Editor Douglas Cohen and Publisher Warren Lapine have just announced the impending death of Realms of Fantasy. The December 2010 issue will not be printed, but will be posted for free on the web site in the coming days.
Cohen notes the magazine lasted 16 years and 97 issues. He’s written a farewell editorial, available here. He also tells writers “If you have a manuscript at Realms of Fantasy, please consider it released from consideration. We wish you the best of luck finding a home for it elsewhere.”
Founding Editor and now Fiction Editor Shawna McCarthy traces the life of the magazine in her own piece here. Lapine’s comments on closing the magazine are reprinted below.
In January 2009, Sovereign Media announced quite suddenly that they were closing the magazine (see this article). In the days following, there was a flurry of rumors and discussions, which culminated in Lapine’s decision to buy the magazine and keep it going (see this article). That move bought the magazine a year and a half, and another nine issues, but ultimately, it succumbed to the same financial pressures.
A Farewell Note from Publisher Warren Lapine:
I purchased Realms of Fantasy with the intent of restoring it to its former glory.
In the past I have published two magazine that had larger circulations than Realms: KISS Magazine and The Whole Cat Journal. So I knew exactly what I was undertaking. I got the relevant numbers on Realms‘ overall performance for the past 12 issues. Based on my experience with purchasing other defunct magazines such as Weird Tales, Fantastic Stories, Science Fiction Chronicle, and The Whole Cat Journal, I had every reason to believe that I could turn Realms around quickly and easily.
But that didn’t turn out to be the case.
I invested more than $50,000.00 of my own money into reviving this magazine. I tried every traditional method I could think of to increase the circulation, but nothing worked. I also spent a great deal of money trying nontraditional methods. I advertised online with Google and Facebook, neither of which came close to covering their costs. And we created DRM-free electronic versions of the magazine to see if that would help increase our circulation. Sadly, the DRM-free versions never sold more than twenty-five copies per issue, and the Kindle editions sold fewer still.
As things stand, I would need to invest another large amount of money simply to continue publishing the magazine at its current level—an investment that I do not believe would have any chance of repaying itself. So, unfortunately, I have no choice but to close Realms of Fantasy and Dreams of Decadence. I have written more than $10,000.00 worth of checks to contributors of Realms in the last two weeks. Tir Na Nog Press, Inc., is still owed money by distributors and advertisers, and as that money trickles in we will pay the handful of contributors that are still owed money. We did all of the work on the December issue and had it ready for press in the hopes that things might turn around. We will be placing a PDF of that issue on our website for our subscribers to download at no charge. We may do the same with Dreams of Decadence. I will also try to find another magazine to assume the subscriptions so that the readers will get something for the unfulfilled portion of their subscriptions.
Ultimately, I believe Realms failed because of a terrible economic climate. When I purchased the magazine I did not believe that the worst economy since the Great Depression would actually get worse; that was a mistake.
Should there be any interest in purchasing the magazine I will gladly sell Realms to a responsible party for $1.00 and give them the finished files for the December issue.
I’d like to take a moment to thank Shawna McCarthy, Douglas Cohen, and the rest of the staff for being so professional and easy to work with. I’m very proud of what we accomplished in the last eighteen months.

Related articles previously published on SFScope:
Realms of Fantasy closing (27 January 2009)
More on the death of Realms of Fantasy (30 January 2009)
Rumor control regarding Realms of Fantasy (9 February 2009)
Realms of Fantasy is NOT closing; sold to Tir Na Nog Press (10 March 2009)
Douglas Cohen promoted to Editor of Realms of Fantasy (17 November 2009)