Prompted by an email from Amazon, I’m reminded that the Kindle September deadline is fast approaching and it’s time to get my SF magazine subscriptions sorted and seek out new vendors.

As many people know, Amazon announced last year it would stop providing monthly subscriptions for most (all?) magazines previously available via the Kindle store. The availability of new subscriptions ended some time ago I believe, but customers with existing magazine subscriptions have until September this year to find other places to fulfil their e-subscriptions. This is when Amazon finally turn out the lights on this section of its Kindle store.

The Kindle magazine subscription service has mostly worked well for me over the past decade. I’ve found it convenient, reliable and cheap, although I came to it with some trepidation. Initially, I was reluctant to trade my paper copies of publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog for electronic versions. But distribution to the UK was becoming increasingly erratic with long delays and numerous missing or damaged issues. Add to that pricing considerations (the ePub version could be as much as a half to a third the price of the paper copy once overseas postage was included) and it made sense to switch. Neverthless I did so with considerable reluctance. Until then I had an unbroken run of Asimov’s, right from the very first issue, and a decade or two of Analog and F & SF. It still pains me that my collection had to end—or at least transition to ebook versions.

I imagine the widespread availability of SF and fantasy magazines on the Kindle store was welcomed by their publishers who were seeing physical magazine sales slowly decline. I know that guaranteed income from subscribers makes a big difference to small press publishers operating on a shoestring. Subscriptions—even ones where Amazon takes a hefty slice of the purchase price—is really important for a publication’s financial stability.

All that is gone now, of course. I’ve read that many (if not all) of the well known SF magazines face considerable uncertainty as a large slice of subscriber revenue is chopped. No one knows how many subscribers will bother finding alternative outlets and taking out new subscriptions. I hope they do––but it seems inevitable publishers are going to face a major hurdle in the coming months to build back their subscriber numbers.

For me, there are four publications I need to source from alternative suppliers: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction and Clarkesworld. I read a range of other online magazines as well but these are either direct subscriptions with the publisher or regular one-off purchases, neither of which go through Amazon. (And not forgetting Interzone which is the only magazine I consume as a paper-and-ink).

When I first researched it earlier in the year, I feared it wouldn’t be straightforward. Several options for US subscribers (particularly for the Big 3) aren’t available in the UK. However, Clarkesworld has been wonderfully easy. The website offers direct subsciptions for both print and ebook versions. I’ve gone with a direct subscription option, currently $2.99/month increasing to $3.99/month from September, but there are plenty of other options to choose from including Patreon or purchase via Weightless Books.

Luckily for me, Asimov’s and Analog have recently put in place a new e-subscription option which is my obvious choice as other third party options looked problematic. F&SF is available through Weightless Books which I think is open to UK-based purchasers–– although I haven’t tried it yet, so can’t be sure. I haven’t seen other e-subscription options, so I’m hoping it is.

So I think I will soon be sorted. If you’ve previously had a Kindle subscription to these (or any other) digital SF magazines I do urge you to subscribe directly to your chosen magazines. It’s going to be tough for publishers to lose a chunk of their subscribers otherwise. And if you haven’t subscribed before, now would be the perfect time to take out a subscription.