I’ve been in the publishing industry for all of five minutes, but I can see what the biggest challenge is: money.
Great writers struggle to have their work selected for publication, because there are so many good stories and so few publications.
Publications are run by volunteers, with the founders/editors often putting in their own money on top of the time it takes to buy, edit, publish and market stories. It’s weird to think of a big-name magazine as a struggling little bootstrapped hobby operation. But times have changed, and they run annual supporter drives and kickstarter campaigns just to keep the lights on.
The only people making any real money in this industry are the distribution platforms and software makers: Amazon, Submittable, Adobe. Probably Meta is raking in some advertising dollars.
Putting my business advisor hat on, what this industry needs is more users: people who visit the websites to read the stories, and end up as paid subscribers. People who buy the books so some money can trickle back to the publishers.
So, that’s my goal: to share the best speculative fiction stories (in any medium) to encourage more readers and supporters for the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror market.