Historical Pay Rates for Short Stories

dgaughran · Apr 12, 2011

Hi all,

I'm writing a piece for my blog on short stories, and I was wondering if I could tap into the hive mind for some information.

I hear all the time things like "pay rates for short stories have been frozen since the 1950s" and things like "back in the days you could buy a house with what they paid for a story in the New Yorker" (I might have made that last one up), but I have trouble tracking down hard data.

I have heard that the top markets (The Atlantic, The New Yorker) can pay between $2,000 to $7,000 for a story. Is this true? How does this compare historically?

And how would you define "pro" rates. $0.05 a word? How does this compare historically?

If anyone has any basic info on readership rates of short story magazines in the past (weeklys and the pulp stuff), that would be great. I have heard circulation figures of around 1.5 million for The New Yorker today, but stories only form part of their content. Does anyone have any idea of the circulation rates of the top magazines (or websites) whose content is more or less purely short fiction (or reviews)?

Finally, what are considered the top anthologies in the US? Do you have any idea of sales numbers?

All and any help is appreciated.

Dave

zanzjan · Apr 12, 2011

Check out duotrope.com

They list all the major markets (including, I think, mainstream) and info about current pay rates.

As far as what constitutes "pro" rates, that varies depending on who you are talking to. Speaking now about SF/F, which is the only thing I really know anything at all about, a lot of folks (but not everyone) goes by SFWA definitions of what makes a pro market, which is a combination of pay rate, circulation, and regularity. The SFWA website should have more info about that: www.sfwa.org

There are some magazines that fall on a borderline where they aren't technically pro by SFWA standards but are generally regarded as on a par with the pro markets, or are treated as pro by other entities. I'm not sure, for example, if/how the BSFA might define pro differently.

I don't know where you'd find historical data about pay rates. So, maybe not a lot of help, but a few pointers to hopefully get you started.

-Suzanne

dgaughran · Apr 12, 2011

Hi Suzanne, thanks for the reply.

I know about duotrope.com (it's great), and probably should have mentioned that above. What duotrope will tell you is if a market pays (what they define as) pro rates, $0.05 cent a word or higher, what it want tell me is how much higher than that they pay.

For example, I have heard stories that The New Yorker will pay $2,000+ for a story (but I have no idea if that is true). Do they pay the same for (the few) unpublished writers, or does, say, Haruki Murakami get a bigger check?

And with regard to historical rates, I don't really need exact figures, but more of a general idea. I have heard that short story writers could make a living from their fees in the past (if they were prolific enough) from what they sold to magazines, but that seems impossible today.

Dave

shelleyo · Apr 12, 2011

Dan Baum was a staff writer for The New Yorker in 2009. He made $3 per word for the 30,000 words he was expected to produce over the course of a year, a nice income for the year,and about $1.50 per word for fiction, I guess, since he said a 5,000 word story was bought for $7,750.

It's some interesting (and possibly disheartening) reading about working for the top-paying magazines:

http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yorker_tweets.html

Shelley

Jamesaritchie · Apr 12, 2011

Historically, no fiction market I can think of comes anywhere close to keeping up with inflation, and pay rates of under a dime are still common, just as they were in the fifties.

Some markets have fallen drastically. The Saturday Evening Post paid as much as five thousand dollars for a short story back in the forties, and you could buy a decent new car then for eight hundred bucks, and the average house cost under seven thousand.

In 1950, the average salary was only $3,000. That's about fifty eight bucks per week. This means that even at one cent per word, a six thousand word short story paid more than most people earned at a nine to five job, and there were hundreds and hundreds of magazines that paid more than this.

Circulation rates are only a tiny part of the story. Inflation means everything costs one heck of a lot more than it did fifty years ago, and this included operating costs at magazines. The only way magazines could still pay the same rates would be if their circulation rates also rose according to inflation. Obviously, this simply didn't happen, and couldn't happen.

But, yes, The New Yorker, and a few other magazines, pay in the thousands for a short story.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 12, 2011

dgaughran said:
Hi Suzanne, thanks for the reply.

I know about duotrope.com (it's great), and probably should have mentioned that above. What duotrope will tell you is if a market pays (what they define as) pro rates, $0.05 cent a word or higher, what it want tell me is how much higher than that they pay.

For example, I have heard stories that The New Yorker will pay $2,000+ for a story (but I have no idea if that is true). Do they pay the same for (the few) unpublished writers, or does, say, Haruki Murakami get a bigger check?

And with regard to historical rates, I don't really need exact figures, but more of a general idea. I have heard that short story writers could make a living from their fees in the past (if they were prolific enough) from what they sold to magazines, but that seems impossible today.

Dave

$2,000 is just about the minimum for a new writer at The New Yorker. $2,500-$3,000 is more likely. Bigger names do get bigger checks.

dgaughran · Apr 12, 2011

Thanks Shelley, that's a very interesting link on Dan Baum

And thanks James - that's exactly what I was looking for.

Dave

Jamesaritchie · Apr 13, 2011

I hope my post wasn't discouraging. It's true that short stories do not pay anywhere near as much as they once did, and it's equally true that there are far fewer markets. It's also true that it's a lot tougher to sell a short story to a good magazine than it is to sell a novel to a good publisher.

This does not mean you shouldn't write short stories. I've made pretty fair money writing short stories over the years, and while being able to write a good short story does not automatically mean you can write a good novel, if you can do both, the published short stories can bring readers to your novels. They can also make a good deal of money through reprints rights, and collections.

And once all that is done, you can then put them up for sale on Kindle, or other such places.

We may even be reaching the point where, if you're good enough and prolific enough, it's possible to again earn something of a living writing short stories.

dgaughran · Apr 13, 2011

James - not discouraging at all. I know it's tough at there, but it's better to be aware of that than to have unrealistic expectations.

I enjoy writing (and reading) short stories. I have had a couple published, and have a reprint coming out in an anthology next month. I have also begun the process of putting some up on Kindle.

And you're right. For someone prolific enough (and professional enough), if you can set yourself up with a nice production line: magazine, reprint, anthology, Kindle, there is money there.

AlwaysJuly · Apr 13, 2011

Man. I wish short stories still paid like they used to. That's interesting, JAR.

Historical Pay Rates for Short Stories

dgaughran

zanzjan

killin' all teh werds

dgaughran

shelleyo

Just another face in a red jumpsuit

Jamesaritchie

Jamesaritchie

dgaughran

Jamesaritchie

dgaughran

AlwaysJuly

slugging through