Alas poor SF World, another magazine goes to the wall
01/11/2000 . Source: Jessica Martin 
The new British science fiction magazine in print, SF World, which could be found on all the shelves of popular news agents such as WH Smith, has collapsed into non-existence after only its fourth issue. Editor Steve Holland commented that the failure of the new title was due to a serious lack of advertising revenue; which is a little odd, because it appeared (over)packed to the gunnels with adverts to our untrained eye. This decision to fold was actually made on the second issue, before the results of their 3rd issue sales were known. We have two criticisms of this sorry tale. One - any print publisher should expect to run a magazine for 6 months minimum at a loss before they throw in the towel. It will take at least this long to build up an audience and for any marketing to take effect. SF World had actually paid for swathes of expensive WH Smith 'highlight shelf' space around their 3rd issue, so they were only just getting going. This decision to cancel shows a lack of gumption and a get rich quick mentality that ill behoves any publisher that understands the commercial magazine space. Our second criticism is this (and we hope it doesn’t read like sour grapes, although there may be an element of vin de sour in this comment). We approached the editor in the title's early days and offered to help SF World with some web-centric material such as writing a free 'found on the web' column of SF/F site reviews for the mag, or running a top 10 chart of what people are searching for on our science fiction search engine. Even when free, they turned this offer down because they were too busy doing 'core content'. Hello. Earth to print SF publishers. The internet isn't new media any more. It's old media, and SF World's dismal failure to even cover the internet in their magazine, let alone mount their own serious site, clearly indicates what century they were publishing in … and it sure wasn't the 21st ! Since we started in 1994, we've watched one print magazine after another launch and fold, both in the UK and the USA. It is getting really boring covering these stories. What should be a rich and vibrant market is falling into neglect. And it isn't just in the magazine world either. The book publishers have totally lost the plot. The list of exciting new talent being published into novel form has fallen dramatically - the most popular books now are Star Wars and Trek share-crops. Heck, you've even got the Prelude to Dune series now, written by Kevin 'Star wars' Anderson with Herbert's son Brian. This all reeks of entropy and decay to us. SF/F is basically feeding off itself, cannibalising its own past glories. Forget the new content. Forget the new talent. Bash out another X-Files novel and watch a few more fans disappear, turned off the genre by the mind-numbing boringness of it all. Another imagination-free piece of garbage, another nail in the coffin for science fiction. It's getting so the only place SF/F is thriving is the gogglebox and its closely related cousin, us (that's the web, fool). Strangely, given that we're the ones cashing in on the growth of SF in this medium, this strikes us as incredibly sad. Oh well. Good bye SF World. We knew you so briefly, we will mourn your loss accordingly. 
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