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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
This suggests something else we've discussed in other forums, namely, direct commercial support of an author, in much the same way advertisers subsidize television.
Without knowing what SciFi expected to "get" out of publishing the novel (more eyes for SFC, which would lead to more advertising revenue, I suppose... good luck tracking those numbers), I'd wonder why the novel was considered good enough for printing, but not for SciFi.com.
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SciFi.com didn't publish novels. Everything they published was was short fiction. Stuff on the site may have been an excerpt form, or expanded into a novel.
What they obviously hoped for was increased readership of the site because of the fiction. When they thought they weren't getting it, they said "Why are we paying an editor and paying for fiction if it isn't drawing people to the site?", and killed it.
Of course, the guy who made the call seems will up on the short list for the "doesn't get it" award, so...
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Still, they're a television station... not a publishing house, and other than advertising their own TV products, not much of a content website. It's therefore not that surprising if they just didn't "get it."
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No, not surprising at all. They still
review books, and I have some hardcovers that were SciFi.con Notable Book selections (with this noted on the cover of the book). Generally speaking, it's been good stuff. But deciding that the purpose of the website was to promote and serve as an adjunct to the TV channel, rather than being a general purpose site about SF was part of what was happening on the site.
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Yes, the SFWA is clearly in that "Castle" mentality, I've noticed: As long as we keep the barbarians out, the world will be better off (especially us).
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Well,
some of SFWA is. The Executive Director and her husband are friends, and we've had various chats about the issues. I'd call her on our side of the fence, but she's a paid employee required to carry out organization policy, and organization policy is a matter of fractious political dispute within the organization. Former SFWA President Jane Yolen once said something like "They're a bunch of little kids, and I'm their Mommy" referring to the membership.
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Dennis