Cory Doctorow on how to save SF Magazines

Cory Doctorow explains how he would save SF magazines. Worth quoting, again here:

If I were running the mags, I'd pick a bunch of sfnal bloggers and offer them advance looks at the mag, get them to vote on a favorite story to blog and put it online the week before the issue hits the stands. I'd podcast a second story, and run excerpts from the remaining stories in podcast. I'd get Evo Terra to interview the author of a third story for The Dragon Page. I'd make every issue of every magazine into an event that thousands of people talked about, sending them to the bookstores to demand copies -- and I'd offer commissions, bonuses, and recognition to bloggers who sold super-cheap-ass subscriptions to the print editions.

[Via SF Signal]

I've been thinking a lot about SF magazines, and about their comparison to the music industry. There's been much discussion about how giving away free songs works in the music industry. The Artic Monkeys made a name without a record deal etc. The problematic difference that I see is that the music industry has radio stations to do marketing for them. Get your song played on Radio 1 a few times, and even with no record deal you've just had a few million people listen to your music. What's the equivalent for online fiction? There are no radio stations. Maybe it's blogs? Although I can't help feeling that blogs are too distributed, together they add up, but not many have vast audiences. So Cory's idea of aggregating bloggers reactions is, I think, a good idea.

I have a vague image in my mind of an uber-blog aggregating digg style fiction review site. Could that work?