First, if I could go from idea to reviewable draft in only a week or two, I’d think I was being extraordinarily productive. As a rule, I write between 1500 and 2000 words a day, but the gap between ‘having got the words down’ and ‘having got the words down in a form where they’re ready to show anyone else’ is far longer than that.

As far as readership for different forms of outlet goes, I think you may be being unfair to suggest that the readership of Asimov’s and F&SF is composed exclusively of other writers, I would be willing to believe that the proportion of readers who are also aspiring writers is higher than for many other periodicals, but that’s at least in part because there’s something about the SF/fantasy genres that makes people want to stop just reading and see if they can do it for themselves.

With regards to “finding an audience” and “wanting broader exposure” that it’s maybe worth clarifying what you actually mean. If you’re after the levels of fame where strangers look at you twice to see if it really is “that man off the TV”, then the chances of you getting it are very, very bad. Even supposing the story you’re working on turns out to be the next Da Vinci Code or the next Harry Potter… well, would you recognise Dan Brown or Joanna Rowling if they walked into your local bar? I know I wouldn’t.

Even if you set your sights lower (considerably lower) than that, your chances are not good. Unless you are extraordinarily lucky (or unlucky) you are almost guaranteed to go through your without any but the tinniest fraction of the human population ever giving a damn about you. That’s true whatever you do. Write a story; most people will ignore it. Write a story and put it on the internet; even more people will ignore it. (I’m not trying to be personal here. The same is true of any of us.) This being so, it’s worth thinking about what kind of fame you want. Are you just after eyeballs. Do you want the respect of people whose values your share and whose opinions you value. If you think of it that way, then maybe the attention of the readers of Aeon or F&SF starts to seem more valuable. There may only be a handful of them, but they’re a smart handful. They’ve got taste.

Of course, in theory this all a very old-fashioned way of looking at things. All that time waiting for your work to claw its way up to the top of an editor’s slush pile, all those dead trees. Why not just put your work on the web and let your fame spread by osmosis? If you’re good, people will link to you and your reputation will spread. That’s the theory. Maybe it’s even the practice some of the time. But I’m not convinced about it. I spend a good chunk of my life on-line and (apart from erotica) I have never tried to look for fiction on the web. Life is far too short to spend it wading through the outpourings of folk who are sure they can write but possess neither talent or the willingness to work. I rely on people like Bridget McKenna and Gordon Van Gelder and Andy Cox to screen that stuff for me. By buying their magazines I am paying them to read crap so that I don’t have to. For me, this is really the point of submitting to a paying market. You’re right, it’s not about the money – although the money is nice to have. But it’s much more about succeeding in an environment where 98% of contenders fail.

Yes! That's it exactly (I've been feeling off for the past week, ever since finishing up the revisions to a novel). If I'm not working on something, whether it's a story or a novel, I'm grumpy as hell.

Speaking for myself only, I have a need to create something, and I finally found the right medium -- fiction. I don't worry too much about audience or editors as I'm doing my drafting and revisiong -- I'm just telling the story to myself, trying to make it as clear as possible. Worrying about your readership is sort of pointless, in my opinion.

It's sort of like, "If you build it, they will come."

But the "it" had better be just as cool as a baseball field in the middle of rows of corn, with ghost ballplayers on it.

Mike