The Fantasy Fan, Volume 2, Number 3, November 1934

Once upon a time, a year ago last summer, to be more specific, I had money to burn, but rather than burn it, I decided to launch an attack upon the fantasy-loving public in the form of a fan magazine. You've guessed it—the result was none other than THE FANTASY FAN. I placed enough capital in the venture to start it off. Needless to say, I was disappointed with the results, as far as circulation goes—it's always that way. Inexperience with the publishing game allows for pretty pictures of people just dying to send in their dollars to your new magazine, but the cold facts certainly throw ice-water on air-castles. Experience shows that a publisher must fight for every subscription. It is filled with disappointments and hard knocks. After all, magazines are luxuries, particularly fiction magazines, and even more particularly fan magazines—and people can't afford luxuries during times when they can just about secure money enough to live on. Fantastic fiction magazines have never been huge successes with the general public, whose average intelligence is that of a moron. The lovers of fantasy have a higher type of intellect, and are therefore very few in number. I doubt that there are 150,000 people in this country of 125,000,000 who can really appreciate the science and weird fiction that is published in contemporary magazines. They are what you call 'class' publications. And not one reader in five hundred of these fantasy magazines is the least bit interested in the fan angle—but those of them that are are loyal to the last. Each of them is worth fifty ordinary readers. They are the only ones that are interested in the fan magazines, so you can see why the aforementioned fan magazines will never boast of circulations comparing with Liberty or the Saturday Evening Post or pay $500 for a cover illustration. Therefore, the only way to keep fan magazines is to secure every available active fan, those rare specimens, and keep them together in one big family. Of course, a few more spring up every here and there when otherwise normal people discover that there is such a thing as fantasy fiction and fan magazines.