Realms of Fantasy to close

[che2000]

Posted on the RoF website is the sad news that Realms of Fantasy is to close once again.



"Realms of Fantasy has ceased operations as of 10/18/10. Please do not send your manuscripts to us. We would love to consider them but can no longer offer them a home. We wish you luck finding a home for your stories elsewhere. Thanks so much for your support over the years."



For more details, see the following link:


http://www.rofmag.com/2010/10/18/a-note-from-the-publisher/

[darkbow]

That sucks. I'm only hoping we're not going to see more of this.

[crystalwizard]

>That sucks

It does. The blog now has some hopeful posts on it.

[Samuel Mae]

Though saddened by the news, i can't say i was surprised. I think for RoF to have had any chance of success after being rebooted it needed a complete overhaul, and possibly a reinvention. One of the difficulties with running a short fiction mag (imo, which could be entirely wrong) is reaching an audience outside of the writing community. Given the average attention span of today's society, plus the general apathy towards traditional marketing (things have to be wow! or they're nothing), reaching that audience isn't so easy.

But i don't think RoFs closure is dire news for the short story scene in general. It died, got resurrected (and even at that stage there were people worried about the circumstances surrounding that) and died again. There's still plenty of good established markets to sub to, as well as some potentially good new markets that pay 3c a word and higher.

On a side note: it wouldn't surprise me if in a year or three the SWFA lowers its definition of pro-paying back to 3c a word and up.

[alrobe]

That does suck. I have wanted to get a story published in Realms of Fantasy for a long time.

[Steve Coate]

Looks like they found a buyer. Now writers everywhere can continue to strive to be published in the zine. In digital editions as well, it seems.

http://sfscope.com/2010/11/once-agai...fantasy-i.html