Factor Four Magazine is closed

Sometimes you just don’t want to make an announcement and so you put it off hoping to find a solution that will prevent you from needing to do so.  Unfortunately, I can stall no longer.  Through teary eyes as I type this, I have to announce that Factor Four Magazine is closed now.  There is no plan to publish future issues of the magazine.

Publishing a magazine is a lot of work, but I really enjoy publishing other author’s stories.  But financially, the short story publishing world isn’t self sustaining.  And over all, I could no longer take roughly $10,000 a year from my family’s income to continue to buy the content we’ve become known for.  This is truly heart-breaking for me.  Not only did I love publishing stories, but Factor Four Magazine was starting to gain traction at an accelerated pace.

We spent most of the last four months attempting to negotiate funding from other private sources.  Unfortunately, traditional funding wouldn’t support the idea of another magazine because they couldn’t see a return on investment.  We couldn’t demonstrate a subscription base, the advertisement sales, and issue sales needed to be “a good investment”.

I’ve had very poor success with crowd funding, largely because everyone is asking for funding on their projects.  It is difficult to stand out.  And over all I didn’t think I wanted to put myself through the emotional roller coaster of thinking I could do it, only to fail (as I have done in the past).  And while we may gain one year’s worth of investment, what would we do in 2021?  I couldn’t see a long term future in continually asking for crowd funding.

It hurts to make this choice.  I apologize to all of our readers and writers who invested time with us for ultimately letting everyone down.  I am passionate about flash fiction in our genre and still believe is should be recognized for the art form that it is, separate from the traditional short story.  I am already exploring options to continue publishing but perhaps on a less frequent basis, such as anthologies or other methods.  I hope to see Factor Four return in another form, but I can’t promise anything.

I want to thank everyone who supported us, submitted to us, and ultimately believed we were doing something great.

Happy Reading,

Richard Flores IV

Editor-in-Chief