In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

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How would you characterize Lightspeed‘s readership (beyond the demographics on the advertising page)? How would you say they differ, on average, from the readers of other genre magazines? Do there seem to be definite clusters of taste among the readership – distinct groups of SF-centric and fantasy-centric readers, perhaps, or of literary and non-literary stories?

I don’t really know how to answer this question, I’m afraid! One of the reasons did a reader survey in the first place–and am now doing one again–is to get to know the readership a little better, but those kinds of comparisons you’re asking about…I’m not even sure how one could figure that out. I am kind of curious what our readers would say is the magazine that is most like Lightspeed. That would have been a good survey question.

In the current one, I did ask people what their favorite SF/F fiction magazine was, though, so that may give me some idea. I think the numbers are so spread out as to be statistically insignificant, but if these are accurate, Lightspeed readers are most likely to enjoy the following magazines in the following order of preference:

Clarkesworld
Tor.com
Asimov’s
F&SF
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Analog

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