Apex Book Company

While most people have encouraged me to go forward with the ’subscription’ model of Apex Magazine, there are a subset of readers who disapprove. Their reasons are varied, some containing merit and others off-base and silly. I thought it’d be interesting to those interested and vested in Apex Magazine that I address some of these comments.

First, a quick history…Apex Magazine began originally as Apex Digest. Apex Digest was a print magazine that initially formed the basis of Apex Publications. Started in November, 2004, the digest ran for 3.5 years through twelve issues. By the time I decided to end the run in March, 2008, our subscriber base was 600 and our circulation was nearing 7,000.

Why did I decide to stop printing the digest? I blame Geoffrey Girard (though in a good way). He convinced me to start publishing books. I quickly discovered that books were way easier (comparatively) and distribution, while a broken process, was less painful. In March, 2008, I brought the digest online, increased the pay, and renamed it Apex Magazine.

Apex Magazine has published two new stories each month (except for a two month hiatus to allow myself and our editors to take a breather) since June, 2008. We also have published reprints and non-fiction.

In the first twelve months of running Apex Magazine, the published original fiction average length was slightly over 5,000 words. That’s two stories for a total of 10,000 words each month. At $.05 a word, that’s a baseline cost of $6,000 a year. Reprints pay anywhere from $10-$50 a month and in our first year we paid $500 for reprints. Server costs are minimal ($100 last year). Occasionally, I try to pay our editors and art directors ($500 last year). Marketing runs around $500 a year (mostly in banners and the occasional cheap ad in a print ‘zine). For one year, the average cost is $7,500. Over two years, we’re looking at $15,000 (though we dropped our word count max, so our cost of fiction should go down 10%-20%).

Revenue does trickle in from a couple of sources. When there is interest, we sell ad space for $25 a month. Otherwise, we run Project Wonderful ads that earn between 5-10 cents a day (total ad revenue has been around $300). There has been the occasional donation (about $200 so far this year). We sold a few sponsorships earlier in the year for about $500 more.

There’s the traffic the magazine brings to the site. While you would think this creates a lot of additional sales of our books, the fact is, I’ve seen it make no discernible difference.

I’ve seen blog posts and comments challenging me on my figure of Apex Magazine costing $10,000 over two years. This is silly. It’s easy enough to figure out a 5000 word story costs $250. Or for sake of argument, 4000 word stories cost $200. Twenty-four stories a year is $4,800. Two years that is $9,600.

I’ve also seen others say that the Apex readers are funding my ‘hobby’. I won’t lie. I *love* doing Apex Magazine. I love reading the great short fiction we publish. As do our editors. All of us are genre fans and love science fiction, fantasy, and horror. We are delighted that others enjoy the product we produce. But giving people the option to contribute monetarily to help us continue to publish a free product as ‘funding a hobby’ is, again, silly. Contributing to a great site like Strange Horizons is the same as funding Susan Marie Groppi’s hobby? Contributing to a great site like Clarkesworld Magazine is the same as funding Neil Clarke’s hobby?

I think not.

Feel free to comment or email.