http://www.amazon.com/forum/anthologies/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxZ8FZHFP6EYOQ&cdThread=Tx2TJYCXTCHU620
Interesting discussion. I note that half or more of the comments are by people pimping their own short stories or fanzines.
Then there's this comment:
says:Absolutely not. Simply asking the question shows that the medium still has relevancy.
Er, huh?
"Does anyone still speak Linear B?"
No, I think that reply is a logical fail.
Consider the work of the following authors: Dave Eggers, Etgar Keret, Wells Tower, Roddy Doyle, T. C. Boyle, Miranda July, David Schickler... You cannot possibly tell me that you are unable to parse out a heartbeat there.
So people are writing short stories. The followup question is, are they making money at it, and are their publishers? I also get the impression he's trying to impress us by namedropping. Keret hasn't published anything in several years, and his Amazon rankings are not impressive. Eggers is doing well, but he's also one of those literati darlings. He may be an excellent writer, but I suspect his sales have more to do with zeitgeist than quality. Schickler has published two whole books, one of which is out of print and one ranking down around 1,000,000. So regardless of quality, sales seem to...suck. July dabbles in everything, her last book was 4 years ago from a small press. I had to google them and I haven't heard of the others. They're certainly not "Stephen King," who did write a lot of shorts but now mostly writes whole books, nor Hemingway.
In SF, Heinlein got paid 5c a word in the 1950s. That was serious money. And around 2006, SFWA raised the minimum "professional" rate for SF to....5c a word, from 3c. You are not paying any bills with that.
Someone comments:
The mid-length short story may be in somewhat of a (temporary?) decline as print magazines are struggling with all the publishing changes. However, ultra-short fiction forms (flash fiction, micro fiction, hint fiction etc.) are on the rise as more people discover (free) online reading and the range of ezines available.
Oh, it's hardly temporary. Magazines that had circulation in the hundreds of thousands have dropped into the mere thousands, and there are less all the time. The specialty mags are happy to get hundreds of readers (out of a US population approaching a third of a billion). As for free content--it's worth what you pay for it.
It is true more content is moving online. There's likely more of it, but, with the proliferation of amateur sites, it will become increasingly difficult to find an audience, and there will be less development by the practitioners. You will see less and less great stories, and even if they exist, you'll see less of them as they are swallowed in the mire of puerile shit.
See, part of what professional publishing brings to the table (as many of us in the field try to remind people), is that development and filter. Few people can finish a story. Fewer a good one. Fewer still can convince someone to part with a mere nickel per word up front for their story. If no one is willing to pay a nickel per word, in the hopes that advertising will recoup those few dozen dollars, is the story really any good? Probably not.
In exchange, the publisher brings a podium. You can have the best message in the world. Shout it in the middle of the Tibetan Plateau and you waste it. Whisper it in the right location in Times Square, say, and you'll have half the world as your audience. Then the message can do some good.
Now, the short form is not dead. However, it's not what it used to be. The magazines are dying, the web won't really offer much in the way of money. These days, the primary reason a writer produces short stuff is for promotional purposes. If you like the short content (and blogging counts), you may spend money on the heavier content.
So the answer comes in three forms:
Yes. Kiss the mags goodbye, they're done.
No, but you're really going to have to dig to find it.
No, but it's never going to be what it was in the past.
I do still write quite a few shorts, but largely as promotion to keep my name out there. I mean, I enjoy it, and I try to deliver the best story possible, but they're all in existing universes and the publicity benefits me more than the few bucks.
