LOCUS 2024 FUNDRAISER

Help us fund a strong 2024 by donating today to
Locus Magazine, locusmag.com, and the Locus Awards!!

Locus is more than a review magazine or a news website or a literary award – it is an enthusiastic mix of readers, writers, fans, and industry professionals, working together to uplift the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field (SFFH) we love for a global audience. Now in our 56th year of publishing, donor and reader support is a crucial component to continuing everything Locus does into 2024. We have a ton of very cool donor rewards and will post more each day, also a few special items that we will auction off!

Locus is made up of you – science fiction, fantasy, and horror readers, fans, and writers– and we want to hold Locus’ pages open for you for years to come, with great book reviews, recommended lists, interviews, news, and commentary. Help us make that future a reality!

Whether you read the magazine to stay in touch with the field, get news and book recommendations from our website, enjoy the Locus Awards, or just want to support a long-standing resource of the SFFH field, please join us and make a tax deductible donation today.

We can’t do it alone – Locus needs you!

“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

When you support Locus,  a 501(c)3 nonprofit, you are championing:

• An ever-growing and freely available archive of engaging author interviews, short and long fiction reviews, curated recommended lists, convention coverage, and more.
• Coverage of new, exciting, and diverse voices in genre fiction.
• Writers, editors, and artists earning living wages and compensation for their creative and diligent work.
• The longest-standing democratic major awards for writing in SFFH.
• One of the only venues that reviews short fiction regularly.
• Resources about publishing trends that libraries, bookstores, book buyers, publishers, and readers rely on.
• 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 that create accessibility for a broad readership.

—Nalo Hopkinson

Our future holds more special-focus issues, more international voices, monthly artist spotlights, and (with enough support) anthologies, writing workshops, and career opportunities, and more.

—Cory Doctorow

LOCUS NEEDS YOU

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 a year to publish the magazine, run the website, and present the awards each year. Through subscriptions, advertising, and existing donations, we can count on $400,000 in anticipated revenue next year. That means we need to raise over $200,000 to make it all the way through 2024. This fundraiser goes a long way toward meeting that goal.

These funds fulfill three main purposes:
‘Locus is people.’ The largest chunk of your support 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 competitive rates to our contributors, reviewers, part-timers, and freelancers. 

Create a top-notch print magazine with multiple digital options; celebrating story and the storytellers. The mag, website, and awards strive to uplift the new and the established, to celebrate the voices of our field, and to champion diverse voices within genre fiction.

General overhead, like office space and utilities, licensing and business insurance. Locus HQ is where the magic happens. Our office gives our staff a place to collaborate, houses 30 Hugo Awards, our historical archives, the photographic history of SFFH, the magazine inventory, and more. 

Thank you for your consideration and support. We exist at the center of the relationships our community has built together over the decades. 

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

—Stephen Graham Jones

Our History

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

Over the past 55 years, we have published more than 750 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 which hosts thousands of reviews, news posts, and articles covering fiction, craft, art, conventions, international events, and more, chronicling the field. All of which are available for the general public to search for free. 

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.

The world has shifted, Locus used to be supported by advertising on top of a steady print subscribership. With print advertising a thing of the past, now we depend on being a donor-supported 501(c)(3) non-profit. With over 100,000 unique visitors per month who benefit from our resources at Locusmag.com, we hope to see our funding met through community support, and this is the moment for it to happen.

Thank you for your support!

“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