Why Book Publishers Love Short Stories

RevisionIsTheKey · Jan 9, 2010

I happened upon this site as I was searching for something else. The link below is a post that will give new hope to short story writers who feel the market is evaporating as magazines die out. Alan Rinzler points out that many agents and editors scour literary magazines for new writers and he also provides a link to an alphabetized list of hundreds of literary magazines.

http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/2009/10/12/why-book-publishers-love-short-stories/

(Apologies if this has already been posted by someone else.)

Jamesaritchie · Jan 12, 2010

Nothing in that article matches my experience. Book pubishers HATE short stories, and those listed on Amazon do nothing to for the case. How many of those 29,000 were published last year? How many were published by a commercial publisher? How many by new, unknown writers from a commercial publisher?

The answers to the last two questions are darned few, and even fewer.

Yes, if you're a famous writer, you can get a collection published, and you might even sell reasonably well, but unless you're a famous writer, it's unlikely you can even get a collection published, and if you do, it probably won't earn out its advance.

Short story credits do show a publisher that you can write well enough to be paid, but that's about all they mean.

AryaT92 · Jan 12, 2010

Does this include anthologies?

My book is an anthology and I picked up publishers interest and several agent contracts within only a month and that month included writing the book.

Jamesaritchie · Jan 12, 2010

AryaT92 said:
Does this include anthologies?

My book is an anthology and I picked up publishers interest and several agent contracts within only a month and that month included writing the book.

Anything is possible, but darned few commercial publishers want anthologies or collections because neither sells well at all unless a big name is attached. And how can you get several agent contracts for one book?

James D. Macdonald · Jan 12, 2010

Anthology: Stories by many writers.
Collection: Many stories by one writer.

That article in The Book Deal is ... well, poorly researched. The author says:

It’s true that agents and publishers hope that the short story writer will also produce that blockbuster novel. And it happens.

Annie Proulx, author of the short story Brokeback Mountain which originally appeared in the collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories, also won the Pulitzer for her novel Shipping News. Richard Ford, who wrote the short story collection A Multitude of Sins, also wrote the novel Independence Day. Michael Chabon, author of the short stories A Model World, wrote the novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

What he doesn't mention is that E. Annie Proulx wrote and published the Pulitzer-winning The Shipping News six years before she published Close Range: Wyoming Stories. Richard Ford's Independence Day was published in 1996; A Multitude of Sins in 2003. A Model World was Chabon's second book (the first was a novel), and it was published nearly thirty years ago; thus it is hardly indicative of today's market. Chabon's preceeding novel had been a bestseller, and brought him a $155,000 advance.

Further:

Just this year, Random House sold around 329,000 copies (according to BookScan, which captures about 70% of all cash register sales) of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for the set of 13 linked short stories about a grief-stricken family set in a small town on the coast of Maine.

That should give every short story writer a boost.

Yes, indeed, that should be a big boost for every short story writer who's won a Pulitzer. Isaac Bashevis Singer, another of the author's examples, won a Nobel Prize for literature.

My experience and observation has been the same as JAR's: Collections from major houses are darned rare, and tend to sell poorly. But, if you're already a best-selling novelist or major award winner, they aren't impossible.

RevisionIsTheKey · Jan 12, 2010

Well, all of this certainly isn't good news.

Is it also a myth that agents check out quality literary mags to find unknowns who write well? That part seemed to make sense to me. Not that they would contact the writer to say they were interested in marketing a collection of their short stories, but rather to ask what else the writer has in hopes of finding someone who is capable of writing a good novel. If I were an agent, I'd be tempted to forget the slush pile and contact writers of stories I had read and seen promise in. Or do agents just not have that kind of time?

The Lonely One · Jan 12, 2010

RevisionIsTheKey said:
Well, all of this certainly isn't good news.

Is it also a myth that agents check out quality literary mags to find unknowns who write well? That part seemed to make sense to me. Not that they would contact the writer to say they were interested in marketing a collection of their short stories, but rather to ask what else the writer has in hopes of finding someone who is capable of writing a good novel. If I were an agent, I'd be tempted to forget the slush pile and contact writers of stories I had read and seen promise in. Or do agents just not have that kind of time?

I've had an agent tell me straight out that she does voraciously read literary magazines, and sometimes will contact editors to get contact info for authors they like. Just to ask "are you working on anything right now" and maybe if they are the agent might be interested in representing it.

If this is true across the board, I have no idea.

AryaT92 · Jan 12, 2010

James D. Macdonald said:
Anthology: Stories by many writers.
Collection: Many stories by one writer.

If one writer wrote a book from the perspective of many characters where each chapter headed off with :

Written By: character
Perspective Of: character

What would that be considered?

Ken · Jan 12, 2010

... I know someone here who had a short story pub'd in a high-circulation pub and they were contacted by an editor shortly after to write a book in a similar vein. So it does happen. And editors and agents will also take notice when you mention such stuff in your bio, though readers, themselves, may not.

James D. Macdonald · Jan 12, 2010

All agents are always looking for salable writers. The slush pile is only one of the places they look.

Agents become agents because they love good writing. Of course they will be reading short fiction, the same as you are. And if they find someone whose writing they love, they might well ask around to see if that writer is agented, or, if not, if he/she is planning a novel.

Selling a short story and selling a novel are about equally difficult (say I, who have sold about an equal number of both). The difference is that the novel will bring in orders of magnitude more money.

Turning back to that article in The Book Deal:

Similarly the stunning young author Junot Diaz first published Drown in 1996, a collection of stories about his early youth in the Dominican Republic and then adapting to life in New Jersey, and used the same autobiographical material in his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2007, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

What he doesn't mention is that Diaz's collection was primarily of previously published (and award winning) stories. And those stories had been published in very prestigious markets (e.g. The New Yorker).

My best advice, if you wanted to publish a collection, would be to first sell the stories to magazines. And, like any other branch of publishing, start at the top and work down.

AryaT92 said:
If one writer wrote a book from the perspective of many characters where each chapter headed off with :

What would that be considered?

A novel.

RevisionIsTheKey · Jan 12, 2010

James D. Macdonald said:
Al

Turning back to that article in The Book Deal:

What he doesn't mention is that Diaz's collection was primarily of previously published (and award winning) stories. And those stories had been published in very prestigious markets (e.g. The New Yorker).

I am usually fairly skeptical of things I read on the Internet. Somehow, when an agent is writing, I turn off my filter.

AryaT92 · Jan 13, 2010

Would it be true that short stories / anthologies are easier to publish as they can't be ruined by the ending and the editor can simply cut things out that he doesn't like without ruining the plot and flow?

eqb · Jan 13, 2010

AryaT92 said:
Would it be true that short stories / anthologies are easier to publish as they can't be ruined by the ending and the editor can simply cut things out that he doesn't like without ruining the plot and flow?

I'm not sure I understand your comment.

With anthologies, the editor usually doesn't buy the story if she wants major changes. If she thinks the story has promise, she'll ask the writer to revise and resubmit. She'll also say what kind of changes she wants, but in the end, it's the writer who makes the revisions.

Once the editor has acquired all the stories she needs, she arranges them in the best order. Each story will go through copyedits, but by this time, any changes are minor fixes, not content edits.

AryaT92 · Jan 13, 2010

But overall, do they have an easier chance being passed? Because the revising and resubmitting is much easier than a novel?

Polenth · Jan 13, 2010

AryaT92 said:
But overall, do they have an easier chance being passed? Because the revising and resubmitting is much easier than a novel?

No. Short stories aren't easier to sell than novels when it comes to the big markets.

eqb · Jan 13, 2010

AryaT92 said:
But overall, do they have an easier chance being passed? Because the revising and resubmitting is much easier than a novel?

I don't understand what you mean by passed. There are three states. Bought. Rewrite request. Rejected.

Rewrite requests are not made casually, either for novels or short stories. It's much easier to buy that other novel or short story that doesn't need any work.

Robert E. Keller · Jan 13, 2010

James D. Macdonald said:
All agents are always looking for salable writers. The slush pile is only one of the places they look.

Selling a short story and selling a novel are about equally difficult (say I, who have sold about an equal number of both). The difference is that the novel will bring in orders of magnitude more money.

I don't have your experience in the industry by any means, but I wonder if some magazines might in fact be harder to land a story in than some major book publishers, because there are a couple of spec fic magazines that are simply brutal--with the rejection rate even toward professional writers being extreme.

And I definitely agree with your last sentence there, which is why I'm focusing so much more on getting novels done now, though landing short fiction in quality magazines does have advantages.

AryaT92 · Jan 13, 2010

In most cases do rewrite requests lead to "Bought".

eqb · Jan 14, 2010

AryaT92 said:
In most cases do rewrite requests lead to "Bought".

I have no idea. Why do you ask?

Polenth · Jan 14, 2010

Even if you had a good chance of selling the story if you made the changes, the chances of getting a rewrite request are slim at best.

From Duotrope... the percentage of submissions that ended in a rewrite request:

The New Yorker - 0.67 %
Strange Horizons - 0.36 %
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine - None
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - None
Pedestal Magazine - None

AryaT92 · Jan 14, 2010

Curious, I'm waiting on a publisher to respond to my agent, this is a publisher I'm pretty confident about as they read 50 pages prior to me having an agent and asked for more when it was finished also stating they liked the idea of the book and the candidness of teh writing.

Just seeing my possibilities

I'm expecting an answer as January dwindles down.

eqb · Jan 14, 2010

AryaT92 said:
Curious, I'm waiting on a publisher to respond to my agent, this is a publisher I'm pretty confident about as they read 50 pages prior to me having an agent and asked for more when it was finished also stating they liked the idea of the book and the candidness of teh writing.

Just seeing my possibilities I'm expecting an answer as January dwindles down.

Ah, okay. Well, as James said, you wrote a book, not a story for an anthology. So the publisher will decide if they like the book as a whole.

Even if they buy your book, the editor will probably ask for revisions. My first novel went through two rounds of revisions with my editor, then a third round after her boss got through with the book.

eyeblink · Jan 14, 2010

Polenth said:
Even if you had a good chance of selling the story if you made the changes, the chances of getting a rewrite request are slim at best.

From Duotrope... the percentage of submissions that ended in a rewrite request:

The New Yorker - 0.67 %
Strange Horizons - 0.36 %
Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine - None
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - None
Pedestal Magazine - None

FWIW I sold a story to F & SF after a rewrite request. That was to the previous editor, Kristine Kathryn Rusch - I've never sold to Gordon Van Gelder.

So it does happen. Occasionally.

jmascia · Jan 15, 2010

I hate to say this, but I highly doubt agents go out of their way to scour lit mags for a new writer to represent. I think they might take a look at one if a writer says they have been published in it in a query. But from experience, I have learned that it's the writers who need the agents, not the other way around. An agent will always have a writer looking for representation that they can pick up, they don't NEED to go out in search of their next big star.

That isn't to say not to write a short story for publication in a lit mag. I can't think of anything better to get your work out there and get exposure for yourself. But if you're going to do it thinking that agents are going to come knocking on your door asking to represent you, then don't bother.

Robert E. Keller · Jan 15, 2010

Why would agents bother to scour short story magazines when they have huge slush piles in front of them that contain...novel queries. I'm not an agent, but it would seem to me that searching through short stories for a potential novelist wouldn't make any sense. First of all, you wouldn't know if the short story writers were: A: Any good at novels. B: Even interested in writing novels. C: Already under contract to another agent. That's a lot of unknowns an agent would have to wade through that could be answered by one simple thing: a novel query and a 10 page sample.

And optimism over short story collections? That's Eragon syndrome again. If one or two writers out of 1,000,000 did it successfully, those are inspiring odds according to the logic of some. I, however, do not find those odds inspiring.

Why Book Publishers Love Short Stories

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