneaking downstairs and trying, in vain, to keep from waking my family when I eventually heard that we had won. The rest is a blur. Cheryl was there to accept and read a speech I emailed her the day before. Emails and IMs started pouring in... and I was stunned.
Sadly, neither of our nominated short stories took home a win, but that doesn't stop me from being damn proud of both.
Through all of this, Sean was silent. His AIM account was logged in, but inactive. No comments. No cheers. No snark. A few hours later, I found out that he slept through the whole thing. He didn't even believe me when I told him that we had won. It took a link from the Hugo Awards website to prove it.
All of us here at Clarkesworld are very honored to have received this award and I can't even begin to say how much it means to me. The silver rocket hasn't landed at my house yet (the pictures are of Cheryl's award), but knowing that I'll have one soon is very cool. This is something my science fiction idols and gods of my youth have on their shelves. Ok, so they received them in other categories, but wow... the kid in me is bouncing all over the place.
Seriously, I'm going to be riding this high for some time.
Of course, none of this could have happened without the excellent team of people that work with me, the authors and artists that entrust their work to us and our readers, who make this all worthwhile. Thank you!
Winning a Hugo wasn't the biggest thing that happened to Sean Wallace in September. Not long after the Hugos, Sean's wife, Jennifer, gave birth to twin girls. Cordelia Anne and Natalie Rose are now home doing what babies do best: making parents happy and keeping them awake. As a father myself, I couldn't be happier for them. Kids have a way of changing everything, typically for the better. A gain for Sean, however, is resulting in a loss for us. It is with great sadness that I must announce that Sean will be stepping down as editor after issue 50. Sean is a founding editor at Clarkesworld and his presence will be missed. Of course, he has the best of reasons and I can be nothing but happy for him. Just look at those faces and tell me he made the wrong decision.
As Sean prepares to leave, Jeremy L. C. Jones and Daniel Robichaud join the staff. For some time now, we've been working with Jeremy as a freelance interviewer. I should have added him to the staff a long time ago and have now corrected that oversight. He has some great ideas and I look forward to working with him on them. Daniel just recently finished his trial by fire and become an official member of our slush team. One of this month's stories is something he passed up to me, so he's off to a great start.
After nearly a year, ebook back issues of Clarkesworld are finally available in Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to make any progress in offering ebook subscriptions at Amazon, B&N or Apple, but we'll keep trying to get an answer from them. For now, you can buy individual ebook issues and volumes of Realms at B&N, Amazon and directly from us. I have a little over half our back catalog converted and hope to have every issue available sometime in earlier 2011.
One thing that is important to me is that Clarkesworld continue to grow. Naturally, any additional content increases our budget and I've been considering supplementing our Ebook sales, book sales and our citizenship program with advertising opportunities. For four years, I've kept this magazine relatively ad-free. In fact, until now, all our advertising has been for books I publish. I have a very specific aesthetic in mind for Clarkesworld, so it's going to be a challenge to find a balance I can live with, but, if a small alteration allows us to increase the number of stories we publish, add new features or do more with art and podcasting, it could be quite worthwhile. The one constant here is change. It keeps things fun and in doing so, we hope to live up to the standard of the bright shiny rocket that people saw fit to award us this year.
What do you think? Would increasing our fiction content be worth including a few extra ads on the site? Is there something else that we should consider adding or a current feature that should be expanded? What about adding art and music columns or non-fiction episodes to our podcasts? Here's your chance. Tell us what you want!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, owner of Wyrm Publishing and a 2013 Hugo Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.
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ISSN 1937-7843 Clarkesworld Magazine © 2013 Wyrm Publishing. Robot illustration by Serj Iulian.
euphrosyne wrote on October 3rd, 2010 at 11:23 pm:
Personally, I'd rather you put extra money towards more fiction--because the fiction here is always impressive. The cover art is always great; more (and larger?) in that vein would also be welcome. Nonfiction and interviews would be a notable second option. Music, I think, is a separate sphere. I'm a reader/viewer, not a listener.
FWIW, I've been reading Clarkesworld for about a year now, fairly steadily. I'm very close to becoming a (paying) citizen, and intend to purchase Realms this year. I rarely click on ads, but I'd like to be contributing
Justin James wrote on October 5th, 2010 at 12:48 am:
Many congratulations on the win! It's well earned. Clarkesworld continues to be some of the best fiction around and I look forwards to the monthly delivery... and Realms 3!
J.Ja
Gideon rogers wrote on October 6th, 2010 at 11:58 pm:
Subs through an ebook retailer would work for me - ability to read offline, simplicity of downloading next edition, ability to gift a sub - all good things. Advertising? Well OK if you must. Thanks for all the effort - it's a great read and I appreciate that.
Mags wrote on October 7th, 2010 at 10:13 am:
I think that a little ad space never hurt anyone. Most will ignore the ads anyway...you can't go anywhere without seeing them online and so we tend to just become blind to them as a general rule. So if it brings you more money to invest in the company and continue with the quality of work you are known for, I say go for it! Especially if it means adding fiction content to the magazine (which means more chances our writing submissions will have the space to be published...a definite plus!).
Adding art to the podcasts, as well, is a great idea. Not sure about the music aspect, I think I agree with euphrosyne in that it seems to be a different sphere altogether. Is there a way to potentially expand the art content? The art is fantastic and I would love to see more of it!
Essentially, I think the magazine is one of the most professional and organized I've seen online. Perhaps, if you are to do advertising anyway, you can include banners for your writers and artists that have their own sites as well so that people can purchase their prints or can find them for projects.
Todd Castillo wrote on October 9th, 2010 at 4:50 pm:
This is so exciting.
Here are some thoughts:
One of my favorite things about Clarkesworld (aside from the stories) is the podcasts. If we could somehow see a greater focus on the audio department. Including non-fiction. Live interviews and discussions with authors and artists. Not always about their works, but maybe just interesting topics.
More stories would be nice, but to be honest, longer stories would be just as fun. I think opening up the length would bring a whole new flavor of possible stories. Maybe even doing serials. Bottom line: more words per month to read here would be great!
Miss C wrote on October 11th, 2010 at 9:45 am:
Ads in exchange for more fiction sounds ideal to me, that's what I mainly come here for.
Jim B wrote on October 20th, 2010 at 3:16 pm:
Even if you didn't increase the monthly content, I would not have a problem with ads. Both the fiction and non-fiction in Clarkesworld are consistently interesting and worth my time, and I suspect that you're receiving a greater number of high quality submissions that you have had to reject due to space (i.e. "money") constraints. I really appreciate that you offer the "citizen" program, providing professional fiction without requiring readers to pay. I'm really rather surprised that you don't run external ads of some sort, given that you pay pro rates. As long as ad content is clearly differentiated from article and story content, this should be a non-issue for the readers.
Simon McCaffery wrote on October 26th, 2010 at 9:03 am:
You have a unique and high-quality product. If you can publish more fiction based on ad revenue generation I don't think your readership is going to leave. Congrats and keep up the good work. With the sad loss of Realms of Fantasy we need all the quality outlets for speculative fiction possible.
Seth Merlo wrote on October 26th, 2010 at 10:07 am:
Congrats on the win!
I too wouldn't mind seeing ads, though I also tend to ignore them. I get that you're probably after a site design that isn't ruined by horrible ads, but if it's the difference between continuing or not...
I'd love to see more non-fiction. Not just interviews, but 'academic' pieces, or at least, something between an opinionated blog post and a scholarly journal article. With the demise of the IRSF there isn't (that I'm aware off) a focal point for this kind of writing outside of academia. As someone doing a their PhD and researching in and around SFF, I'm always looking for fresh articles. It would be very awesome to see a non-fiction equivalent of Realms happening, but selling something like that would always be difficult.
Ben Allen wrote on December 14th, 2010 at 6:24 pm:
Definitely well earned. I just started reading (and submitting), but I've been very impressed with the quality of the stories. I don't like them all, but they're always interesting - and some (e.g., N K Jemisin's piece in #50) made me say "THAT'S what I'm trying to do" in my own writing.