Genre Grapevine Special Report: Amazon’s Ending of Kindle Newsstand Could Severely Impact SF/F Magazines
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My father grew up in a rough, rural area where his family's neighbors were bootleggers and backwoods mobsters. One of these mobsters liked him and, when my father turned 12, announced my dad was old enough to carry a gun for self-defense. He then gifted my father an illegal sawed-off shotgun covered in black tape to hide fingerprints.
"Be sure to hide it from the deputies," the mobster said.
Growing up around all that, my dad learned a good bit of life wisdom. And one bit of advice he shared with me is that if someone's rigged a game, don't play it unless you've got no choice.
Sadly, sometimes we have no choice. Which brings us to Amazon.
In December, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld said that "In an absolutely devastating announcement (right before the holidays) Amazon has informed us that they are ending their Kindle Subscription program in 2023 and trying to get magazines to switch to Kindle Unlimited."
Michael Damian Thomas of Uncanny Magazine echoed this news. "If you are an SFF short story writer, the sky is falling today. This Kindle news couldn't come at a worst time with what is also going on in social media. We were all barely scraping by. This is an extinction-level event for the ecosystem unless we all figure something out."
The reason for the alarm is that over the last decade, Kindle subscriptions have become a significant part of the overall circulation for a large number of science fiction and fantasy magazines. Essentially, people like the convenience and ease of buying and reading e-books and expect the same from their magazine subscriptions.
By ending the Kindle Newsstand program, Amazon would no longer allow people on their platform to subscribe directly to magazines. Instead, Amazon announced it would allow certain magazines to remain on the platform through their Kindle Unlimited program.
As Rajiv Moté said, this meant Amazon would be "moving e-magazines to a Spotify model, just like music. You pay the sales platform, not the producers."
Because Kindle Unlimited (KU) allows subscribers to read as much as they want for a monthly fee, KU pays authors and publishers based on how many pages people read. The problem with translating this to magazines is many people don't read every page in a magazine. Instead, they may pick out certain stories and articles to read, or may even stop reading a story if it doesn't work for them. (Update: One anonymous source has told me Amazon's KU for magazines won't be based on pages. But specific details are not available.)
With an actual subscription, a publisher receives guaranteed revenue from each subscriber. With KU, the revenue magazine publishers receive will be far more uncertain.
Worse, as Uncanny pointed out about their own magazine, not all genre magazines were offered the chance to join Kindle Unlimited.
Since that initial announcement during the 2022 holiday season, genre magazine publishers have been trying to figure out their options. During a call with Amazon, Neil Clarke learned that "KU for Magazines is different than KU for books. It will not prevent us from publishing/selling our magazine elsewhere. It is not paid per-paid, but based on an annual projection based on 'qualified borrows.'"
Fast forward to this month. On March 10, Amazon notified Kindle Newsstand subscribers that their subscriptions will end on September 4, 2023. As the Amazon email stated:
After that date, you will no longer be able to renew your subscription(s) through Amazon. You will still be able to read all issues that have already been delivered to you by visiting Your Kindle Library. If you wish to continue receiving content from a publisher directly, please visit their website for alternative subscription options.
In this month's edition of Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke published an insightful editorial on what this change means for genre magazines. With regards to Clarkesworld itself, he said:
We are also among a small number of genre magazines that have been invited to participate in Amazon's Kindle Unlimited for Magazines program. There are limits to what I can say about the terms of our contract, but I can say that our earnings for the first year will be substantially below what we had been receiving. Critically lower, but it does lower the number of new and recovered subscriptions we'll need to acquire, so we're going to give it a chance. At worst, it buys time, but we are also very aware that we are playing with the dog that just bit us. We're proceeding with caution.
It appears that Fantasy and Science Fiction will also be taking part in the KU program (I currently subscribe to them through Kindle Newsstand and Amazon is pitching me to get Kindle Unlimited so I can continue reading F&SF.)
In addition, Sheila Williams confirmed to me that the Penny Publications/Dell genre magazines will be available through KU. As Williams said:
Working with Kindle Unlimited has been a positive experience. We're happy that all four of our fiction titles have been included in the program. (In addition to Analog and Asimov's, we also publish Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines). Kindle Unlimited is a good deal for anyone who subscribes to more than two magazines a month and/or is interested in the book offerings and discovering more magazines. We also have our own digital editions of the magazines in development. These subscriptions will be offered on our websites and probably at other venues as well. Print subscriptions can always be purchased from us directly at any time.
I totally understand why genre magazines that were invited to remain on KU are doing so. One reason so many magazines allowed subscriptions through Kindle Newsstand is because the platform enabled people to discover or find their magazines, similar to how old-style newsstands used to work. Kindle Newsstand also offered a massive number of potential readers and a platform that dominates the e-reading market.
Or as Uncanny's Michael Damian Thomas said in response to people criticizing them for working with Amazon in the first place, "A reminder that Kindle accounts for somewhere between 70-80% of the eReaders, & sells around 80% of the eBooks. Magazine subscriptions from KPP automatically appear on Kindles."
So how will all this affect SF/F magazines? In Neil Clarke's recent editorial he mentioned what genre magazines will be dealing with:
Over the next six months, you'll see a lot of publishers trying to convince former Amazon subscribers to migrate to other subscription services, all without a means of contacting those subscribers directly. That's right, none of us know who these subscribers are.
Magazines are the lifeblood of the science fiction and fantasy genre. They are how new writers find readers and readers discover new writers. The stories genre magazines publish are frequently at the genre's cutting edge and help chart the directions the genre will go in the years to come.
If you subscribed to a magazine through Kindle Newsstand, take a moment to transfer your subscription directly to the publisher. Here's a partial list of genre magazines that offer their own subscriptions:
In addition, Weightless Books is a wonderful independent option for e-magazine subscriptions. They can even send your subscription directly to your e-reader. Check out all the magazines they offer.
As my father taught me, "If someone's rigged a game, don't play it unless you've got no choice." Unfortunately, Amazon has such a monopoly on e-reading distribution that it's difficult for genre magazines to not play the company's game.
Still, what matters here is that SF/F magazines survive the coming months and years. What matters is that people find a way to support our genre's magazines.
I plan to transfer my own subscriptions and keep supporting the genre magazines I love. I urge others to do the same.