Locus Magazine is delighted to announce our first annual crowdfunding campaign! 

Help us raise $75,000+ to ensure the future of Locus.

If you’re a fan of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Locus touches your life more than you may know. The books you devour, new authors you find, the readers you reach, and publishers you support rely on Locus Magazine. We’re an enthusiastic community of readers, writers, fans, and industry professionals, and we’re part of the glue that holds SFFH together. Without Locus, the landscape of the field would be forever diminished. 

This is why we’re asking you to contribute to the future of Locus Magazine and the Locus Awards. When you back this project, we can explore that future together.

“I’ve been part of the Locus community for over three decades, and I believe it is incredibly important to the speculative fiction community.”

—Neil Gaiman

When Locus Magazine first went to print as a one-page ‘zine in 1968, no one could have guessed it would become such a fixture of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres, guiding its readers through worlds of imagination.

Over the past 54 years, we have published more than 740 issues, keeping readers, authors, artists, book buyers, industry professionals, and fans up to date on what’s happening in the field – the Publishers Weekly of SFFH. We launched a website whose archive holds thousands of reviews, news posts, and articles covering fiction, craft, art, conventions, international events, and more, chronicling the field.

Beyond the magazine, we started the Locus Awards in 1971, celebrating writers, editors, and artists of SFFH. We’re proud to include an award specifically for debut authors as well as an award for community development, historically given to those who boost marginalized voices.

We started a writing workshop series tapping our immense community of master writers. We offer internships and have seen many move on to establish publishing careers.

A lot has changed at Locus over the years. Most recently, the way advertisers and readers interact with the magazine has shifted drastically. While our paid subscribership is modest but steady, our online readership—which engages with our free content—is orders of magnitude larger, over 100,000 per month.

At the same time, as costs rise across the board, one of our traditional revenue streams has almost entirely collapsed. Print advertising revenue is down across all print media, and Locus is no exception. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, we’ve been shifting to a donor-supported model to meet our needs. But Locus is at risk of not surviving this current recession.

“Locus Magazine is the spit and baling wire that holds the entire, bizarre, wondrous enterprise of publishing together. We’re all seriously f—ed if it ever stops working.”

—Cory Doctorow

If Locus ceased to exist, we’d stand to lose much more than a magazine. We’d lose a community gathering place where fans, pros, and readers come together to experience:

• Interviews with up-and-coming and established writers, providing an in-depth look at their publishing journey, process, philosophy, experiences, and more.
• Reviews of books and short fiction by award winning critics who pinpoint exciting new titles and writers to look out for. 
• Forthcoming Books Lists used worldwide by bookstores, librarians, collectors, and avid readers to make buying decisions.
• News including international reports about what’s happening in the SFFH community around the world, to keep us all connected and informed.
• The Locus Awards, the democratic, readers’ choice  award that acknowledges, celebrates, and embraces authors and artists in the field. 
• And more, including recommended reading lists, convention and workshop news, workshops, internships, event calendars, and obituaries honoring the life and work of SFFH’s voices.

What would the world of SFFH look like without Locus? We honestly can’t imagine it, and you shouldn’t have to. 

“Locus—it’s the hub of all things science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”

—Stephen Graham Jones

When you support this campaign for Locus, you are championing:

• Paying writers, editors, and artists a living wage for their creative and diligent work.
• The longest-standing democratic major awards for writing in SFFH.
• Uplifting new, exciting, and diverse voices in SFFH.
• Resources about publishing trends that libraries, bookstores, book buyers, publishers, and readers rely on.
• Publicity opportunities for authors through engaging interviews, reviews, curated lists, and more.
• Crucial SFFH archives, including over half a century of photographs, articles and obituaries, and award and publication information.
• One of the few remaining print magazines in the field with digital options, creating accessibility for a broad readership.

Your support will help us continue producing the magazine (both print and digitally) and hosting the Locus Awards in the future. Our future holds more special issues of the magazine, amplifying new and international voices, committing to monthly artist spotlights, publishing anthologies, hosting workshops, creating career opportunities and more.

We continue our commitment to leveling the playing field for emerging and diverse writers, and to creating an informative and enjoyable magazine that serves as an important historical record for SFFH. 

“Who will tell the storytellers’ stories?”

—Mary Robinette Kowal

Locus Needs Your Help!

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and relies on the support of subscribers and donors to manage our operations.

It costs over $600,000 to run Locus each year. Through subscriptions, advertising, and existing donations, we can count on $400,000 in anticipated revenue next year. That means we need to find an additional $240,000 to make it all the way through 2023. This $75,000 will make that goal so much closer. 

Those funds fulfill three main purposes:
‘Locus is people.’ The largest chunk of our expenses pays our writers, editors, and artists, including staff, contributors, and freelancers. We strive to pay living wages to our six full-time San Francisco Bay Area writing and production staff (with health insurance), who have devoted themselves to making this magazine work, and to pay competitive rates to our contributors, reviewers, part-timers, and freelancers. It’s particularly important to value the work of creatives, especially during increasing inflation and a potential recession.

Create a top-notch print magazine with multiple digital options; celebrating story and the storytellers. Locus Magazine, the annual Locus Awards, and the Locus website uplift the new and the established, to celebrate the voices of our field. And we will continue to uplift and champion diverse voices within genre fiction, with your help. Your support enables us to create a more accessible magazine in multiple formats, print, digital, and online. To reach libraries and schools and bookstores, readers and professionals. With the increasing costs of printing, shipping, and paper, the print magazine has become more expensive to produce—but no less valuable to subscribers.

General overhead, like office space and utilities, licensing and business insurance. Locus HQ is where the magic happens. Our office space not only gives our staff a place to collaborate, it houses 30 Hugo Awards, our historical archives, the photographic history of SFFH, the magazine inventory, and more. And it’s where we see the year’s books and select for our recommending lists. 

We’re taking proactive steps to shore up this deficit, and in the next 12 months, we are also starting three new initiatives: a subscription drive, an auction, and this crowdfunding campaign.

Your contribution will help us survive and thrive in 2023—even in the face of a changing economy and market trends.

“Locus Magazine has worked tirelessly for decades, helping build this wonderful community.”

— Diana Pho

We exist at the center of the relationships our community has built together over the decades. 

We are made up of you, our friends and readers, and we want to hold Locus’ pages open for you for years to come. Please help us make that future a reality.

Thank you for your consideration and support.

“Locus Magazine is the home-town newspaper for the science fiction community, which has become one of the great centers of all the world’s cultures.”

— Kim Stanley Robinson

Each week we will release new fun rewards, and if we meet our first goal, we have plans for some exciting stretch goals to tell you about.