Today, prolific writers can earn six-figure incomes entirely from self-published stories on Amazon. If they had lived in In the mid-twentieth century, those same writers may have turned to science fiction magazines instead, a source of income that has almost dried up today.

“Payment rates have not kept up with inflation,” says Alec Nevala-Lee, the writer and biographer whose latest book, Unbelievable: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, is this week and covers the era which saw the rise of our modern conception of science fiction, the years approximately between 1939 and 1950. The book follows John Campbell, one of the most influential figures of the genre and, this No coincidence, editor-in-chief of the magazine that offered the highest rates for acceptance. Campbell’s Breathtaking science fiction paid writers after accepting their work, rather than paying them only after publishing the story, as many other magazines have done. This gave him an inordinate influence in the field. But this payout rate – and influence – plummeted in the decades that followed.

“Before World War II,” says Nevala-Lee, “the rate of Astonishing for a popular author like [L. Ron] Hubbard came in at a penny and a half a word, which would work out to about 27 cents a word today. At present, Analog (Astonishing has been renamed Analog in 1960) pays 8-10 cents a word, which is still the highest rate in the business, but it’s not enough for anyone to make a career in writing news. “

So how has science fiction publishing evolved from the days when a writer could make a living by publishing short stories in magazines? “There aren’t as many professional markets for sci-fi shorts as there used to be,” says Nevala-Lee. “It goes without saying that the book market has grown considerably since Campbell’s time. Analog, which is doing well after nearly ninety years, there are still a handful of print magazines, including the digest Asimov’s science fiction and Fantasy and science fiction. But the big story over the past two decades is the migration to digital or online distribution. “

Tor.com is an example Nevala-Lee mentioned: the website started out as a sci-fi blog run by Tor Books, itself owned by Macmillan Publishers, become one’s own imprint, publish original fiction with a focus on the news. Digital publishing has conquered the science fiction community. “At the moment, digital and online publications dominate awards like Hugo’s, and there is no difference in prestige between these platforms and print summaries,” notes Nevala-Lee. The world of digital publishing has even eclipsed the sci-fi loving community that served as its roots in the mid-twentieth century. Today, the speculative fiction genre is bigger than ever, all thanks to self-published authors largely on Amazon.

Together, self-published independent print and independent without a listed publisher make up the largest speculative fiction e-book segment sold in the past year, with 46.2% of all e-book units sold across genres. science fiction and fantasy, according to the Industry Data Service. Bookstat. Admittedly, the five biggest publishers in the industry still have more revenue than the independents: between October 22, 2018 and October 22, 2017, the Big Five sold 21.8% of the total science e-book units. fiction and fantasy sold over the past year while earning 38.3% of total dollars earned, compared to 46.2% of total units in India and just 31.2% of dollars earned. However, it is clear that freelancers and self-publishers move the most units when it comes to speculative fiction eBooks, and – since self-publishers in most cases avoid agent costs, publishers or editors – they are probably walking away with more income overall.

The under-reported success of sci-fi and fantasy ebooks has been trending upwards for years: Sales of genre books have doubled between 2010 and 2017. And the existence of the genre in its current form today is largely due to Campbell.

“[Campbell was] one of the first magazine editors to move away from computer hardware for articles more focused on sociology, psychology and cultural change, ”said Nevala-Lee. Campbell saw the genre as a machine or a laboratory for generating analogies or storylines about the future – that’s why he changed the title of the magazine to Analog – and he consciously made it a vehicle for exploring questions of society or human behavior. This is clearly where science fiction has had the most impact on mainstream readers, and in its modern form, it starts here. “

Today, the real money found in science fiction may have overtaken pulp magazines and Amazon coffers. But science fiction will always have a debt to the man and magazine who shaped the genre.