I do think the short story market in particular is shifting enough that anyone still publishing exclusively in print needs a good reason to do so – it’s not enough to just publish fiction any more, any physical magazine needs to be a beautiful-looking thing to be worth buying.

HarperCollins Voyager Aust also has their own forums, where fans can talk to the authors themselves. It’s a surprisingly strong community, encouraging connection not just to the authors but to the brand of Voyager itself.

Orbit has the $1 ebooks, one bestseller a month available.

Perhaps some publishers are just not shifting with the market as well as others?

The way I see it this: all things being equal, people aren’t going to buy a book or a magazine. It’s up to the publisher to kill every excuse they have not to buy it. Excuses are things like:

- I can’t find it easily.
- It’s too expensive.
- The cover looks ugly.
- The content doesn’t seem interesting.
- It’s laid out badly.
- It’s just like that much more prestigious publication, only not quite as good so why bother?

And so on. As a reader it isn’t my responsibility to support a publisher – it’s the publisher’s responsibility to give me no reasonable choice but to support them.