Jim Baen’s Universe to be Closing in 2010

Apparently this has been on the wire for over two months but for those aspiring writers out there hoping to get their short stories published some day, they should note that Jim Baen’s Universe will be closing with its last issue to be published in April 2010. The bimonthly online science fiction and fantasy magazine launched in June 2006 by Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen. Mike Resnick joined the magazine in its second year of publication.

As to the reasons surrounding the magazine’s closure, Eric Flint released the following information on Jim Baen Universe’s website:

“In a nutshell, we were simply never able to get and retain enough subscribers to put us on a sales plateau that would allow us to continue publishing. From the beginning, we were too dependent on the income from the Universe club. The Club’s purpose was to provide the magazine with a much-needed initial surge of income—which it did indeed provide—and then, after the first year, to continue as an important but subsidiary source of income. Instead, the Club wound up being the source of about half of our annual income, from beginning to end.”

New subscribers can purchase a US$30 subscription for access to any issue of the magazine since its inception in June 2006 through to the last issue coming in April 2010. For people that have been subscribing since the very first issue of the magazine in June 2006, they will either be reimbursed for however many issues they don’t receive (at $5 per issue) or the magazines will figure out alternative arrangements that suit them. It’s just such a shame to see another one of the great short fiction magazines of our time get shut down in its prime but according to the webpage it was simply a matter of funds.