Editorial Matters

By Cheryl Morgan

We have two new ventures starting up this month. Firstly I would like to welcome a new partner bookstore. Paul Wrigley and Debbie Cross have been regular features at conventions on the west coast of America for many years now. Recently they have had to close their physical store in Portland, and have set up online instead. As you probably know by now, I think specialist SF&F bookstores are going to have to do this more and more in order to survive. If you want such stores to continue to exist you need to support them. So, US-readers, if you see a book reviewed here that you would like to buy, instead of going to your local chain bookstore, why not order it from Wrigley-Cross instead? Especially as they stock lots of those small press books I keep going on about and which you may not be able to get in chain stores.

In addition we have the first in what I hope will be a continuing series of feature articles by big name writers in the SF&F field. Our opening article is by Matthew Cheney whose blog, The Mumpsimus, earned him a World Fantasy Award nomination this year. Although Matt writes a lot about genre issues, he also teaches English and is well known amongst the mainstream lit-blogging community. He’s far better placed than I am to suggest interesting mainstream writers that genre readers might enjoy, which is what I have asked him to do for this issue.

Next issue I am expecting an article from no less than Jeff Vandermeer, which should be a treat for everyone.

There’s a change on the web site too. As I mentioned last month, I have gone over to a system of one page per article, because that helps up the "page views" statistics and helps attract advertisers. For now I have also left the whole issue on a page version accessible for those who prefer it, but I would like some feedback as keeping both versions is a pain and I’ll drop the whole issue version if no one wants it.

Talking of the web site, with November now being over, I can happily report that for the first month ever Emerald City has averaged over 2000 unique visitors per day.

Now of course there are few things more fraudulent than web site statistics, and in the case of unique visits a major problem is knowing how many of them are real people and how many are software bots of various sorts. Also this level of readership is pitiful compared to better-known SF sites such as Locus Online. While the readership does appear to be continually growing, it is still well short of the level needed to attract regular advertising from major publishers. Which means that for now we are still reliant on your generosity. If people don’t continue to subscribe, I won’t be able to afford to get a regular flow of articles by big name writers.

One good thing I have to report is that publishers are very happy to give away books for the subscriber draw. The way things are going right now, subscribers have a very good chance of winning something over the next few months.

Meanwhile, back with January, as well as Jeff Vandermeer’s article we will have my review of his new novel, Shriek. Also in the line-up for January are Liz Williams, Tobias S. Buckell, Justine Larbalestier, Glenda Larke and a chap called Jules Verne.

See you in 2006

Happy holidays,

Cheryl