Spectra Magazine: Speculative Fiction Mag Just for Mobile

Personally, I believe that you can never have too much sci-fi or fantasy to read...which is why I was happy to hear that Spectra Magazine is taking a stab at the e-magazine market! Spectra is a brand-new sci-fi / fantasy / horror publication, and unlike other fiction magazines, Spectra plans to be digital-only and is specifically designed to fit mobile devices like the iPad, iPhone, Kindle, and Sony eReader. E-magazines aren't new, but seeing one built specifically for modern, mobile devices is a nice change indeed.

So how did this new fiction mag get started? As Spectra themselves put it:

Spectra Magazine came about as the result of a conversation between creative writing company Pure Square Go and the e-book publisher Andrews UK. The latter has literally thousands of digital books on the App Store, and Kindle, and a host of other digital reading platforms, and was interested in testing the e-magazine waters. Fiction is proving to be considerably more popular than non-fiction on the e-readers, so we decided to launch a kind of pulp fiction/penny dreadful reboot for the 21st Century, covering news, reviews and short fiction from the sci-fi, fantasy and horror genres.

Spectra has already received literally hundreds of stories from both new and established writers—Hugo Award-winning author Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a lead story in the first issue, for example. Submissions are now closed, but authors should note that the magazine pays a portion of the profits rather than on a per-word basis.

If you're into science fiction, fantasy, horror, or the broader genre of "speculative fiction," be sure to give Spectra Magazine a look. The first issue is already out in the Kindle store for a mere $3.49, and the iPhone app is slated to hit any day now. In the meantime, you can read some preview at the magazine's website: http://spectramagazine.com/.