He’s not wrong, but it’s been a decade since he wrote this and technology changes. The biggest change is that “webscriptions” isn’t a thing now. Figuring out sales for the magazine is a matter of how much effort you want to put into it. Eight years in, it would have been way more time and effort than it was worth to someone with a plate as full as Eric. Nearly three years in with the new magazine, going back to gather data any data we don’t already have for each issue is still doable, but it’s getting to be more work than I want to take on without a darn good reason.
It’s no shock to say that most of the sales are in the first two months. They clearly continue after that, but for purposes of things like comparing how well issues are selling, that’s a reasonable cutoff. We don’t have the same exact distribution channels Eric lists, but it’s pretty close.
Again, it’s no shock that most authors get most of their income from Amazon. We are in a unique position because we have a subscriber base as well, and that’s a huge help for us. (If you aren’t a subscriber yet, please consider it.)
– Bethanne Kim (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine)
Baen’s Bar
Question: What kind of audience does the 1632-verse have? How many people subscribe to the Gazette? How many individual copies typically sell when a new Gazette comes out?
26 May 2015 07:55
Calculating the sales of an online magazine like the Gazette is difficult. Not impossible, I presume, but so difficult that I’ve never done it because there’s no pressing reason to do so. All that really matters is that the magazine generates enough income to keep being published for (as of now) a little over eight years, with no end in sight.
The first problem is that an electronic magazine has a sales pattern that is much more like those of a long-running novel series than a paper magazine. Since no issue ever goes out of print, people keep going back and buying earlier volumes. There is therefore no point at which you can say “this issue sold so many copies” as you can with a traditional paper magazine which only stays on the shelves for a few weeks.
The second problem is that the income derives from many streams, which don’t have the same pay cycle. The largest is the monthly income from Webscriptions. That’s followed by the income generated on the magazine’s own web site from selling RoF Club membership (mostly the $50 level which essentially serves as an enhanced annual subscription). That comes in on a daily basis except for weekends. (It turns out electrons need to rest on the weekends like people do. Who knew?} Next comes the income from Amazon, which paid on a monthly basis except it’s scattered into a lot of different payments. Next comes the income from PayPal which, as with the magazine’s direct income, gets paid daily (assuming anyone bought anything that day) except for weekends. Then come the rag-tag-and-bobtail: Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Audible. Three of them pay monthly, Smashwords pays… whenever.
Trying to calculate all this when there’s never a final figure for any one issue would just be too time-consuming given that: a) there’s no pressing reason to do it; 1632 Inc. has exactly two employees, me and my wife Lucille. She has her own job to take care of and I have way better things to do with my time like, you know, write books.
