PiQ magazine folds

It’s been a busy weekend. I went out with friends on Friday night, and while I was out there was a spasm of internet uncertainty about whether the magazine PiQ, the successor to Newtype-USA, had folded. The final answer is that it did, and the publisher posted a message to that effect.

While PiQ had come in for some heavy criticism during its short life, the message hints that the real reason for the magazine’s failure is a lack of support from parent company ADV. [Edit: There’s actually a PiQ, LLC, which is technically the parent company of PiQ, but, as Simon Jones (NSFW) points out, it has the same address as ADV.] Perhaps “hints” is too weak a term:

It’s unfortunate that we’ll never get a chance to see how successful PiQ could have been, but a combination of low advertising revenue, poor business management and a lack of proper marketing and promotion all hamstrung the magazine from the start. We, the editorial/creative/production staff, did the best we could to put together a quality publication, but as we’ve discovered, without a good financial backing, it’s all an exercise in futility.

PiQ freelancer Lesley Smith weighs in, and Josh of Josh’s Anime Blog looks at the situation and wonders about the implications for ADV, as well as for his subscription:

As for those of us with subscriptions, they say they will have “more details later.” If they’re just going to refund money, I don’t know why they wouldn’t just say so, which means that we’ll probably eventually get our money back in some sort of round-about way.

Like, another magazine?