Face it: The paying short fiction market is dead

[abominationerupts]

John Macdonald wrote how he always had thirty short stories in the mail and didn't give up on a story unless it was rejected ten times.

Now days, there are not even ten paying magazines to send short stories to.

Let's look at crime fiction for example.

There are two American mystery magazines, Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen, and they both operate out of the same office. Behind that, there's nothing.

Horror magazines?

You've got Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance and maybe a couple others. After that, you've got nothing.

Sci Fi?

Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analogue, Isaac Asimov's followed by nothing.

Westerns?

Nada

Action/Adventure?

Nothing

Contemporary?

You need an agent to get published by The New Yorker. Then there's Harpers (Probably really requires an agent also). Then nothing.

There's no money in writing short fiction. You better be having fun or you are wasting your time.

Too bad magazines like Gent, Cavalier, Big Boob, etc. don't buy contemporary short stories anymore.

[johnnysannie]

There are actually many more than ten magazines who pay for fiction - and pay reasonable rates. I'd be interested to know where you got that number because there are many, many more.

Making a living selling ONLY short fiction would indeed be difficult - and always has been.

Clips of short fiction, however, can help fiction writers find an agent for their novel as well.

[WildScribe]

What's it called? Glimmer Train? There's lots of short fiction markets!

[Bubastes]

You need an agent to get published by The New Yorker.

Uh, I don't think you do.

I second the duotrope.com recommendation. Duotrope and Writer's Market gave me enough contemporary fiction markets to keep me busy for quite some time!

[johnnysannie]

The New Yorker still accepts unsolicited fiction MS. So will Harper's.

[Summonere]

I think it’s more accurate to say that the number of markets that pay well have diminished. Back in the early days you could reasonably expect to make a living by publishing regularly in the short story market because there were nationally circulated weekly and monthly magazines that would pay top dollar for printed entertainment, plus a whole slew of other, though lesser-paying, markets. Then along came T.V., and the top dollars went to T.V. writers, not short story writers. So goes the Kurt Vonnegut theory of how things went downhill…

My own experience is that the few top-tier magazines will pay in the low thousands of dollars for a story, they are very competitive, and almost no one who isn’t already a published author, and a known one at that, will get a story in those markets. It happens, but it’s rare.

The next tier down from those very few markets is slightly larger, but the pay cut is huge. Instead of a few thousand dollars, they offer a few hundred.

The next tier down from there is a populous region in which the pay cut is again huge -- a few tens of dollars are offered.

Next, there are token-payment markets, followed by no-payment markets.

With each step down the ladder you take, the smaller the market and the correspondingly smaller number of readers who will see your work.

But, as others have said, the number of paying markets, collectively, is much more than ten.

P.S. If I took the John McDonald approach and dumped stories after ten rejections, I’d still be unpublished.

You’re right about having fun and making money, though. If you don’t do the former you likely won’t achieve the latter, on any scale.

[JeanneTGC]

There are paying internet markets, too. Maybe not huge payments, but payments nonetheless.

And neither the New Yorker, Harper's nor the Atlantic Monthly require an agent.

[Mark Lazer]

There's ton of paying magazines, really. Maybe you have to search a bit better nowadays, but they're still out there.

[PeeDee]

You need to check your facts a little better before you declare paying short fiction a dead field.

It's not dead. Not any more than the novel is a dead storytelling form. The reason people assume they're dead is, they don't make as much noise as TV/movies/music do.

Heck, my local Barnes & Noble sells more than ten magazines.

[Medievalist]

There are far more paying markets than that; Suberranean, for one, there are also fantasy mags, and British and Canadian mags. And the online mags are more and more becoming paying markets.

[Birol]

I've got more than 10 individual guidelines bookmarked for just science fiction and fantasy magazines. This excludes the databases that specialize in those areas.

[PeeDee]

*ahem*

I mean....Yeah! The market's dead! You may as well all give up and NOT SUBMIT TO ANYONE! Honest! Go write a novel and don't send out ANY short stories! Good idea!

*heh heh heh......*

[Southern_girl29]

I agree with what everyone else said. I surely hope it's not dead because I've got several short stories I'm shopping around right now.

[Southern_girl29]

Same here. In fact, it was way easier to find magazines to submit to that "fit" my sf pieces than to find even ONE that fits, say, the short story I've got in the women's section of syw right now (OT: if anyone has any ideas what genre that could be, let me know).

Jadezuki, I believe it's women's fiction, but finding a mag to accept that is hard. I think if you look for one that accepts mainstream or contemporary, you'll probably be fine.

[MidnightMuse]

*ahem*

I mean....Yeah! The market's dead! You may as well all give up and NOT SUBMIT TO ANYONE! Honest! Go write a novel and don't send out ANY short stories! Good idea!

*heh heh heh......*

You're such an altruist!

*wonders if today really is Pete's birthday*

[Jamesaritchie]

There are actually well over 2,000 markets for short stories that pay something. Most pay very little, but there are still some high-paying markets out there.

The genre market isn't as large as it once was, but if you write SF or Fantasy, you can still find well over 100 markets that pay something.

The truth is that genre markets for short stories never did do very well. Even in the best of times, markets died about as fast as they were born. It's just that so many more were born that you always had a place to submit. But outside of the mystery market, which has largely dried up, there are still plenty of paying markets for short stories.

And you haven't begun to do your homework. There are plenty of markets. You need to do a bit more hunting.

[PeeDee]

You're such an altruist!

*wonders if today really is Pete's birthday*

Aye, laddy, it is. I am older today than I was yesterday.

[MidnightMuse]

It's lassie (not the dog, though) and Happy Birthday to ya, :D

[veinglory]

"Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analogue, Isaac Asimov's followed by nothing."

Less, perhaps, but not nothing. For a start the UK continues, despite reports to the contrary, to exist (Interzone, Third Alternative).

[Rolling Thunder]

Here's a site with a list of SS markets:

http://www.jbwb.co.uk/markets.html

Here's the NY'er sub page:

http://www.newyorker.com/site/contact#submissions_

and some more places to sub:

http://www.marketlist.com/proindex.asp

Knock yerselves out. Good luck!

[blacbird]

The truth is that genre markets for short stories never did do very well. Even in the best of times, markets died about as fast as they were born.

As an example, Philip K. Dick wrote gazoogles of short stories for pulp mags early in his career. And damnear starved.

There are indeed lots of markets out there still.

It's just none of them want what I write.

caw

[PeeDee]

It's lassie (not the dog, though) and Happy Birthday to ya, :D

*cough* I knew you were a girl already. It's just what I get for writing posts while I'm at work. :D

[AzBobby]

At http://www.sfwa.org/org/qualify.htm SFWA lists 14 sf/f markets on their list of "qualifying professional venues" belonging to what was called the "second tier" in an above post (paying hundreds but not thousands for a short piece) while mentioning about 10 additional markets as occasional publishers of fantasy at professional pay rates, some in the so-called "first tier" (paying thousands for a short piece). This list excludes non-English venues, any markets less than a couple years old even if they pay well, and of course the many choices that don't do sf/f. No, it's not a list of thousands offering a professional pay rate; but it's more than ten per story at least.

Sure, the short fiction market isn't what it used to be. The Vonnegut theory is reasonable: average people used to get their short fiction in print, but now they get it on TV, leaving the surviving short fiction for the smaller markets of bookworms and hobbyists. My guess -- just a reasonable guess -- is that the percentage of junky fiction at the height of the popularity of fiction mags might have been similar to the amount of junk on TV now, when TV is in its own true "golden age" of more cinema-quality productions than ever, mixed in among the greatest quantity of cheap and stupid shows ever available. By and large, only the best stuff will be remembered in forty years, and people will look back and remark on how great TV got to be around now with little awareness that "Fear Factor" or "American Idol" ever existed. Conversely, only the "best stuff" makes it to print now in the top magazines, and plenty more of the "best stuff" must find its home among the semi-pros where only mediocre fiction would have appeared decades ago.

Now, I wonder what will transpire to make short fiction ride its next big wave? The popularity of fiction never waned, as we see from novel publishing; it just doesn't sell as well in the large glossy magazines as it used to. It stands to reason that the short form will always offer the conveniences of time and immediate gratification; it's just a question of the format catching up with the culture again. I think improvements in electronics might do the trick over time. Most of us don't prefer reading from screens, but I sure as hell prefer reading short fiction from a screen over long fiction -- it's a better fit all right. New e-book technologies are diminishing the difference in "feel" between portable screens and hardbound books. Also, audio books have yet to drop to reasonable prices but once they do (again the new paradigms of iPods etc. at work) all these people I know who would like to listen to them during their commutes to work but can't afford them will finally be able to enjoy them regularly, and again I suspect in many cases the short format will be more appreciated than ever. Sure, it's not the printed page, but it's exposure and putting short stories back into the pop culture. Am I being too optimistic?

[PeeDee]

I do truly think that the internet will be the next big format for short fiction, and we'll see a boom of it in a year or so. I think it's the next change, like going from pulps to glossy was.

I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think we're close enough to warrent paying attention.

[pdr]

we do have an excellent list of market lists and markets stickied at the top of this forum board.

Yes, there aren't as many paying markets but there are enough to pay the rent. Go do some market research work and don't forget that most magazines have a website.

PeeDee, I think there will be a huge demand for stories to listen to. Audio markets are increasing and those little 'two shorts in a booklet' that's small enough to tuck into a pocket and read on the bus or during lunch are looking good.

The UK has launched a great Save the Short Story scheme with an annual prize of a staggering amount and many newspapers are promoting short stories, though not by buying them!!!!
I don't think that many online zines have got their act together. They need to be looking at this dreaded pod cast business I am just trying to get my head around, as well as producing a quality readable print-off version at a button's click. Very few are doing this. Tomorrow's readers will be more listener than reader and short stories will be 'in' again.
That company which sells stories and news to mobile 'phone users is doing well too.

Short shorts and flash may be the way to go and I think we need to learn to write across the genres and write mainstream as well. There will always be a reasonably well paid literary market for short stories and it might be well to hone those skills too.

[emeraldcite]

Short markets come and go, as they always have, but there are still quite a few really great markets out there (even ones that pay a decent amount).

If the market was dead, no new markets would pop up; however, I would point out that there are several really excellent markets that have popped up recently . Apex is one in particular in the horror/sci fi market.

Also, I think the OP is missing some really huge markets in that list. The Strand is also still running. I think Fantasy magazine might pay professional.

There's a good deal out there and still more popping up. I won't call it dead until Those big names stop turning a profit and no one shows up to take their place.

[blacbird]

I do truly think that the internet will be the next big format for short fiction, and we'll see a boom of it in a year or so. I think it's the next change, like going from pulps to glossy was.

I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think we're close enough to warrent paying attention.

I'd like to believe this contention, but what's the paradigm for authors making any degree of respectable compensation in this medium? I don't see any movement in that direction, and until there is, I can't see it becoming a viable option. As it is, any clown can now post any gibberish written on a website, and call it an accomplishment, as long as no payment is expected.

caw

[bsolah]

I don't think the driving factor for short fiction should be money. I'm perfectly content with being paid contributor's copies for my fiction, so long as it gets scene.

I think part of the problem is - for Australian short fiction, at least - that short fiction magazines aren't available mainstream. Like political activity has fallen out of most people's lives and this is a barrier to me as an activist, people have fallen out of the habit of reading short fiction, if they ever were in the habit. If we can better market short fiction - and subscribe to the magazines we submit to - then our writing can be supported by the efforts of readers, including ourselves.

[billyf027]

I think it would help if they published different stories. The literary journals at Barnes and Noble and Borders near my home, sit on the shelf, untouched. They sell none. The covers are boring, the stories are boring and I'm often suspicious of how the stories enclosed got published. Favoritism or nepotism, or just bad judgement is going on. I asked and showed other non-writers and they agree that they would never read them.
The book publishing industry has changed, they are putting out exciting, interesting books every month.

[PeeDee]

I'd like to believe this contention, but what's the paradigm for authors making any degree of respectable compensation in this medium? I don't see any movement in that direction, and until there is, I can't see it becoming a viable option. As it is, any clown can now post any gibberish written on a website, and call it an accomplishment, as long as no payment is expected.

caw

That's specifically why I don't think that we're there yet. One, the mass of a reader audience is not yet there. Two, the writers are not yet properly paid for online stories (though there are more and more e-zines following in the paying steps of Quantum Muse and it's ilk.

Three, right now there's no filter, like you say. Any old chump can post any old piece of garbage on the internet (and seem to feel it's there duty to do so). Then again, anyone can print up a copy of their crappy book, and anyone can release a print magazine full of crappy stories. The Qualifiers and people who filter the pap from the chaff aren't there yet.

[PeeDee]

I think it would help if they published different stories. The literary journals at Barnes and Noble and Borders near my home, sit on the shelf, untouched. They sell none. The covers are boring, the stories are boring and I'm often suspicious of how the stories enclosed got published. Favoritism or nepotism, or just bad judgement is going on. I asked and showed other non-writers and they agree that they would never read them.
The book publishing industry has changed, they are putting out exciting, interesting books every month.

The audience who reads them is not the sci-fi/fantasy audience, nor the video game audience. (Well, some are, to be fair). As a result, people do read them, it's just quiet enough that you don't hear about it.

[billyf027]

literary magazines. The book market is putting out some wonderful stories in literary and genre. They are amazing.

[Kate Thornton]

Fiction Markets:

The last story I sold to Woman's World (short mystery) paid me $500.
They publish 52 short mysteries & 52 short romances (at $1000 a pop) each year.

Literary magazines: They fly off the shelves in my town.

I write short stories and some non-fiction. I find markets *everywhere*!!!

[PeeDee]

If the market's so dead, I'll just go back to writing Fiction Novels, then.

[abominationerupts]

Thanks for the link that had the mailing address to Playboy Magazine. I've been searching for that for awhile.

I still don't see where The New Yorker accepts unagented submissions.

Glimmer Train only accepts one in a thousand fiction submissions. I wouldn't waste my time clicking my finger on that one.

[PeeDee]

Thanks for the link that had the mailing address to Playboy Magazine. I've been searching for that for awhile.

I still don't see where The New Yorker accepts unagented submissions.

Glimmer Train only accepts one in a thousand fiction submissions. I wouldn't waste my time clicking my finger on that one.

........so submit to one of the countless other magazines out there, then.

[PeeDee]

From the New Yorker web-site, after a five minute Google run...

Submissions


Submissions should be sent by e-mail to the appropriate department, as indicated below:


Fiction: fiction@newyorker.com



The Talk of the Town: talkofthetown@newyorker.com



Shouts & Murmurs: shouts@newyorker.com



Poetry: poetry@newyorker.com



Newsbreaks: newsbreaks@newyorker.com



We cannot accept submissions that are sent as attachments, so please send your work as part of the body of an e-mail. Alternatively, submissions may be sent by regular mail to the appropriate department at The New Yorker, 4 Times Square, New York, NY 10036. The New Yorker does not accept unsolicited submissions by fax.


No more than one story or six poems should be submitted at one time; poetry submissions should include the poet’s name in the subject line. We prefer to receive no more than two submissions per writer per year, and generally cannot reply to more. We do not consider simultaneous submissions or material that has been previously published.


Please do not send originals. Manuscripts, art work, and other materials submitted must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. We are not responsible for the return or loss of, or for damage to, unsolicited manuscripts, unsolicited art work, or any other unsolicited materials.


We respond to all submissions, but, due to volume, this may take up to three months.

[JeanneTGC]

We respond to all submissions, but, due to volume, this may take up to three months.

And they DO respond, and that politely. (Counting the days until I hit them with 2007's offerings to the gods of culture and taste...hmmm...maybe that's why they haven't accepted me yet...must ponder more while counting...)

[blacbird]

The Qualifiers and people who filter the pap from the chaff aren't there yet.

I guess it's the "yet" part I wonder about. I don't see any movement toward "yet". If anything, I see continued movement away from it.

caw

[Birol]

Oh, I agree with PeeDee's statement about the move toward online markets for shorter fiction. More and more ezines and short pocket books are coming out, and more and more of them are of better quality. People still enjoy reading short fiction -- just like writing shorter fiction is different than writing longer fiction, reading short fiction is different than reading a novel. It's just that the places people read short fiction is different. We don't curl up with a magazine on the sofa anymore. Life is far too hectic for that. Instead, we pull up an ezine during our break at work or flip out a pocket story on the commute home.

[PeeDee]

Oh, I agree with PeeDee's statement about the move toward online markets for shorter fiction. More and more ezines and short pocket books are coming out, and more and more of them are of better quality. People still enjoy reading short fiction -- just like writing shorter fiction is different than writing longer fiction, reading short fiction is different than reading a novel. It's just that the places people read short fiction is different. We don't curl up with a magazine on the sofa anymore. Life is far too hectic for that. Instead, we pull up an ezine during our break at work or flip out a pocket story on the commute home.

Exactly. When people talk about e-book readers and its ilk, I don't see a particular use (or joy, really) in using it for novels, but I can see exciting things about it for short stories.

I have a dandy piece of software on my iPod which converts big blocks of text into a readable format on the iPod. I've been using this for my slush pile, because I can pull my iPod out and scroll through a story when I'm walking, or waiting in line, or what not. I do this with some of my own short stories, so I can glance at them when in an odd state of mind, because then I can think on them from a different angle.

This is wonderful for short stories, and I love it. I would hate it for a piece of long fiction.

the internet is the perfect medium for short fiction. It's just not there yet. I do think, though, that it's moving properly toward it. not very quickly...not very quickly at all, yet. But it's getting there. It's much closer than it was two years ago. Light-years closer than it was five years ago.

[Birol]

Coyote Wild is going to have podcasting. Mac said she really, really wanted it and I didn't see any reason not to let her have it. :D

[PeeDee]

How interesting. BBT's chief editor and I were just talking about podcasting the other day, too.

It shows why the internet is wonderful for short story publications, even if they are print releases. They can use online features to augment themselves.

[blacbird]

We don't curl up with a magazine on the sofa anymore. Life is far too hectic for that.

I curl up with a magazine on the sofa regularly, precisely because life is hectic. Please explain to me how you can boot your computer, click through a half-dozen menu options and get to reading a short story quicker than flopping on your butt and opening a mag.

caw

[Dave.C.Robinson]

I have a PDA with ebooks on it. I push one button and I'm reading. YMMV

[JeanneTGC]

And the beauty of a book on a PDA, or even a laptop, is that you are taking those electronics with you (normally) on trips. Magazines and books are heavy, and I'm a fast reader. It's nice to have something on an electronic I've got with me anyway. Plus, I can write on those electronic devices, as well, versus just turning down pages for interesting ideas, pictures and names.

[smiley10000]

Glimmer Train only accepts one in a thousand fiction submissions. I wouldn't waste my time clicking my finger on that one.

But if you don't try, how would you know if you could be that 1 in a thousand?

:Shrug:10000

[billyf027]

And the beauty of a book on a PDA, or even a laptop, is that you are taking those electronics with you (normally) on trips. Magazines and books are heavy, and I'm a fast reader. It's nice to have something on an electronic I've got with me anyway. Plus, I can write on those electronic devices, as well, versus just turning down pages for interesting ideas, pictures and names.

I'm interested in a PDA for stories or books. Any recommendation on a specific model? Where do you download the stories?
Thank you.

[Kate Thornton]

I really regret the demise of Handheld Crime - it was a great zine that delivered the goods to your PDA or laptop or whatever. I loved publishing with them. Hope to see more of their ilk.

[JeanneTGC]

I'm interested in a PDA for stories or books. Any recommendation on a specific model? Where do you download the stories?
Thank you.

I have a Palm LifeDrive and like it very much. Sort of Palm's answer to the pocket PC, but I prefer Palm over some of the other brands, so went with the LifeDrive. Has a lot of memory, good screen, etc.

[abominationerupts]

The New Yorker doesn't specifically say they accept unsolicited manuscripts. My instructor at LRWG told me they don't.

I'm a dreamer, but not that much of a dreamer. Glimmer Train's one in a thousand odds are too high for me.

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.

[Sheryl Nantus]

last time I checked Ralan's was still running... and had plenty of 'zines looking for subs.

:)

[johnnysannie]

The New Yorker doesn't specifically say they accept unsolicited manuscripts. My instructor at LRWG told me they don't.

I'm a dreamer, but not that much of a dreamer. Glimmer Train's one in a thousand odds are too high for me.

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.


The New Yorker would say if they DID NOT accept unsolicited submissions and your instructor is incorrect. (Instructors can be - maybe you're not aware of this fact but they're human too).

I've submitted to them before and received responses - they've yet to accept a story but they do consider them.

I submit to Glimmer Train as well during their four "open" periods each year. Sure, the competition is fierce but they publish someone's work.

[veinglory]

And the true odds are different for every submitter, having much more to do with the suitability and quality of one's story than the number of other people who choose to submit.

[JeanneTGC]

The New Yorker doesn't specifically say they accept unsolicited manuscripts. My instructor at LRWG told me they don't.

I'm a dreamer, but not that much of a dreamer. Glimmer Train's one in a thousand odds are too high for me.

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.

With respect, your instructor is wrong. They accept them. They only want 2 submissions per writer per year, unless the ask otherwise, but they accept them.

Your odds are worse than Glimmer Train's in terms of being published in anything, other than on your own blog. This is not a personal slam, and I am not saying to give up your dreams, but truly, if you are not open to rejection, perhaps a career in the arts is not for you.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

I'm interested in a PDA for stories or books. Any recommendation on a specific model? Where do you download the stories?
Thank you.

I have an older PocketPC (one of the last Compaq versions of the Ipaq) and I really like it. I can get books or magazines from Fictionwise or Baen Books (Baen is excellent if you like SF and Fantasy as they have about 80 novels available for free in multiple formats).

I also have a folding keyboard so I can write on mine. Very handy device.

If you plan to use it for reading, the recommendation I have is look to see which software you find easiest to use and take the machine that runs that. I went PocketPC over Palm just because I found MS Reader the easiest reading program to use.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

The New Yorker doesn't specifically say they accept unsolicited manuscripts. My instructor at LRWG told me they don't.

I'm a dreamer, but not that much of a dreamer. Glimmer Train's one in a thousand odds are too high for me.

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.

Those odds only matter if you think it's a matter of luck or chance that you get published. Sturgeon's Law tells us 90% of everything is crap. So of those 1000 submissions 900 are crap that may as well not have even been sent in. So if yours isn't crap, you've already crossed into the top 10%.

Then of the non-crap they probably have at least 50% that for whatever reason are not right for them.

That leaves about 50 of the 1000 submissions that you're really competing against if you are writing their kind of material and it's not crap.

One in fifty doesn't sound that bad does it?

[AzBobby]

Some interesting points have been made about the apparent cheapness of online publishing -- in reference to both accessibility and quality -- and how this relates to (a) short fiction's popularity and survival, and (b) any possibility of electronic publishing catching up as a paying market despite the deadly combo of the barrier-free supply and the typical user's expectation of reading stuff online without cost.

Yes, I agree the lack of a "barrier" is pertinent. (Make no mistake, I love the free Internet. Bartleby.com rocks.) But I think this is where superficial aspects of quality come in that separate the wheat from the chaff -- albeit not based on the quality of writing itself, but in the value others place on the writing, its market value. Not unlike the print publishing world, right? The examples in the electronic world include investments in extra production like having professional quality audio versions of the literature available for purchase. That's quite a barrier, right there. Professional quality audio is hard to do and requires an expensive setup -- and even with the right production behind it, the resulting quality varies like crazy.

As for strictly print-based stuff ready to download to e-books, they might require an association with magazines people are willing to pay to subscribe to online, where the ad revenue is higher and so on. The New Yorker is online already, of course, but perhaps many others like The Saturday Evening Post can survive through this century by returning to their literary traditions -- that's all they've got going for them, as their web site formats are hardly distinguished otherwise from the zillion other news magazine sources online and I can't imagine them surviving otherwise. In these cases, it is not the individual user deciding to pull out their credit card to take a chance on a single story online (rarely gonna happen) but finding the package deal offered by a certain publisher to be a worthwhile part of their leisure time in the long run.

This kind of professional association is another "barrier" that will help ensure that short fiction writers will find some compensation from the Internet aside from the rare cases like Strange Horizons. (SH is a truly visionary idea -- professional pay rates supported by voluntary contribution -- but I can't believe many markets will arise and thrive the same way.)

[JeanneTGC]

This kind of professional association is another "barrier" that will help ensure that short fiction writers will find some compensation from the Internet aside from the rare cases like Strange Horizons. (SH is a truly visionary idea -- professional pay rates supported by voluntary contribution -- but I can't believe many markets will arise and thrive the same way.)

20 years ago, the idea that you would be able to download one song from an album would have been absurd. That anyone would pay for it would have been more absurd. That's what 45s were for, or, at the dawn of CDs, mini CDs were for. Vinyl died and CDs took over but the way of the music world was relatively steady.

10 years ago the idea that the music industry would become dependent up on the Internet for music sales would have sounded farfetched. No one cared about the number of downloads until Metallica noticed that they and others were losing royalties. Napster came, went and came back.

Today, the music industry is running scared, and altering their entire approach to handle the iPod revolution. People regularly pay to download music to their computers and handheld devices. The top downloaded songs and ringtones now have their official lists and are tracked with the same care and interest as the top albums/cds. The idea of a full album is slowly starting to look like a vanity project.

That's only one example of how the internet has altered consumer's buying habits. It will continue. 10 years from now, it will not surprise me at all if a goodly portion of readers will pay to download a story from the internet, or pay because they enjoyed a story ON the internet. The pay rates might vary, depending on source and level of knowledge about the author, might vary due to advertising or no advertising, etc. But will it happen? Yes. Will it kill physically printed books? No. Books have survived the dawning of movies, television, VCRs, DVDs and the Internet. They will survive this as well. Magazines? Maybe. Time, and subscription rates, will tell.

[BuffStuff]

To be fair to the original poster, I ASSUME he meant "paying" as in "I could comfortably support myself solely by writing short fiction". And in that context (if I am reading him correctly), he is not entirely wrong. There are still many paying markets out there for the average short story writer if one defines 'paying' strictly as monetary remuneration for the publication of one's work but the number of markets out there that offer payment on the level you'd need to comfortably support yourself, let alone a family, are getting tinier by the month, it seems.

The high-paying markets always were relatively few, but things are far worse now than they were a few decades ago for the average writer expecting to make a living writing short fiction.

Concerning the New Yorker, while technically, yes, they do take unsolicited manuscripts, this quote from current Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman does seem to express the magazine's stance on unsolicited work.

Q: Have you ever rescued anything notable from the slush pile?

A: Someone who’s submitting themselves directly to the fiction editor probably isn’t all that savvy about publishing and probably not about writing either. Though I’m sure there are exceptions to that. Particularly in poetry. A lot of poetry comes from the slush pile, because poets don’t have agents.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/editorial/among_the_unsavvy.php is a link to the article where I got the above quote.

Given what Treisman's quotation implies, I can definitely see where Abomination's instructor, whether he's right or wrong, would get the opinion that the New Yorker doesn't accept unsolicited work.

[PeeDee]

If it's paying markets by which you could support yourself, then I'm afraid that market has been dead for a very, very long time. It never particularly existed. There were writers, like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison and Bob Silverberg who may have been supporting themselves, but they are exceptions and I suspect you'd find that they did other things besides.

If you're setting stipulations for how you're going to get published, such as only submitting to certain magazines with a certain percentage of new writer sales, then you may find yourself looking into an interesting career in the exciting world of telemarketing.

And if the world of short stories is so dead, then go write a novel. Or poetry. Or non-fiction. Or any wealth of other things. There is no set law which says that a writer has to write a certain volume of short stories before he can promote to novels.

[Birol]

Eh, Buffstuff, based on abominationerupt's past posts, I'd have to disagree with your assumption. I'm betting he meant paying as in dollars and cents exchanges hands. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so, but I don't think I am. Only abominationerupt's can confirm that one way or the other. I'd like to see abomination settle in here and become a real part of the community.

[JeanneTGC]

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/editorial/among_the_unsavvy.php is a link to the article where I got the above quote.

Given what Treisman's quotation implies, I can definitely see where Abomination's instructor, whether he's right or wrong, would get the opinion that the New Yorker doesn't accept unsolicited work.

Thanks for sharing, that was an interesting article.

I would point out, though, that it was written in 2003. It's almost 2007. While I don't know if/how many unagented and/or unknown writers have made it into the New Yorker's pages, I can say that they do indeed get through that slush pile, and they do indeed send you a reply back, and it is indeed polite and at least gives you the impression they took a look at what you sent before saying "next!".

[steveg144]

The New Yorker doesn't specifically say they accept unsolicited manuscripts. My instructor at LRWG told me they don't.

I'm a dreamer, but not that much of a dreamer. Glimmer Train's one in a thousand odds are too high for me.

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.

My old Irish grandma had a saying: "If you shoot for the moon, you may only land on the roof. But if all you ever shoot for is the roof, then you'll surely always land in the mud."

[RJLeahy]

Quick question:

When submitting a short story by email, is there a preference as to form, ie: plain text, rich text, word document, etc?

[Birol]

Well, the best form is whatever's listed in the guidelines. If nothing's specified, I'd suggest either as an .rtf or just pasting the thing into the body of the e-mail. Those are the two safest options.

[abominationerupts]

I don't think I need to qualify what I meant. There really are very few magazines out there that actually pay more than the cost of paper, postage and ink. Some genres--westerns, action adventure, sports--are dead, completely deceased. Others--contemporary, horror, mystery/suspense--are thin, very thin. After reading some of these posts, I realize Sci Fi is still alive, just barely, but I don't necessarily want to write straight sci fi (the technical mumbo jumbo bores me). So that doesn't do me any good.

I am going to become a regular poster on this message board. I used to waste my time on political message boards arguing with Neanderthal conservatives, but after the last election, I've exhausted all of the issues and I'm tired of it.

So I guess I'll waste my time here.

[Kate Thornton]

Abomination - it won't be a waste!

[icerose]

So what kind of stories does The New Yorker publish anyway?

All the others give some idea of what they are looking for but that one and I live in Utah so I can't exactly subscribe.

[Birol]

They are more literary and a bit eclectic. They publish "New Yorker-type" stories. They're practically a category in and of themselves.

[PeeDee]

Over at Ralan.com, I can find without doing very much looking, over 150 different paying short story markets. That's through one web-site, and that's not even doing a very deep search. They do not pay a fortune, but they never did. Not even back when the short story market was supposedly "alive." Neither short stories, nor novels, and certainly not poetry, are quick routes to making very much money, I'm afraid. Mostly, they're just a joy and a delight.

[JeanneTGC]

I don't think I need to qualify what I meant. There really are very few magazines out there that actually pay more than the cost of paper, postage and ink. Some genres--westerns, action adventure, sports--are dead, completely deceased. Others--contemporary, horror, mystery/suspense--are thin, very thin. After reading some of these posts, I realize Sci Fi is still alive, just barely, but I don't necessarily want to write straight sci fi (the technical mumbo jumbo bores me). So that doesn't do me any good.

I am going to become a regular poster on this message board. I used to waste my time on political message boards arguing with Neanderthal conservatives, but after the last election, I've exhausted all of the issues and I'm tired of it.

So I guess I'll waste my time here.

Paper and ink for a short story don't cost that much -- it would be pennies a sheet (tops) for each. Same with postage. What could a short story cost to post, .69? So, maybe you spend a dollar a submission? Let's go wild and say $2.00 a submission. There are plenty of paying markets out there which will pay more than $2.00 a submission. Almost all of them, unless they are paying by the word and you are writing flash fiction.

If you want to see the world as bleak, it will be bleak. If you want to see the world as full of opportunity, it will be full of opportunity. Same goes with publishing -- all aspects of publishing.

[Birol]

I believe that most flash fiction places pay a flat rate. Even Coyote, when we were first starting to accept subs last reading period, we got one flash piece that was less than 100 words long. I told Mac, you know, I really have a problem paying less than a $1 for anything. She agreed. At the time, our guidelines said that we paid per word for everything except poetry -- come to think of it, they still say that -- really need to get those updated -- but we decided then and there that our minimum rate was going to be the same as our poetry rate.

[abominationerupts]

Icerose,

The New Yorker is a national publication. They publish contemporary short stories. Most of the stories compiled in the annual collection--The Best American Short Stories--come from The New Yorker. It's a very respected publication and most of the stories are excellent, though there are always some I wonder about.

[Mike Coombes]

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.

Looked at statistically, the odds on any mag are less than 1%. In reality, you make your own odds - if your writing is good enough, the odds are 100%. If not, they're 0%.

[Sailor Kenshin]

The short fiction market is in trouble, but not yet dead.

But it's much more difficult now than back when I started.

[Jamesaritchie]

The New Yorker doesn't specifically say they accept unsolicited manuscripts. My instructor at LRWG told me they don't.

I'm a dreamer, but not that much of a dreamer. Glimmer Train's one in a thousand odds are too high for me.

I never submit to a magazine where the odds of getting published are worse than 1%.

Of course The New Yorker specifically says they accept unsolicited submisions. That's why anyone is allowed to submit a story, an dthat's why they say anyone is allowed to submit a story. When a magazine doesn't want unsolicited stories, they don't accept them.

It's true you probably won't sell them a story because they pay extremely well, and hundreds of the best writers in teh world compete for story space, but they will read your story, and if they like it more than anything else they see that month, they will buy it.

If you follow that 1% rule, you'll never submit to any good magazine. Or probably to any paying magazine. Even many, many magazines that don't pay at all have odds much worse than 1%. I can't think of a single magazine out there of any size where the odds aren't greater than one percent.

Even small magazines such as Asimov's and Analog have odds of 1% or less. And most of the stories any paying magazine accepts will be from previously published writers.

But looking at odds makes no sense. Having a story accepted isn't a lottery. Editors don't close their eyes and draw stories out of a spinning barrel, then publish the lucky winners. Editors look for good stories, filled with good characters, who speak good dialogue.

Honestly, 90% of the stories any editor sees would stand no chance whatsoever of being accepted, even if the editor bought 10% of everything he saw. So forget 90% of the competition. It doesn't exist because 90% is so bad no editor is ever going to consider it.

If you can do no more than turn in a story with proper grammar, proper punctuation, and coherent sentences, you're automatically in the top ten percent of all the stories an editor will see.

In reality, only three to four percent of all writers turn in stories that are anything like professional quality. Almost one hundred perfect of the fiction at any magazine will be purchased from the top three to four percent of all the writers who submit. This is your competition, not the hundreds or thousands who submit stories no editor is even going to consider

Just because a magazine receives a thousand short stories a month does not your odds are one in a thousand. Your odds are either zero, no matter where you send the story, and no matter how few stories that magazine receives, or you're at least in the top ten percent.

[Jamesaritchie]

If it's paying markets by which you could support yourself, then I'm afraid that market has been dead for a very, very long time. It never particularly existed.

Well, it was never easy, but it did exist. It's always been genre writers who had the most trouble earning a living writing short stories. Once upon a time, some magazines paid tremendous sums of money, and non-genre writers could easily earn a living. The Satursay Evening Post sometimes paid up to $25,000 for a short story at a time when you could buy a house for $3,000.

But genre writers? No, writing short stories was never a way for genre writers to earn a living. Any any genre writer good enough to earn a living from writing short stories didn't need to earn a living this way.

Many look back and see a time when there were a lot more fiction magazines, but don't check to see how little most of those magazines paid. Many of the genre magazines "back in the day" paid a penny per word, or less. Some paid as little a one eighth cent per word. No one ever made good money by writing for these magazines.

Writing short stories has never been about how much money the writer could make. Genre short stories are written for pleasure, for practice, and because they help promote the novels a given writer has out there. The genre money has always been in novels, and it's one heck of a lot easier to write and sell genre novels now than it ever was in the Golden Age.

Having said that, there's still money to be made writing short stories, if you're good enough to sell what you write, and if you write fairly fast.

At a nickel per word, a 2,000 word short story only brings in $200. But if it only takes four hours to write this story, you get fifty bucks per hour, and not many would sneer at this. The stories I've sold to Ellery Queen all paid more than $300, and I don't think any of them took more than a day to write. The children's magazines I've written for usually pay from 20-25 cents per word, and this adds up faster than many would think.

And if you don't limit yourself to genre magazines, some good money can be made. Some of the outdoor magazines I write for pay from $750-$1,000+.
If I wrote only short stories, I have no doubt that I could still earn from 25-30K from various forms of short fiction alone.

But short stories never have been about the money. It always was, and still is, far easier to earn money by writing books, and far, far easier to earn a living writing articles, rather than short stories.

[Jamesaritchie]

One other thing. "Professional pay rate" is not what many think. It has nothing to do with the fact the pros expect to be paid this much, or that you're an amateur for writing for less. It's an artficial number, now set, I think, at six cents per word. It's set at this solely because the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America demands that writers make sales to magazines paying at least this rate before that writer can join the SFWA. Mostly, I suspect, to weed out those who sell only to freebie internet mags, and fly by night print mags.

So when you start counting how many magazines there are that offer "pro rates," it's good to keep in mind why it's called a "pro rate," and to realize that a great many of those now defunct fiction magazines of yore never paid this much, or anything close to it.

[PeeDee]

Well, it was never easy, but it did exist. It's always been genre writers who had the most trouble earning a living writing short stories. Once upon a time, some magazines paid tremendous sums of money, and non-genre writers could easily earn a living. The Satursay Evening Post sometimes paid up to $25,000 for a short story at a time when you could buy a house for $3,000.

But genre writers? No, writing short stories was never a way for genre writers to earn a living. Any any genre writer good enough to earn a living from writing short stories didn't need to earn a living this way.

I was referring to genre fiction. I'm afraid outside of genre, my knowledge weakens a little. I'm sure if, in the 1950's, someone sold stories to the New Yorker and to The Saturday Evening Post and the like, then perhaps a living could be made. I don't know. Your numbers are probably right.

But unless you're Ray Bradbury and you start to transcend genre boundaries after a while, this wouldn't happen. I mean, Harlan Ellison may have written whole issues of a few magazines back in the day, but even then, he was living in a very small apartment, and I seem to recall that he and Bob Silverberg were roommates. These days, I suppose if three or four regularly selling short story authors lived together, they could perhaps earn enough to keep a roof over there heads. If I wrote and sold nothing but short stories, and I did not have a family, maybe I could keep myself in a studio apartment and buy some hot dogs.

I think that approaching the short story market from a financial and statistical standpoint is as much a folly as approaching your first novel from the same point. You're not getting rich. Hell, I'm not in danger of paying off a credit card.

Mostly, you're writing something that matters to you, and then you're getting it out there so other people can read it. Maybe that's attention craving, but I don't think so. If all you wanted was attention, then you'd plop your short stories on the internet and leave it at that.

Approach short stories out of love, or not at all. It's not like you have to write the things in order to have a career. The concept that you have to sell X number of short stories before you can sell your novel is a fairly recent one, and it's mostly gibberish. You can sell a novel without selling short stories. You can sell short stories for the rest of your life and never do a novel, if it takes your fancy. Doing either one to make a profit is fairly silly.

There. That's the end of my all-over post.

[Jamesaritchie]

All true. I remember one old time editor saying there were only four or five SF writers who earned a living from writing novels in the old days, let alone short stories. Today there are more than fifty. Close to one hundred, if you hold your mouth right when you count.

[strngchs]

I DO write short fiction for the love of it. I have been paid a total of 25.00 for my stories to date, and have one 5.00 story pending publication. I don't do it for the money. I am looking for a lift every once in a while to offset those Thanks but no thanks from agents as I shop my novel.

I think writing shorts is great training ground. My two centavos of course ;)

[PeeDee]

The money from short story publications is rarely enough to pay a bill. Mostly, I find what I do is when payment for something comes in, I'll take my wife out to dinner or a movie. It doesn't always cover a full dinner, it usually gets both of us into a movie and sometimes buys us some popcorn. Mostly, it gives us an excuse to get out. Plus, there is a happy feeling you get from sitting in a restuarant, eating a steak that was bought with money you earned writing.

Maybe I'm just easily pleased.

[Jamesaritchie]

I've never had much to complain about with short story money. I went for twelve years without selling a single short story for less than $250. This will cover the phone bill, the cable bill, and still have enough left over for a good dinner.

Then, because I couldn't resist the word rate, I sold a one hundred word story for one hundred dollars. And because I couldn't resist the magazine, I sold another short story for $150.

[PeeDee]

I like your markets more than mine, then. I tend to write short stories very fast -- when I'm in short story mode anyway -- and usually, I put them out to people with quick response times. Mostly, because I find that if they sit around the house for too long, they start to rot.

The best genre market was sci-fi.com's SciFICTION section, edited by Ellen Datlow. They paid .20 cents a word. I haven't seen anyone paying higher, but that nearly stopped my heart.

[Jamesaritchie]

I like your markets more than mine, then. I tend to write short stories very fast -- when I'm in short story mode anyway -- and usually, I put them out to people with quick response times. Mostly, because I find that if they sit around the house for too long, they start to rot.

The best genre market was sci-fi.com's SciFICTION section, edited by Ellen Datlow. They paid .20 cents a word. I haven't seen anyone paying higher, but that nearly stopped my heart.

That probably was the best pure genre rate, though Omni used to pay more, and, of course, Playboy uses a lot of genre fiction, and they pay $3,000.

But most of my stories are at least 3,000 words, so even a nickel per word gives me three hundred bucks, and many of my short stories hit the 5,000 word mark, and a few have been 6,000 words or longer.

[PeeDee]

That probably was the best pure genre rate, though Omni used to pay more, and, of course, Playboy uses a lot of genre fiction, and they pay $3,000.

But most of my stories are at least 3,000 words, so even a nickel per word gives me three hundred bucks, and many of my short stories hit the 5,000 word mark, and a few have been 6,000 words or longer.

It got me thinking, so I went and looked. That's about accurate for what I do for short stories, too. The lengths are about the same, too. I don't think I ever do stories under 1,000 words. Flash fiction confounds me, by and large.

It occurs to me I haven't sold a short story to anyone, for any reason, in quite a while. It also occurs to me that I miss Omni. I didn't know that Playboy still published any fiction at all, actually.

[JeanneTGC]

That probably was the best pure genre rate, though Omni used to pay more, and, of course, Playboy uses a lot of genre fiction, and they pay $3,000.

Okay, can you please, please share just where in the world Playboy's submissions information is hidden? I have searched their entire site (and all of Hustler's, too) and other than seeing a lot of silicone and some intriguing lingerie, I haven't found one iota of information about submissions (unless I wanted to submit an "amateur" video, then I had some options).

Do I need to send my husband out to buy the latest issue (he's offered quite willingly, but I am somewhat less keen on the idea), or is there information on a website somewhere that I am just incapable of finding? Help me, oh very wise and far-better-paid one, you're my only hope.

[PeeDee]

Playboy
Monthly, circ 3,200,000
Publishes one short story per issue
Pays $2000 to $5000

Submissions by mail only to:
Playboy Magazine
Attention: Fiction Department
680 N. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60611
USA

Web site – http://www.playboy.com/ (http://www.playboy.com/)
Guidelines – http://www.playboy.com/help/fiction-guidelines.html (http://www.playboy.com/help/fiction-guidelines.html)

[JeanneTGC]

God love you, Pete!

I don't even want to know how easy it was for you to find this information (on the grounds that it will indicate that I'm an idiot ;) ).

Off to submit!

[PeeDee]

I'd hold off rushing to submit. I'm worried that's old information. I'm trying to get some updated information. I see what you mean about how difficult it is to find anything on the Playboy web-site. I'll see what I can arrive at.

[JeanneTGC]

I'd hold off rushing to submit. I'm worried that's old information. I'm trying to get some updated information. I see what you mean about how difficult it is to find anything on the Playboy web-site. I'll see what I can arrive at.

Okay. I can always rip the envelope open and pull off the stamps (uh, yeah, it's already in an envelope :D ). I will wait to mail for a couple of days...I have searched for weeks and never came up with the info you had, so I'm almost willing to risk it, but I can be patient. Sometimes. :ROFL:

BTW, if you think Playboy is bad, try Hustler (enjoy explaining that to the wife...you should have heard the conversation I had with my husband when he walked in and I had the Hustler site up).

[PeeDee]

Here's some info I found off of a site called "absolutewrite.com" whatever that is.

The links I've found to the Playboy submission guidlines have all been dead. The advantage of this listing is, it gives you some idea of what they want.

They probably have a listing in my Writer's Market, except I can't find my book, so I can't give you that.

The below information I feel pretty safe in trusting. The bits here match up with the bits I've found elsewhere on the web, so I trust both the address and the idea of what they're looking for. If this information sits welll with you, I'd go ahead and submit.

I spent half an hour on their web-site and found nothing. I couldn't even find an e-mail address where I could just ask them about submissions. Horrible.

Here:

PLAYBOY
Articles Editor
680 North Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60611
Editor's note: Mark fiction submission: Attn: Fiction Department.
http://www.playboy.com (http://www.playboy.com/)
E-Queries: Yes for nonfiction proposals.
Contact: Articles editor.
Email: articles@playboy.com
Writer's guidelines online: Nonfiction: http://www.playboy.com/help/nonfict.html
Fiction: http://www.playboy.com/help/fiction-guidelines.html
Pays: Minimum payment (nonfiction) is $3,000 for 4000-5000 words. Online guidelines did not state if payment was on acceptance or publication. (Editor's note: These guys are very selective.)
Rights: FNASR only, no second serial rights are considered. Byline given. No simultaneous submissions.
Description: Monthly. From the website regarding nonfiction: "Playboy regularly publishes nonfiction articles on a wide range of topics -- sports, politics, music, topical humor, personality profiles, business and finance, science and technology -- and other topics that have a bearing on our readers' lifestyles."
Readers: Well-informed young male audience.
Needs: From the website regarding nonfiction: "Playboy regularly publishes nonfiction articles on a wide range of topics -- sports, politics, music, topical humor, personality profiles, business and finance, science and technology -- and other topics that have a bearing on our readers' lifestyles."
Editor's Note: From the website on nonfiction: "A bit of advice for writers: Please bear in mind that Playboy is not a venue where beginning writers should expect to be published. Nearly all of our writers have long publication histories, working their way up through newspapers and regional publications. Aspiring writers should gain experience, and an extensive file of by-lined features, before approaching Playboy. Please don't call our offices to ask how to submit a story or to explain a story. Don't ask for sample copies, a statement of editorial policy, a reaction to an idea for a story, or a detailed critique. We are unable to provide these, as we receive dozens of submissions daily. Our response time is approximately four weeks."
PLAYBOY FICTION: From the website: "The average length of a Playboy story is 1000-6000 words, and we will not consider manuscripts longer than 7500 words. Payment is usually $5000; very short pieces are paid $2000. We publish about twenty stories a year. It pays to take a close look at the magazine before submitting material; we often reject stories of high quality simply because they are inappropriate to our publication." "Fairy tales, extremely experimental fiction and out-right pornography all have their place, but it is not in Playboy."
Editor's Note: Check over the web guidelines carefully. They're good.

[JeanneTGC]

Here's some info I found off of a site called "absolutewrite.com" whatever that is.

The links I've found to the Playboy submission guidlines have all been dead. The advantage of this listing is, it gives you some idea of what they want.

They probably have a listing in my Writer's Market, except I can't find my book, so I can't give you that.

The below information I feel pretty safe in trusting. The bits here match up with the bits I've found elsewhere on the web, so I trust both the address and the idea of what they're looking for. If this information sits welll with you, I'd go ahead and submit.

I spent half an hour on their web-site and found nothing. I couldn't even find an e-mail address where I could just ask them about submissions. Horrible.

LOL! I tried searching AW, but didn't find anything but some threads where Playboy was discussed. Probably didn't look in the right forums (would NOT be the first time).

And, yeah, Hustler's the same way. At least in the old days, you could easily find where to send letters to Penthouse Forum. :D (Not that I ever did...in case my husband or daughter stumble onto this thread...never, I would never do that! Well, at least, never at dusk...)

Thanks again, VERY much, for the help!

[smiley10000]

I had my writer's market handy... here is the listing for Playboy:

Address:
Fiction Department
730 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10019

Needs: Humor/satire, mainstream, mystery/suspense, science fiction. Does not consider poetry, plays, story outlines or novel. Writers should remember that the magazine's appeal is chiefly to a well-informed, young male audience. Fairy tales, extremely experimental fiction and out right porn all have their place but it is not in Playboy. We will not consider storied submitted electronically or by fax.

How to Contact: Query. Responds in 1 month to queries. No simult.subs. Writer's guidelines for #10 SASE or online at website.

The other mag you mentioned is not in the 2006 writer's market... But penthouse is looking for erotica (it sounds like they want true stories though...)

HTH
Now, I really hope my hubby doesn't see this...
:scared:10000

[Jamesaritchie]

Playboy does pay up to $5,000 for a short story, but from what I've been told, this rate is usually reserved for big name writers, ones who can draw readers by name appeal alone. New writers usually receive $2,000-$3,000, depending on length of the story.

[JeanneTGC]

I had my writer's market handy... here is the listing for Playboy:

Address:
Fiction Department
730 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10019

Needs: Humor/satire, mainstream, mystery/suspense, science fiction. Does not consider poetry, plays, story outlines or novel. Writers should remember that the magazine's appeal is chiefly to a well-informed, young male audience. Fairy tales, extremely experimental fiction and out right porn all have their place but it is not in Playboy. We will not consider storied submitted electronically or by fax.

How to Contact: Query. Responds in 1 month to queries. No simult.subs. Writer's guidelines for #10 SASE or online at website.

The other mag you mentioned is not in the 2006 writer's market... But penthouse is looking for erotica (it sounds like they want true stories though...)

HTH
Now, I really hope my hubby doesn't see this...
:scared:10000

Thanks, Smiley! One question, what year is the Writer's Market? I've got the 2006 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market and cannot find Playboy in there anywhere. (Playboy, my Holy Grail...LOL!)

[JeanneTGC]

Playboy does pay up to $5,000 for a short story, but from what I've been told, this rate is usually reserved for big name writers, ones who can draw readers by name appeal alone. New writers usually receive $2,000-$3,000, depending on length of the story.

*COUGH* I could deal with that. :D

[Birol]

And new writers will definitely turn their noses up at $2-3K.

[CaoPaux]

A cached (http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Qsq8Bc9iA24J:www.ralan.com/sfpro/listings/playboy.htm+playboy+fiction+guidelines&hl=en&lr=&strip=1) page from Ralan re: changes in Playboy's submission policy.

[Jamesaritchie]

I haven't verified it yet, but I have been told that Playboy is no longer planning to buy science fiction stories.

And someone told me that Playboy actually contains photos of nude women. I didn't know this, since I only buy it for the great fiction.

Though I will say I find it interesting that Playboy also has a braille edition.

[RTH]

Nudies? Surely you jest...

I'm willing to bet that a small to mid-size literary mag. would actually get a person far more readers than a Playboy publication. I mean, let's face it...

[Jamesaritchie]

Nudies? Surely you jest...

I'm willing to bet that a small to mid-size literary mag. would actually get a person far more readers than a Playboy publication. I mean, let's face it...

I would like to know what percentage of Playboy "readers" actually read the fiction. Obviously, enough do so to justify their continued existence.

But I wonder how many men use the fiction and articles as an ecuse. "But, Honey, Sweetheart, Darling, the May issue has a short story by Ray Bradbury.
I mean, Ray Bradbury. You know I never miss one of his stories. Centerfold? What centerfold?"

[JeanneTGC]

I would like to know what percentage of Playboy "readers" actually read the fiction. Obviously, enough do so to justify their continued existence.

But I wonder how many men use the fiction and articles as an ecuse. "But, Honey, Sweetheart, Darling, the May issue has a short story by Ray Bradbury.
I mean, Ray Bradbury. You know I never miss one of his stories. Centerfold? What centerfold?"

I don't care if the readers read it. I care if Playboy takes it and publishes it. A credit like that goes a LONG way to getting into other good pubs and might (for once) impress an agent.

Sure, it's a long shot. So what? The reward is more than worth it. (Plus, the fun of telling my in-laws that they have to buy this month's Playboy because my story is in it is one of those sitcom humor moments too good not to hope for :D .)

[Lyra Jean]

I am working on some new stuff. I even remember talking to my dad he said if Playboy pays that much why not submit to them. So I think I will try and submit to them sometime in the future.

I found it funny that they don't take out right porn. It's just too funny. :ROFL:

[steveg144]

I would like to know what percentage of Playboy "readers" actually read the fiction. Obviously, enough do so to justify their continued existence.

But I wonder how many men use the fiction and articles as an ecuse. "But, Honey, Sweetheart, Darling, the May issue has a short story by Ray Bradbury.
I mean, Ray Bradbury. You know I never miss one of his stories. Centerfold? What centerfold?"

Oddly enough, when I was a teenager (back in the Stone Age when PB was THE only game in town) I actually did read the articles ... and the interviews. But then, I was a weird kid. (but in my own defense, yes I did look at the pitchers as well ... )

[CaoPaux]

*snerk* From their FAQ:

Does anybody really read Playboy for the articles?

The articles may not be the first part of the magazine most readers turn to, but judging from the letters we get, millions of Playboy readers also enjoy our award-winning journalism, humor and fiction. The only people who can rightfully claim to read it solely for the articles are the thousands of blind readers who peruse our Braille edition, which has been distributed by the Library of Congress since 1970. Which of course immediately brings to mind the scene from Robin Hood: Men in Tights.....

[JeanneTGC]

Which scene?

[ChaosTitan]

Which scene?

Robin returns to England to find his castle being towed away by the Sheriff's men. He discovers...ah...the guy from Saved by the Bell....on the toilet, checking out a braille centerfold.

[JeanneTGC]

Robin returns to England to find his castle being towed away by the Sheriff's men. He discovers...ah...the guy from Saved by the Bell....on the toilet, checking out a braille centerfold.

Oh! Thank you...I was wracking my brain (and it hurt!) and couldn't come up with that. I can sleep tonight now. :)

[smiley10000]

Thanks, Smiley! One question, what year is the Writer's Market? I've got the 2006 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market and cannot find Playboy in there anywhere. (Playboy, my Holy Grail...LOL!)

Yep, 2006 pg 355 Right below the New Yorker
:D10000

ETA: Thanks for this thread. I haven't laughed this hard all week...

[abominationerupts]

No way can you make 25-30 K annually writing short fiction. That's just entirely false.

I disagree with you about most stories being unpublishable. I've heard that line before and I believe it's pure crap, an excuse by editors who need to justify their decisions.

For example I bet I could go through the slush pile at Fantasy and Science Fiction and find enough rejected stories to fill ten magazines and most of the stories would be better than the ones they chose, but of couse that would be my opinion.

It's a subjective field.

Name recognition matters.

And I guarantee, if the editor of The New Yorker doesn't recognize a name (because they haven't been contacted by an agent), they do not read your story.

I betcha Playboy only reads agented submissions also.

[Sheryl Nantus]

No way can you make 25-30 K annually writing short fiction. That's just entirely false.

I disagree with you about most stories being unpublishable. I've heard that line before and I believe it's pure crap, an excuse by editors who need to justify their decisions.

For example I bet I could go through the slush pile at Fantasy and Science Fiction and find enough rejected stories to fill ten magazines and most of the stories would be better than the ones they chose, but of couse that would be my opinion.

It's a subjective field.

Name recognition matters.

And I guarantee, if the editor of The New Yorker doesn't recognize a name (because they haven't been contacted by an agent), they do not read your story.

I betcha Playboy only reads agented submissions also.

wow.

bitter much?

just to give a bit of reality - I sold one of my first short stories to GRIT magazine just over two years ago. I had basically nothing to my credit other than a few non-fiction articles up on the web and a few sales to online 'zines.

didn't pay the rent but I certainly didn't get the sale through "name recognition" and I'd like to think it was better than the other ones in the slush pile.

but, hey... whatever you want to believe. After over a decade of reading and writing fanfiction I've seen enough bad stories to believe that there are a lot more unpublishable stories out there than publishable ones.

[abominationerupts]

I'm not bitter, I'm just injecting a reality check here.

Yesterday, I submitted a short story to a new ezine that pays twenty bucks...but only for the featured story of the month.

So if it's chosen for publication I've got maybe a ten percent chance of getting twenty bucks.

[Birol]

Abomination, your posting history on this board suggests that you believe the publishing industry is a closed system, that it is, somehow, against you as an individual. It's not. The publishing industry is a business. It's a thing. It has no emotional stake in anything. It doesn't care about you as an individual one way or another. To it, you are just another component to the system: a writer. If you work -- if you turn out salable stories that fit its needs -- great! It will use you, it will buy your work. It doesn't care who you are or who you're not. If you don't work -- if your work is slush -- then it won't use you, you will be rejected.

That's it. That's the entire system in a nutshell. If your writing fits the needs of the market you are submitting to -- and those needs are more complex than just how good your writing is -- and given the bittery quality of your posts, I'm doubting that you've got this fiction writing thing down -- you will be published. If your writing doesn't fit the market needs -- if it's of poor quality, either mechanically or from a story perspective, if it doesn't fit the market's parameters, if it's too long or too short, if it's too much like what was published recently, if it's not enough like what was published recently, if it doesn't fit the publications budget -- you won't be.

Who you are or who you aren't just. doesn't. matter.

[Sheryl Nantus]

I'm not bitter, I'm just injecting a reality check here.

Yesterday, I submitted a short story to a new ezine that pays twenty bucks...but only for the featured story of the month.

So if it's chosen for publication I've got maybe a ten percent chance of getting twenty bucks.

well, why even SUBMIT there if you're not going to get paid for it?

Ralan.com has a slew of publications that PAY for each and every story they buy; not a crapshoot of "if you're the best" and the others get nothing.

the reality check is that there are good zines and bad zines. I've subbed to those that PAY, be it a little or a lot. I don't play the lottery game and I don't submit to non-paying 'zines.

Dark Horizons, Alien Skin Magazine, The Harrow - they all pay. Why aim low and play the lottery system when you can at least get a few bucks for your work?

*shakes head*

[PeeDee]

abominationerupts, whatever your problem is with the publishing industry, it's not "injecting realism." It's just bitching. You don't need an agent to submit to Playboy, you don't need an angent to submit to the New Yorker.

What else can I disprove? Well, if you wrote short stories steadily enough and published all of them, you could maybe make 25k a year. Not easily, but it's not hte absolute impossible you've decreed it to be.

Also, slush piles are not mountains full of hidden gems that editors turn away from. MOstly, they're sheer garbage. The occasional story an editor finds in a slush pile which is good is a delight, because there are so many bad ones. I might also suggest that, unless you have actually spent time going through a slush pile in a regular basis, you have no grounds at all to say anything about the qualities of the stories that a magazine like Realms of Fantasy, or any other, pick. 95% of any slush pile is garbage. 2% is inexplicable. The rest are decent stories. Some of them won't work because the writers fell apart and wrecked their ending, some of them the writer is skillfully writing a bizarre story that isn't useful.

A handful in there are very good, interesting, exciting stories. I'm always glad when I find them. I bet you most editors are.

Here's the thing. If you're so hateful toward the world of short stories -- and don't tell me you're injecting realism again, because it wasn't a useful line the first time -- then don't write short stories. Go write a novel. Go write non-linear prose. Go write free verse poetry.

If short stories are dead and publishing is a closed and incestuous circle, then why don't you go explore the exciting world of telemarketing? Or shelf-making?

I hear a statistically improbable number of writers every year who are convinced that, even with the publishing industry Broken and Hateful Of New Writers as it is, they are going to Beat The System, Against All Odds.

The one statistic I can't show you is how many of those have gotten published. MOstly, they're going to putter around, get some perspective, and then take steps toward publishing.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Ya gotta love optimists. ;)

[Jamesaritchie]

No way can you make 25-30 K annually writing short fiction. That's just entirely false.

I disagree with you about most stories being unpublishable. I've heard that line before and I believe it's pure crap, an excuse by editors who need to justify their decisions.

For example I bet I could go through the slush pile at Fantasy and Science Fiction and find enough rejected stories to fill ten magazines and most of the stories would be better than the ones they chose, but of couse that would be my opinion.

It's a subjective field.

Name recognition matters.

And I guarantee, if the editor of The New Yorker doesn't recognize a name (because they haven't been contacted by an agent), they do not read your story.

I betcha Playboy only reads agented submissions also.

Making 25-30K per year writing short stories isn't really all that difficult, if you write well enough to sell. I make 12K per year from a single magazine.

You can disagree all you want about kost short stories being unpublishable, which is probably why your own don't find homes. Anyone who can read at all simply needs to read a single slush pile, any slush pile, to know that at least half of all stories that come in are so bad it make you wonder whether the writer even made it trhough sixth grade English.

Another twenty percent are not this bad, but are still so amateurish they satdn zero chance of any editor taking them seriously. Still anotehr twenty percent aren't too bad, some may be fairly well-written, but they stand no chance at all of being bought because they're either wildly inappropriate for the magazine, or they're clones the editor has seen at least a hundred times in the last six months.

This is just how it is, like it or not, believe it or not. Editors do not have to justify their decisions in any way. In all honesty, editors don't give a rat's whisker what you think of their decisions, what I think of their decisions, or what any other writer thinks of their decisions. So they have to justify nothing to any of us.

Thinking all writing is purely subjective is so silly I really shouldn't even answer it, but I will. But I'll leep it short and simple. Whether a story by Stephen King is better than a story by John Updike is subjective.

Whether a story by Stephen King is better than 90% of what you find in slush is something any three year old can tell.

The moment you start believing it's all subjective is the momet you'll never again write anything except pure crap.

And if you really, honestly believe you could go through any slush pile and find enough good stories to fill ten magazines, there's no hope for you. It either means you've never seen a slush pile, or you have absolutely no clue what good writing is, and more important, what bad writing is.

Many things are subjective, but pure crap isn't. Bad grammar and bad spelling are not subjection. Incoherent sentences are not subjective. Dialogue so poor, so unrealistic, that no human being ever spoke it is not subjective. The majority of stories landing in any slush pile comtains these problems, and often many more.

[Jamesaritchie]

No way can you make 25-30 K annually writing short fiction. That's just entirely false.

I disagree with you about most stories being unpublishable. I've heard that line before and I believe it's pure crap, an excuse by editors who need to justify their decisions.

For example I bet I could go through the slush pile at Fantasy and Science Fiction and find enough rejected stories to fill ten magazines and most of the stories would be better than the ones they chose, but of couse that would be my opinion.

It's a subjective field.

Name recognition matters.

And I guarantee, if the editor of The New Yorker doesn't recognize a name (because they haven't been contacted by an agent), they do not read your story.

I betcha Playboy only reads agented submissions also.

Oh, and again, you have no clue. I doubt you could buy one. Of course name recognition matters, but what, do you think writers with big names were born with name recognition? Got news for you. Darned near every big name writer out there started selling short stories, often lots of them, long before anyone had a clue who they were.

And just from personal experience, teh first draft of the first short story I ever wrote sold to Far West Magazine, teh first mag I submitted it to, and they paid me almost as much as my day job paid in a year. Following shortly on teh heels of that story, the first draft of a story I wrote for Sports Afield paid me a thusand bucks, and a second there only a couple of weeks later paid eight hundred. I received another $350 from yet a different magazine for reprint rights to the first story.

And no one had a clue who I was at any of these magazines, I didn't have an agent, and had no contacts at all in publishing.

Like just about everyting else, you're dead wrong about The New Yorker and Playboy. I know from personal experience that Editors at The New Yorker read everything, and buy fairly often. Have you ever actually read The New Yorker? It sure doesn't sound like it. They published a lot of fiction each year, and all you have to do is go through the issues, and you find writer after writer who isn't a known name. It takes very little effort to actually research these writer and see just what they've had published, and whether they use an agent.

But it does take some effort, and it seems you'd rather just believe what makes you're own failure to sell excusable.

And while Playboy does buy stroies from many big name writers, they'd be foolish not to do so, they're famous for giving new wruiters a break. As long as those new writers don't believe wriitng is subjective, which jmeans they'll be submitting crap so bad the editor won't get past page one.

[Jamesaritchie]

I'm not bitter, I'm just injecting a reality check here.

Yesterday, I submitted a short story to a new ezine that pays twenty bucks...but only for the featured story of the month.

So if it's chosen for publication I've got maybe a ten percent chance of getting twenty bucks.

There is no reality at all in anything you say. Why one earth would you submit anything to such a magazine. One reason I've always made good money from selling short stories is that I only submmit to magazines that pay me enough to justify my time. I know what good writing is, I know how to give it to editors, and I know beyond doubt that when I do this, they will buy my stories.

I think you need to understand that your "reality" has nothing at all to do with the way things really are. The truth is that, while good writing may be subjective, crap is purely objective, and editors see very, very few short stories that even approach professional quality. The truth is that if your stories do not sell, it is not because you lack a big name, it is not because of subjectivity, it is not because editors pick stories at random, and yours have just been unlucky.

If your stories are not selling, one of two things is the reason. 1. The stories you're writing do not fit the magazines you're submitting to. 2. Your stories just aren't good enough to beat the competition. Darned few are.

And if you have story after story after story coming back with mostly form rejections, then your stories aren't even good enough for editors to spend time on.

Reality is simple. There are lots of short story markets out there, and someone is filling those short story slots each and every month. If it isn't you, don't blame the industry, don't blame editors, and don't blame writers with big names. The only person to blame is yourself.

Reality is knowing that most people can't write a grocery list without help, no matter what they think of their own abilities. But if you can write well, if you have even a clue what good writing is, what a good story is, what a good characters is, and what good dialogue is, you not only can sell short stories, and to markets that pay pretty darned well, it's remarkably easy to do so.

[Del]

I like writing short stories, market be damned.

[Sheryl Nantus]

to interject some more "reality", just look at the math.

whether you're King, Grisham or Ed Greenwood, there are just so many stories a human being can write in a single day/week/month/year. And with all the magazines out there it's mathematically impossible for them to fill ALL their pages with ALL the known writers to "play it safe".

it's rather like the oft-repeated myth that publishers don't take on new authors. After all, why would they when they can get a new manuscript from Nora Roberts every three months... oh, wait, they *have* to publish new authors because these authors can only do so much. As older authors slow down and stop producing new material the publishers have to cultivate and generate new readerships based on new authors - which is why first-time authors are signed all the time by publishing houses, big and small.

the myth doesn't stand up to the hard facts that new authors and their stories *must* be published somewhere, somehow, otherwise the entire publishing industry will collapse and fail eventually. King can't write forever, nor can Grisham. And someone's got to pull something out of the slush pile to put in the magazine that's fresh and new and *not* a known name at some point.

however, I understand the comfort in taking refuge in the "conspiracy" theory - it's much easier to stand back and wag your finger at the 'zines and publishing houses than to admit that your own skills may not be up to the standard they require.

so either keep learning and developing your skills to GET up to those standards or move onto another area where you feel that you can be recognized and applauded at the level you've attained.

jmo.

[Jamesaritchie]

What else can I disprove? Well, if you wrote short stories steadily enough and published all of them, you could maybe make 25k a year. Not easily, but it's not hte absolute impossible you've decreed it to be.



Of course, 25K per year would be fairly simply, if you could sell one story to each of the big four. This alone would get you better than halfway there, even at beginner rates. More, if you were paid top rates.

The only reason I know I could make at least 25K in a year is because I can sell to the outdoor markets. They never pay me less than a quarter per word, and often pay fifty cents per word. Sometimes a bit more. I can also sell to enough other fairly large magazines on a regular basis that it just wouldn't be very tough, if I wrote short stories full-time. I know I can make 15-18K from the outdoor markets alone.

But, really, if I tried writing only genre fiction, I'd be very lucky to make more than 10K in a single year. 12K tops, and I'd have to be lucky.

I'm a pretty fast writer, and I've written quite a few stories in only a few hours that sold to large magazines. Even those two Sports Afield stories I mentioned were both written and submitted within five hours of the time I got the idea. Those two stories actually earned me $2,150 for less than nine hours work. Would that I could do this every day.

I'd hate writing this fast day in and day out, though I've had months were I wrote twenty short stories, and once wrote twelve during a four day weekend. I think I sold eight or nine of them.

I could never keep this up for a year, but even cutting myself some serious slack, I have no doubt I could write 75 short stories in a year without risking burnout. I have no doubt I could write 100 genre stories in a year, but I honestly don't know what I'd do with 75.

That's my problem with genre stories. Looking through my records, my average genre story sells for $375. I'd have to sell 66.6, call it 67, short stories to make that 25K, and I don't think I could find nearly enough paying markets to do this, even if I sold everything I wrote. My usual sell rate is about 70% on first blush, and many of the others sell soon or later, to one place or another, after some revision and rewriting to make them fit. But I can't count on more than a 70% sell rate during the first year of submission. And then only if I can find enough markets that pay a dead minimum of five cents per word. I could write enough stories that a 70% sell rate would give me 25K, but could I find enough paying markets? I doubt it very much.

To make $10,000 in a year, I'd only have to sell 27 genre stories, and this is possible, but it simply isn't worth the effort, at least to me.

So i write very few genre stories. I like to write one for Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock every couple of years, but 98% of my short stories are decidedly not genre fiction.

But one of my goals for next year is to start writing more short stories. I'm going to aim at forty, which should be doable, even with novel and nonfiction wriitng taking up most of my time.

[johnnysannie]

No way can you make 25-30 K annually writing short fiction. That's just entirely false.

I disagree with you about most stories being unpublishable. I've heard that line before and I believe it's pure crap, an excuse by editors who need to justify their decisions.

For example I bet I could go through the slush pile at Fantasy and Science Fiction and find enough rejected stories to fill ten magazines and most of the stories would be better than the ones they chose, but of couse that would be my opinion.

It's a subjective field.

Name recognition matters.

And I guarantee, if the editor of The New Yorker doesn't recognize a name (because they haven't been contacted by an agent), they do not read your story.

I betcha Playboy only reads agented submissions also.

My what bitter grapes!

Although I have not (yet) been accepted by The New Yorker, I did get some personal feedback on one submission so they do read them.

Name recognition matters....sure, to a point. But good writing matters most of all.

I won't waste any more time attempting to open a closed mind but if you feel this way about the industry and writing, then why do you bother?

[Jamesaritchie]

My what bitter grapes!

Although I have not (yet) been accepted by The New Yorker, I did get some personal feedback on one submission so they do read them.

Name recognition matters....sure, to a point. But good writing matters most of all.

I won't waste any more time attempting to open a closed mind but if you feel this way about the industry and writing, then why do you bother?

I haven't yet sold to The New Yorker, either, but I have had some very detailed personal feedback. And I do have a couple of friends, may they develop boils on both butt cheeks, who have sold to The New Yorker.

[PeeDee]

Ouch, my butt cheeks are getting painful now. Weird.

James, your math is spot on (of course it is; why wouldn't it be?) but reading it over, I realized the simple reason that I don't make that kind of money writing short stories. The reason being, if I felt I had to, for example, produce 67 short stories a year and sell them to a certain tier of markets, I think that a lot of the fun and joy would start to go out of things, and I would eventually putter out.

I think that's why it's important not to write for the money. At least, that's why it's important to me. If I sit myself down and work at it, I can produce a workable short story in a couple of hours. When it comes to fiction, I write a tight first draft, and I usually have a home in mind for it when I'm done. Despite that, if I had to do that every day, all day, in and out, it would become too much work without enough spark of joy for me to keep it up. I wouldn't burn out, I would just become lackluster.

I would love to try it, as an experiment, for six months. Write as many stories as I can, as fast as I can, and sell them, and see what happens. Do it industriously, I mean.

This summer, I'm doing a serial story, one new episode every two weeks, upwards of 50-or-more episodes. This isn't new to me (though certainly, it's been a few years since I've done anything like it) so I don't expect major problems in having to produce at speed.

Pardon the rambling post. This thread, particularly your latest post, James, has got me thinking not only writerly, but in terms of money as well. That doesn't happen very often.

[blacbird]

From Blacbird's Unabridged Dictionary, 2006 edition:

Publishable, adj.: Accepted for publication.

Unpublishable, adj.: Rejected.

caw

[JeanneTGC]

Making 25-30K per year writing short stories isn't really all that difficult, if you write well enough to sell. I make 12K per year from a single magazine.

Santa, all I want for Christmas is to duplicate JAR's career success.

Oh. Dang. I have to write as WELL and with the same output levels as JAR does in order to have that same success?

There is ALWAYS a catch.

Damn conspiracies...

[Jamesaritchie]

From Blacbird's Unabridged Dictionary, 2006 edition:

Publishable, adj.: Accepted for publication.

Unpublishable, adj.: Rejected.

caw

I think your definitions are incomplete.

Publishable, adj.: Accepted for publication because it's both good and apropriate for the magazine.

Unpublishable, adj.: Rejected because it's either inappropriate for the magazine, or not very well-written.

[Jamesaritchie]

Ouch, my butt cheeks are getting painful now. Weird.

James, your math is spot on (of course it is; why wouldn't it be?) but reading it over, I realized the simple reason that I don't make that kind of money writing short stories. The reason being, if I felt I had to, for example, produce 67 short stories a year and sell them to a certain tier of markets, I think that a lot of the fun and joy would start to go out of things, and I would eventually putter out.

I think that's why it's important not to write for the money. At least, that's why it's important to me. If I sit myself down and work at it, I can produce a workable short story in a couple of hours. When it comes to fiction, I write a tight first draft, and I usually have a home in mind for it when I'm done. Despite that, if I had to do that every day, all day, in and out, it would become too much work without enough spark of joy for me to keep it up. I wouldn't burn out, I would just become lackluster.

I would love to try it, as an experiment, for six months. Write as many stories as I can, as fast as I can, and sell them, and see what happens. Do it industriously, I mean.

This summer, I'm doing a serial story, one new episode every two weeks, upwards of 50-or-more episodes. This isn't new to me (though certainly, it's been a few years since I've done anything like it) so I don't expect major problems in having to produce at speed.

Pardon the rambling post. This thread, particularly your latest post, James, has got me thinking not only writerly, but in terms of money as well. That doesn't happen very often.

Burnout is a real possibility for most writers. I learned several years ago that, for me, burnout doesn't come from writing a given amount of material, but from sitting at the computer for too many hours each day. I can write five hours per day without burning out. But I also take two weeks off each spring, sometimes two weeks off each summer, and I always take the full month of October off. I also do not write from about two days before Christmas until the New Year. Nor do I write on Sundays.

The biggest benefit of writing full-time is that I don't have to write full-time, if you see what I mean.

There have been many writers who could write all day, every day, and apparently never suffered burnout. William Saroyan broke into print by telling an editor at Story that he was going to send him a new story each day for a month, and then doing it. He actually wrote more than one story per day, and along about mid-month, one of those stories was The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

Max Brand once wrote ten million words in a single year, which is an average of about 27,397 words per day. He earned $100,000 dollars that year, all at a penny per word. To me, this seems impossible. I am not that kind of write.

I'm not even a terribly fast writer. Most of the time, I write from 500-700 words per hours, which is considered slow by many professional writers. But I do write very clean first drafts, and I do write five hours per day, day in and day out.

For whatever reason, I'm a bit faster when writing short stories. I have no idea why, but short stories generally come out at 800-1,000 words per hour. (Can you tell I've spent quite a bit of time studying speed, primarily so I could find the minimum number of hours I have to write to get the job done?)

Anyway, the point is that, as I said, as a full-time writer, I don't have to write full-time. I don't have to spend all day, every day, writing in order to get a lot of material out the door. I just have to make sure I do put in the five hours, and I do actually write when using them. And I have to write clean first drafts.

But I am NOT a speed demon, and I know from experience that writing all day, every day burns me out quickly. When I wrote those twelve stories in four days, I couldn't write anything else for at least ten days.

I'm a moderately slow, steady wins the race kind of writer, and even at this, I need those two weeks in the Spring, and I need October, to refill the well, recharage the batetries, or whatever metaphor you want to use.

At any rate, I wish you a lot of luck. Just remember that burnout is a possibility, and that you'll get a lot more done long term if you don't try to attempt the impossible short term. Show up at the computer every last day, but leave before you drain the battery.

[PeeDee]

At any rate, I wish you a lot of luck. Just remember that burnout is a possibility, and that you'll get a lot more done long term if you don't try to attempt the impossible short term. Show up at the computer every last day, but leave before you drain the battery.


When I was younger, I would write at a frantic pace, doing 12-20,000 words a day. I'd do this for three or four days, then fizzle out and do nothing very much for three or four days.

These days, with a family and a day job (you write full time; I wish I did that.) I find that I can do about 2,000 words a day cumulative. Or more, if need be. One of the nice things about writing for a long time is that you build up stamina which you don't always use, but which is available when you need it.

Mostly, your numbers fascinated me because they're entirely plausible, and entirely attainable, and I hadn't looked at it so concretely before. It's hardly reshaped anything I'm doing now, but it interested me very, very much. I appreciate that.

Right. Off to write.

[Del]

When I wrote those twelve stories in four days, I couldn't write anything else for at least ten days.

So mathematically, to write those 12 stories cost 14 days. ;)

I would consider myself fortunate to be so productive. I wrote 1200 words yesterday, the first I've written in a month. It was a complete short story but then I was too whipped to edit it.

I used to write 2000 - 3000 most days way back when but I started to change around 1998 and everything I used to do became really hard. It took me a year to illustrate my children's book (first hint of trouble) and it should only have taken a couple weeks. It is hard to draw when your pencil is arguing with you.

When my energy level is low (which is most of the time) I can't write much or any. If my people would stop coming to me to solve their problems (another long story) I could write more but I zap easily.

If you know you have a lot of writing to do, maybe you should economize your external energy output and save it for writing. I don't know if the body can really take energy from the mind but now that I have to conserve energy daily, it certainly seems plausible.

[PeeDee]

If you know you have a lot of writing to do, maybe you should economize your external energy output and save it for writing. I don't know if the body can really take energy from the mind but now that I have to conserve energy daily, it certainly seems plausible.

It's very true. I find that when I have a lot of writing to do all at once, I stop communicating with friends and extended family. I watch less TV with my wife, I play no video games, I go for no walks. I tend to read the same two or three novels over and over again, even though I've read them several times, because it's something for parts of my head to do while the rest of the bits ae busy.

It's sort of like going into standby, or shutting down non-essential functions. I don't do it often, but it does happen sometimes. Not always on purpose.

[Jamesaritchie]

So mathematically, to write those 12 stories cost 14 days. ;)

I would consider myself fortunate to be so productive. I wrote 1200 words yesterday, the first I've written in a month. It was a complete short story but then I was too whipped to edit it.

I used to write 2000 - 3000 most days way back when but I started to change around 1998 and everything I used to do became really hard. It took me a year to illustrate my children's book (first hint of trouble) and it should only have taken a couple weeks. It is hard to draw when your pencil is arguing with you.

When my energy level is low (which is most of the time) I can't write much or any. If my people would stop coming to me to solve their problems (another long story) I could write more but I zap easily.

If you know you have a lot of writing to do, maybe you should economize your external energy output and save it for writing. I don't know if the body can really take energy from the mind but now that I have to conserve energy daily, it certainly seems plausible.

Well, they way I look at it, those four days made me miserable for ten. And I was miserable. I was completely bruned out. It wasn't merely that I couldn't write, I couldn't even think. I just sat around doing nothing, or slept, and remained on auto-pilot the entire ten days. I don't think this is ever good.

I don't know whether the body can take energy from the mind, but I know the mind can steal every last bit of energy from the body. When the brain burns out, it takes the body with it.

[PeeDee]

I don't know whether the body can take energy from the mind, but I know the mind can steal every last bit of energy from the body. When the brain burns out, it takes the body with it.

I can think of miserable days of boring physical labor I've done in the past where I think nothing at all for the whole day, I get home and think "My brain's been off all day," and I'm tired enough that I sit there, brain still off, and am useless and miserable.

Those are long, dark tea-time of the soul days.

[JeanneTGC]

I feel better when I'm writing. It gives me energy, both mental and physical, and makes the time fly. I am also more fun to be around if I've been writing or editing -- I have interesting things to say and am actually interested in what others have to say as well.

Researching where to send that writing I find exhausting, both mentally and physically. Sending in submissions creates a mixture of nausea and relief. I hate the "work" part of the publication process, more and more each day.

I am in submission mode for all of 4Q. Pity my friends and family, they deserve it for putting up with me during this time.

[Jamesaritchie]

It's very true. I find that when I have a lot of writing to do all at once, I stop communicating with friends and extended family. I watch less TV with my wife, I play no video games, I go for no walks. I tend to read the same two or three novels over and over again, even though I've read them several times, because it's something for parts of my head to do while the rest of the bits ae busy.

It's sort of like going into standby, or shutting down non-essential functions. I don't do it often, but it does happen sometimes. Not always on purpose.

One thing I've learned is that I must have some degree of physical activity in order to get the writing done. I write five hours per day, but this is broken into two sessions. I write for two and a half, then eat lunch and take a fairly long walk. If I get the walk in, I suffer no physical or mental burnout at all from the five hours writing. If I go a few days without the walk, I get really tired, and something doesn't get done.

If the writing does get done, then other things, going places with my wife, getting in the evening reading, something, is going to go undone.

For me, at least, long term writing has meant finding the routine that works, and then sticking to it. Now and then I have a deadline that forces me out of this routine, and I always pay for it.

But getting in that walk is important. It doesn't drain energy, it replaces energy. It freshens my mind, takes the kinnks out of my body, forces some fresh air into my lungs, and actually helps me get through the day.

[PeeDee]

I agree, and when I'm conscious of it, that's what I try to do too. I find that walks, or hanging out with friends, or even something busy like cooking dinner does more to get the gears turning in my mind than anything else.

I especially like my walks. I don't bring a notebook or anything. I just walk, and I think, and I stew. Sometimes. Sometimes, Ijust have a pleasent walk. I find that if I have a killer idea that I want to write right that second, then not having a notebook means that by the time I get home, the idea has either turned into something a little more matured and useful, or it's faded in the face of other ideas that are actually worth keeping.

When I shut down, though, which does happen sometimes (for all sorts of reasons. Actually, it doesn't happen much anymore) the above description is how I tend to shut down. I find that when you have a family and a job and a general reason to leave the computer/notebook, then you're less apt to shut down and less apt to burn out.

[Del]

Alas, were I normal.

[JeanneTGC]

Alas, were I normal.

Don't despair. It's we non-normals who have all the fun, Delarege!

[Sailor Kenshin]

With me, it's in the shower. Which can be quite inconvenient.

[bsolah]

I find that when you have a family and a job and a general reason to leave the computer/notebook, then you're less apt to shut down and less apt to burn out.

I find that this is true. I felt terrible when I was unemployed and wasn't writing. I did nothing. Now that I'm working, I still feel ok when I'm not writing, because so many other things occupy my time. Though, there are moments where I realize I haven't written anything in two weeks and it scares the hell out of me.

[bsolah]

As a horror writer, I'm finding my options are limited to cross-genre mags, unless you're submitting to the big guns like Cemetery Dance and 13.

I'm an unpublished writer, so I'm not sure if it'd be wise to submit to CD. Would it be worth a shot, do you think? Advice me, oh wiser ones. I just finished a rewrite of the ending, and with some more tightening up, I think it's a pretty strong story.

[Del]

I'm an unpublished writer, so I'm not sure if it'd be wise to submit to CD. Would it be worth a shot, do you think? Advice me, oh wiser ones. I just finished a rewrite of the ending, and with some more tightening up, I think it's a pretty strong story.

Of course it's wise. They can say no (might say yes) but it isn't like the rejection is going to be recorded in a publisher's list of crappy submissions. If they say no it's just no. They aren't going to hold it against you professionally.

Make sure it is suited to them and if so, don't let being unpublished keep you from testing a potential market.

[PeeDee]

Delarege is absolutely right. Submit to 'em! If it fit the market, I'd say submit to the New Yorker, even if your odds of getting published aren't great. If you never make the effort, you're really never going to get published.

[Jamesaritchie]

As a horror writer, I'm finding my options are limited to cross-genre mags, unless you're submitting to the big guns like Cemetery Dance and 13.

I'm an unpublished writer, so I'm not sure if it'd be wise to submit to CD. Would it be worth a shot, do you think? Advice me, oh wiser ones. I just finished a rewrite of the ending, and with some more tightening up, I think it's a pretty strong story.

Of course you should submit to them. No editor has ever said, "I love this story. Best thing I've read in two months. I'd buy it, but the guy who wrote it has never been published. Too bad. My readers would have loved it."

[bsolah]

Thanks guys, I'll submit when I'm sure the story is appropriate. I need to get myself a copy of the mag, but there's this problem (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49901).

[Del]

Thanks guys, I'll submit when I'm sure the story is appropriate. I need to get myself a copy of the mag, but there's this problem (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49901).

It isn't much easier living in the states. Who can afford to buy every magazine they want to submit too? And even if you could, one magazine isn't going to be an accurate example of all they publish.

Search, ask around, find examples, get help...

Maybe someone on AW has a dispensable copy of a mag. you're looking for and would send it to you.

Alternatively, albeit limiting, there are ezines that are easy to examine, email submissions, etc. You don't have to let your poverty hold you back. You've made it to here. You can make it to someplace that can get you started.

[ChaosTitan]

Maybe someone on AW has a dispensable copy of a mag. you're looking for and would send it to you.


You know, that's not a bad idea. Kind of like a lending library. Once you've read a few issues and know their style, do you really need to keep the old copies around?

It would be interesting to have a thread for magazine swaps. If someone has copies of Mag X they'd be willing to send to an interested party. And for folks to ask for copies of something they can't get a hold of.

Just a thought....

[Jamesaritchie]

It isn't much easier living in the states. Who can afford to buy every magazine they want to submit too? And even if you could, one magazine isn't going to be an accurate example of all they publish.

Search, ask around, find examples, get help...

Maybe someone on AW has a dispensable copy of a mag. you're looking for and would send it to you.

Alternatively, albeit limiting, there are ezines that are easy to examine, email submissions, etc. You don't have to let your poverty hold you back. You've made it to here. You can make it to someplace that can get you started.

Most can't read every magazine they submit to, but doing so does greatly increase your chances of selling to any magazine.

And, of course, even a small sales usually pays for a mag subscription several times over. I think those who don't subscribe are really saying "I'm not going to sell anything to this magazine, so I can't afford to buy a subscription."

Confidence means you think you will sell the magazine at least one thing, however small, over the course of a year, and if you do, the cost isn't an issue.

And the cost of a subscription is something you can write off, even if you've never made a sale.

It may not be possible to read every magazine, but not doing so is being penny wise and pound follish. You save the cost of a subscription, but have a far lower chance of making a sale.

You really can't afford NOT to read the magazines you want to submit to.

[PeeDee]

I don't subscribe to most of the magazines I submit to, but in my defense, I'm dirt poor. It doesn't affect me much, though, because I still tend to read the new issues (or portions thereof) at Barnes & Noble, or buy them individually when there are a few dollars floating around.

It's a useless example, though, because if you don't have a local Barnes & Noble, you're not helped by that.

[Sailor Kenshin]

There's always the library.........

[blacbird]

Of course you should submit to them. No editor has ever said, "I love this story. Best thing I've read in two months. I'd buy it, but the guy who wrote it has never been published. Too bad. My readers would have loved it."

Maybe not, but I guarantee there are editors out there who, at least on a really busy day, will say "I never heard of this writer, I have stuff from Rick Bass and Joyce Carol Oates and Stuart Dybek to deal with, and I don't have time to read it," and tosses the thing in the form-reject stack.

caw

[verbie]

I've just spent the past several minutes reading this thread, and I've really learned a lot. I'm submitting to several short markets right now; fifteen are making the rounds. I was encouraged by the math. It makes sense to me that 90% of submissions are pure crap. That's almost universal in anything. Just pure sales, you learn it's a numbers game. But if you target your work and learn the craft, you're in the top 10%. Those odds don't sound all bad.

I've never really looked at the math before. I think I'm making a mistake by submitting to low paying markets. I thought I had to have clips and a name before having a shot. Hell, if I've only got a 10% chance at a low paying market, too, it's foolish to try the low markets because of lack of confidence. Thanks. I've learned something important today.

[verbie]

James, how much time do you spend each week/ month in marketing, querying, studying targeted magazines, etc.? What percent of time do you recommend a new writer spend on marketing vs. actual writing if she wants to make a profit in the first year? How many submissions should a full time writer keep in circulation? How many rejections should a piece get before you decide to edit or retire it? Sorry for all the questions.

[PeeDee]

James, how much time do you spend each week/ month in marketing, querying, studying targeted magazines, etc.? What percent of time do you recommend a new writer spend on marketing vs. actual writing if she wants to make a profit in the first year? How many submissions should a full time writer keep in circulation? How many rejections should a piece get before you decide to edit or retire it? Sorry for all the questions.

*head explodes*

I'll not presume to answer for James, but I expect you'll find that there isn't a really honest-to-goodness percentage based system for all this. I know that some weeks/months, I don't send out anything or research anything at all. Other weeks, I get very little writing done and I'm busy sending stuff out.

If you have something to send out, send it out. How many pieces you have to send out is how many submissions you should keep out, I think.

Rejections? Send it 'round till hell won't have it.

That's what I say anyway. James will come around and offer something too, I imagine.

[Sailor Kenshin]

James, how much time do you spend each week/ month in marketing, querying, studying targeted magazines, etc.? What percent of time do you recommend a new writer spend on marketing vs. actual writing if she wants to make a profit in the first year? How many submissions should a full time writer keep in circulation? How many rejections should a piece get before you decide to edit or retire it? Sorry for all the questions.

I used to have 40 stories circulating but don't quote me.

[PeeDee]

I used to have 40 stories circulating but don't quote me.

Oops! Sorry!

:D

[Sailor Kenshin]

:ROFL:

[Jamesaritchie]

James, how much time do you spend each week/ month in marketing, querying, studying targeted magazines, etc.? What percent of time do you recommend a new writer spend on marketing vs. actual writing if she wants to make a profit in the first year? How many submissions should a full time writer keep in circulation? How many rejections should a piece get before you decide to edit or retire it? Sorry for all the questions.

I can only answer for myself, and I don't really set goals here, they just happen. I try to read as much as I write, but usually fall a bit short. I generally read about four hours each day, and about half this time is spent reading short stories.

I usually have subscriptions to roughly two dozen magazines, and get as many more from the library as possible. If the library carries a magazine, I probably won't get a subscription. Instead, every six months, I check out the previous six month's worth of that magazine, sit down, and read through them within a week or so.

But the real answer is to read as much as you can in the time you have.

How much time you spend marketing depends on how much time you spend writing. The more you write, the more material you have that needs marketing, but I think marketing is always secondary. Just write as much as possible, and do what you have to do to get everything in the mail and to keep it there. Reading is good marketing, but I do usually pick one day per week to handle submissions, marketing, research, etc. The rest of the week, I'm reading and writing.

At any rate, making a profit your first year depends far more on writing something an editor wants than on how much time you spend writing, reading, marketing, or researching. But I do think the more you read and write, the faster you learn to give editors what they want.

How many rejections does a piece get before I decide to edit or retire it? As many as possible. I only edit/rewrite when an editor asks me to do so, or when I find a new market that I know will only take the story if I change something in the story to make it fit that particular magazine. An example of this is a story I wrote that was simply a kids adventure story with a humorous slant. Then I saw a listing for a hunting and fishing magazine that paid a lot of money, but want humorous stories with a hunting or fishing slant. So I added two paragraphs to the story to give it teh right slant, and they bought it.

I only retire a story when I simply can't find anywhere else to send it.

I'm a firm believer in Heinlein's Roles of Writing. I firmly believe writers who follow each of these rules stand a far greater chance of being published than writers who ignore any of them.

HEINLEIN'S RULES FOR WRITING


1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.



A great explanation of these rules can be found here: http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm



I could add rules; 6. You must read. 7. The reason to study a magazine is not to give an editor more of the same, but to give him something new that's written in the way he loves. 8. Write to the length editors want, not to the length the story "demands." The writer is suppose to be the boss, not the writing.



But Heinlein said enough.

[verbie]

Thanks for your responses, and the link from James. I did a little browsing on the sf website, and he stressed sending in submissions by paper. I do a lot of email submissions. Do you think his advice is sound or is it perhaps a bit dated? And he also recommended submissions only to the print market, not to online pubs. Do you agree with either of these recommendations? Thanks.

[Jamesaritchie]

Thanks for your responses, and the link from James. I did a little browsing on the sf website, and he stressed sending in submissions by paper. I do a lot of email submissions. Do you think his advice is sound or is it perhaps a bit dated? And he also recommended submissions only to the print market, not to online pubs. Do you agree with either of these recommendations? Thanks.

I think snail mail submissions gives you a somewhat better chance, and print magazines are more prestigious, and certainly pay much better on average. But e-pubs are getting better.

The trouble with e-mail submissions is that they are easier and more convenient, which means far more new writers use them. Not necessarily a good thing.

I'd say submit to both, but be selective.

[Lyra Jean]

That's an interesting website. Thanks for pointing it out.

[verbie]

To be fair to the original poster, I ASSUME he meant "paying" as in "I could comfortably support myself solely by writing short fiction". And in that context (if I am reading him correctly), he is not entirely wrong. There are still many paying markets out there for the average short story writer if one defines 'paying' strictly as monetary remuneration for the publication of one's work but the number of markets out there that offer payment on the level you'd need to comfortably support yourself, let alone a family, are getting tinier by the month, it seems.

The high-paying markets always were relatively few, but things are far worse now than they were a few decades ago for the average writer expecting to make a living writing short fiction.

Concerning the New Yorker, while technically, yes, they do take unsolicited manuscripts, this quote from current Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman does seem to express the magazine's stance on unsolicited work.

Q: Have you ever rescued anything notable from the slush pile?

A: Someone who’s submitting themselves directly to the fiction editor probably isn’t all that savvy about publishing and probably not about writing either. Though I’m sure there are exceptions to that. Particularly in poetry. A lot of poetry comes from the slush pile, because poets don’t have agents.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/editorial/among_the_unsavvy.php is a link to the article where I got the above quote.

Given what Treisman's quotation implies, I can definitely see where Abomination's instructor, whether he's right or wrong, would get the opinion that the New Yorker doesn't accept unsolicited work.

As I re-read this quote from Ms. Treisman, I didn't get the same take on it. IMHO, she is referring to a submission to "the fiction editor" as showing an unsavvy submitter. I've read somewhere that she reads all submissions personally addressed to her.

Why would anyone submit directly to a "fiction editor" without taking time to research who the current editor is, the correct spelling of the name, and what his/her particular taste runs toward?

This is just my take on the quote, but it makes sense to me.

[PeeDee]

I'm particularly fond of Heinlein's Rules because they reinforce things that Roger Zelazny said elsewhere. I can't go wrong there. Mostly, I'm glad that they talk about not re-writing, because that's a slippery slope for a lot of writers.

It may just be me (probably is) but I tend to write a solid first draft, and then do a second draft that's really just tightening and editing and making sure the story is there. That's it. I've only ever had one or two short stories that I've actually re-written from bones up.

Write it, tighten it, get it out the damn door before it rots.

[Jamesaritchie]

It may just be me (probably is) but I tend to write a solid first draft, and then do a second draft that's really just tightening and editing and making sure the story is there. That's it. I've only ever had one or two short stories that I've actually re-written from bones up.

Write it, tighten it, get it out the damn door before it rots.

It isn't just you. That's how I write, and how a great many pro writers handle it. It's probably the most common system out there. Like Asimov, I find that if the second draft, which is really just a tightening and polish draft, doesn't get the job done, then nothing else I do is going to help.

On rare occasions, I've worked on a short story for weeks, and all that extra work didn't help a bit.

[johnnysannie]

The same method - first draft, then polish and tighten the second draft - is what works for me, too. And like James, if that tighten and polish doesn't get it, then the story is probably a wash.

[abominationerupts]

Most of the stories that made The Best American Short Stories of 2006 were first published in The New Yorker. I recognized 90% of the names of the writers. I guarantee they all had agents. Most of the stories were very good and I enjoyed them, but there were a few I wondered about, like how they got published at all. That's why I say it's subjective. That's why almost every agent puts on their form rejection cards, "it's subjective."

You ask why I submit to an e-zine that pays so little.

I looked at the list of markets.

I found this from ralan.com. It was the most appropriate venue for my story. I studied ralan.com, the spicy green iguana, the Writer's Market, and The Best of the Magazine Markets (a special publication put out by LRWG).

I see next to nothing and nobody here's been able to convince me that there's much of a paying market for fiction at all..

And Ritchie--the magazines that pay you are non-fiction. I still say there is no way the average no name writer can make $25 K a year selling short fiction. That's just ridiculous. There aren't that many magazines out there.

Don't get me started about novel writing. Getting a novel published by a real publisher involves even lower odds than short story publication.

I have a completed novel btw. I think it's pretty good. To sum it up in a nutshell it's like Robin Hood meets Robinson Crusoe. I doubt there's market for it but I haven't given up on finding an agent yet.

[Birol]

Abomination, they are names because they know how to write; they're not name because they have agents. And, even if they do have agents, that's no guarantee that the agents represented the short fiction. Agents do not automatically represent all of your work.

But, you're right. We haven't convinced you. And we won't. You know why? You don't want to be convinced. You're vested in having publishing be a closed system because it explains your own lack of success.

[abominationerupts]

Birol,

You don't know anything about me or what kind of success I've had or haven't had. You have no reason to get personal with me.

I simply want someone to give me a list of good paying short fiction markets. I've seen ralan.com., spicy green iguana, etc. I'm not impressed.

You all can't do it. There are almost no magazines at all that publish contemporary short stories. That's the truth.

[PeeDee]

Fine. So we can't do it. So damn what? If you can't do it yourself, I have an astonishingly little interest in doing your homework for you. Especially if your sole interest is to "be impressed" by the quality of the short fiction market, or the novel market, or the prawn trade market, if you like.

Don't like it, don't submit.

"Here, sour grapes," you say, and we are going "Oh. Yeah. They are. Anyway..." and then you're going "No, dude, look! SOUR GRAPES!!" over and over again.

The short story market is what it is. Somehow, it continues to be just that, even if it doesn't blow you away.

It has my seal of approval.

I'm going to be sure to mention that in my next cover letter. "Oh, and by the way, I approve of your market."

Sheesh.

[Birol]

Okay.

Although the markets JAR named might be NF, many NF markets also publish one or two fiction pieces an issue. A market is not necessarily one thing or another. It requires research and hard work to find the appropriate markets.

As for knowing your writing, your first post on AW gives a link to your website. That's been a long time ago, so it's possible your writing has grown and developed since then, but honestly, if the writing on your site is indicative of what you're submitting, you're going to continue to be rejected. The stories of yours that I sampled are heavy-handed. They let the message you are trying to convey get in the way of story. In fiction, subtly can be a good thing. It lets the reader sink into the world and experience it with the characters rather than remaining on the surface.

[Sheryl Nantus]

Birol,

You don't know anything about me or what kind of success I've had or haven't had. You have no reason to get personal with me.

I simply want someone to give me a list of good paying short fiction markets. I've seen ralan.com., spicy green iguana, etc. I'm not impressed.

You all can't do it. There are almost no magazines at all that publish contemporary short stories. That's the truth.

I told you about my sale to GRIT. I had little to no credits and they bought it.

I told you about my sale to Mundania Press. First novel with nothing other than short story sales.

obviously you don't want to hear anything other than agreement with your perception of the writing world, so...

yes, it's a huge conspiracy. No one other than the big name authors EVER sell short stories or are published by the big houses. No one other than the big name authors EVER makes a sale. Everyone here on this board who has made a sale is lying or is actually one of those big name authors posting here under a false name.

feel better now?

:Shrug:

[johnnysannie]

Birol,

You don't know anything about me or what kind of success I've had or haven't had. You have no reason to get personal with me.

I simply want someone to give me a list of good paying short fiction markets. I've seen ralan.com., spicy green iguana, etc. I'm not impressed.

You all can't do it. There are almost no magazines at all that publish contemporary short stories. That's the truth.


First, pairing work - fiction or non-fiction -with the right market is a big part of a writer's work. Writing is just part of it - marketing is also important and I don't understand why you think that anyone should do the homework for you.

Your mind is made up and I truly fail to fathom why you lash out at others whose experience is different from yours.

[AzBobby]

If you compare selling a short story to a high-profile magazine to selling a used CD on eBay, it's probably valid to keep saying there's not much of a paying market in short fiction (though "none" would be inaccurate), even considering the success stories.

Knowing that "short story writer" is no solitary career goal by a long shot -- beyond whatever fun or self-satisfaction I get out of writing some myself -- I've gathered a few excuses to consider various additional earnings one can get out of the short fiction business (considered more holistically) once you get past the dues-paying stage and can publish a few short stories a year on a professional basis.

I invite anyone with experience relating to these points to comment on, correct, or add to them. As a beginner still schlepping market to market, I'm just repeating points I've read elsewhere that I employ for self-encouragement:

-- For many (or most) writers, the most lucrative prospects as a novelist mean getting a good agent who can reach the top publishers and make the best deals, and the best agents normally respond to a publishing track record, often meaning a list of pro short stories.

-- Some short stories are expanded into successful books; at least this is common for spec-fic magazines, from which quite a few classic novels have sprung (and perhaps hundreds of moderate successes I've never heard of).

-- As a new novelist, you can't expect much publicity you don't generate yourself. Sales will be an uphill battle. A novelist who keeps publishing short stories has a steady stream of advertising to a perfectly targeted audience. Again, I'm relying on the genre magazine example -- mags like F&SF typically plug the author's latest book in intros appearing above the title of the short story, although publishing your name alone should help regardless. This makes perfect sense to me because I've discovered some of my favorite authors strictly by reading their short stories first, then looking for their books as a result. It makes me wonder how most non-celebrity novelists could succeed without shorter work popping up in magazines during their print runs.

-- Various other sources of income such as teaching writing classes and workshops or writing more lucrative nonfiction articles can be linked directly to one's fiction experience. One can't necessarily separate the other sources of income and say they're not from short fiction writing, if one's reputation and expertise is dependent upon being a pro fiction writer. That's like saying the sales of Darth Vader masks have nothing to do with whether anyone liked the Star Wars movies. The movies had to be made first, and they had to be very good (well, at least a few of them).

-- Many writers gather their short stories into compilations to sell from the book shelf. I hear they're a harder sell but worthwhile for those who get respectable sales from novels first and have some loyal readers to attract. Even if the profit margin is lower, any profit at all might be considered gravy after most of those stories were already written, published, and paid for years beforehand. Still other successful novelists persist in publishing anthologies of new short stories. That means they might have spent a recent year of their career making a living on short fiction alone.

-- Many other short story writers are published in anthologies and "Best of" volumes that continue to generate income from the book shelves and stretch any publicity you need to sell additional work. Awards listings and "best of" lists work similarly for publicity as well. The frequency of such opportunities for short fiction far exceeds that for novel-writing alone, for obvious reasons.

-- Much of this list is in the "dream on" category, so why shouldn't I mention that many films are made from short fiction properties?

Yes, it's clear that only a small minority of writers "make a living" on it so it's unrealistic to count on it... Just wanted to point out that it seems equally unrealistic to narrow the business of short fiction down to one particular transaction (and disqualify the rest) when many aspects of a full writing career might revolve around this art form.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

I've two shorts that are going out tomorrow. Both to Tesseracts, a Canadian anthology. If they buy them they won't be a lot of money, but I'd get cash and something to put in a query letter.

The market's not dead. The problem is that it never has been a quick and easy way to make lots of money.

[Del]

Writing isn't so hard. But earning from writing has always been tough. If you want easier income you better try selling real-estate. If you just like to write then WRITE. Ease up on yourself and the market. Things are just what they are.

If you are just writing for profit then you better try non-fiction. Fiction is slow. Readers love to love a writer but they have to get to know you first. Forget looking for that rainbow. Get your stuff out. I just googled "Short story market" and saw lists of lists of magazines. There are lots of place that could potentially print your work but face it, most are rejected because they just aren't good enough. Are you good enough? Who says? Your opinion on your work doesn't count (even if you think you're lousy). Maybe it is time to wake up and hustle or throw in the towel.

I'm not trying to break bad on anyone. I don't have that right. It is just so common to hear this again and again; writers passing the buck so they don't have to take responsibility for their own deficiencies. Examine your writing and your methods. Face that if you cannot get published then it is you that needs to change. You aren't going to change the market.

[Summonere]

abominationerupts:

There are almost no magazines at all that publish contemporary short stories. That's the truth.

Wrong. (But most don’t pay much.)*

I've seen ralan.com., spicy green iguana, etc. I'm not impressed.

Those are not the places to look for “contemporary short story” markets (if by this you mean what is commonly called "contemporary fiction"). They list markets for genre fiction -- SF, F, H.

Browsing through an old copy of Writer’s Market turned up almost a hundred “contemporary short story” markets.* You could do the same, probably more, with your own such search, as mine was merely a haphazard peek borne of curiosity.

[Jamesaritchie]

Most of the stories that made The Best American Short Stories of 2006 were first published in The New Yorker. I recognized 90% of the names of the writers. I guarantee they all had agents. Most of the stories were very good and I enjoyed them, but there were a few I wondered about, like how they got published at all. That's why I say it's subjective. That's why almost every agent puts on their form rejection cards, "it's subjective."

You ask why I submit to an e-zine that pays so little.

I looked at the list of markets.

I found this from ralan.com. It was the most appropriate venue for my story. I studied ralan.com, the spicy green iguana, the Writer's Market, and The Best of the Magazine Markets (a special publication put out by LRWG).

I see next to nothing and nobody here's been able to convince me that there's much of a paying market for fiction at all..

And Ritchie--the magazines that pay you are non-fiction. I still say there is no way the average no name writer can make $25 K a year selling short fiction. That's just ridiculous. There aren't that many magazines out there.

Don't get me started about novel writing. Getting a novel published by a real publisher involves even lower odds than short story publication.

I have a completed novel btw. I think it's pretty good. To sum it up in a nutshell it's like Robin Hood meets Robinson Crusoe. I doubt there's market for it but I haven't given up on finding an agent yet.

First, it's far easier to sell a novel to a commercial publisher than it is to sell a short story to a national magazine. It's so much tougher, and you have to be so much better, to sell a short story that the two aren't even in the same class. MZB used to say that anyone who could sell a single short story to a national magazine could earn a living as a writer. This is truer now than ever. You have to be a far, far better writer to sell a short story to a national magazine than you do to sell a novel to a commercial publisher.

Second, odds are nonsense, anyway, and only those looking for an excuse to fail mention odds. The odds of getting pubished, be it short story or novel, are either very close to zero, or very close to 100%. If you can write something an editor wants, and good writers don't guess at this, the odds of selling are extremely close to 100%, even if ten thousand other writers are submitting to that editor. If you can't write something an editor wants, the odds are really zero, even if you're the only writer submitting to him. Talking odds is talking nonsense. Talent and skill and market sense are why stories sell, not odds. If you're a lousy writer, your odds really are as close to zero as it's possible to get. If you're a good writer, a good storyteller, and if you know how to build good characters who speak realistic dialogue, your odds of selling are 100%. Odds are just silly.

If there are any odds that matter, it's only the odds of whether a writer actually has the talent and dedication to write well. Most who try, probably 99%, lack the talent or the dedication, or the smarts to ever sell much of anything. But it isn;t because of odds, and it isn't because there aren't enough markets. It's because they just don't have what it takes to be a professional writer.

Third, if you really can't find a market for the particular story you wrote, and I don't care what genre it is, there are a fair number of markets where it might fit, then why in blazes did you write it? I suppose it's the old, "Well, I'll just write something and hope I can find a market for it later" notion. Works real well, doesn't it? If there really aren't any markets, then don't write the story. Or maybe it was, "I know what magazines want. I read the guidelines, didn't I?" Yeah, that works real well, too, doesn't it?

And what the heck does it matter who is or isn't in The Best American Short Stories, or where they were first published? All this tells me is that you don't actually read The New Yorker each week, and have no clue about any of the writers therein. I know several of the writers, and the fiction editor. I know what they buy, who they buy, how they buy, and why they buy.

And I don't believe for a second that you've properly studied any of the marker guides you list. No one can go through Writer's Market from one end to the other and think for a second there's a shortage of markets for short stories. Unless they just don't understand the listings. Or unless they've already written a story without considering market beforehand. Writer's Market list a LOT of magazines that take short stories. But they want what they want, not what you decided to write without caring what they want beforehand.

Yes, the magazines I listed are nonfiction. But I sold them fiction, just as many other writers do. I'll let you in on a trade secret. . .not all the "nonfiction" out there is nonfiction. Particularly humorous "nonfiction." Just because a piece doesn't have "Short Story" under the title does not mean that piece is nonfiction. Some of it is fiction. A lot of it is fiction.

Have you ever heard of Patrick McManus? He not only made a LOT of money selling one piece of humorous fiction per month to Field & Stream, and later to Outdoor Life, more than we're talking about here, (Two NONFICTION magazines.), he's made a fortune selling collections of these fiction pieces. Just two NONFICTION magazines, one at a time, and he made more money from each than you believe a writer can make from selling to them all.

So. too. is a fair amount of magazine appropriate adventure fiction.

Nonfiction magazines are often the best, and the highest paying, places to sell fiction, if you know what they want and can write it. New writers who only look through listings in order to find fiction magazines are going to be disappointed. If you're going to do this, you may as well throw away your market guides. Another reason you have to not only read the listings in such guides as Writer's Market carefully, you also have to know what you're looking for in the listings, and YOU HAVE TO READ THE MAGAZINES. Market guides aren't worth squat unless you also read magazines. Tons of magazines. Magazines are every type. If it's in your library, read it. If you can buy copies, find copies, or steal copies, read them.

Most writers don't even both reading the end year issue that has an index of everything published that year. How can you possibly know what that magazine has already published, see any trends, and have a clue what to send the editor if you haven't even read the yearly index issue?

Now, you write "I still say there is no way the average no name writer can make $25 K a year selling short fiction. That's just ridiculous. There aren't that many magazines out there." This shows a profound lack of knowledge. There are literally thousands of markets, and many pay very well indeed. But they don't have to. If you can write well, and actually know how to find markets, even modest paying markets can give you a lot of money over a year's time.

"Average writer" might make sense. I never said an average writer could do anything. I said I can. I'm not average in a lot of ways. Neither is any other writer who sells fiction on a regular basis. If you're just average, you're in the wrong business.

But it's the NO NAME writer that's silly. In the short story field, there really is no such thing as a no name writer. Well, in a way there is. In the short story field, a NO NAME writer is a writer who just isn't good enough to sell much of anything, anywhere. Editors don't give a rat's behind whether you have a name. Editors care only that you send them a story that's better than 99% of anything else they see that month. Doing so is not easy, but if a new, average, no name writer can't do it, it has nothing at all to do with that writer being new, average, or no name. It's because he can't write well enough, or doesn't know how to find markets, or doesn't read enough copies of a magazine and so submits something the editor doesn't want or need, even if it is well-written. It's certainly NOT because there aren't enough markets.

It's a myth that big name writers get published because they increase circulation. Much research has been done on this, and there's no evidence at all that big name writers increase circulation a bit. "Big Name" writers get published so frequently because they're the ones most likely to submit a story that really is good. This is precisely why they are Big Name writers. And even big name writers get rejected often. I know one editor who rejected five of the biggest names in that field (SF) on the same day. . .and bought a story from a first time writer.

That day, that month, most of the big name writers didn't submit anything that fell in the top one percent, and they were rejected. A no name did submit something that fell in the one percent, and he was accepted. Having a Big Name didn't help any of the writers, and being a no name didn't hurt the writer who sold his story.

But more often than not, yes, big name writers win out. But it isn't because of a name, it's because they're better writers. This is why they have a name.

And a big complaint almost all editors have is that the moment a good short story writer sells a novel, his short story production goes way, way down. And why shouldn't it? The big money is in novels, not short stories, so darned few editors ever have enough big names to fill a magazine, even if they wanted to do so, which pretty much none of them do.

Now, let's look at 25K per year another way. How much money is this? Not very much when you break it down. Just to round things off for easy head math, 25K per year is $2,083 per month. Still a lot. It's also $480 per week, and that's still a lot. Fine, it's $96 per day, five days per week. It's also $12 per hour for an eight hour day, or about $19 per hour for a five hour day. But let's stick with the $96 per day for a minute.

How many words makes $96? At a nickel per word, it takes 1,920 words. That's a lot of words, and I'd hate to try earning 25K this way, but 1,920 words is only four hour's writing for a slow writer, and less than two hour's writng for a fast writer. I can't earn 25K at this word rate, though some have earned more than this at a lower word rate, but I can certainly earn close to 10K.

But I don't write very often for a nickel per word. I very seldom write for less than five nickels per word. Now I only need 384 word per day to make that $96. Most of my outdoor markets pay me ten nickels per word. Now I only need 192 words to make that $96 dollars per day.

So let's go back to month chunk. $2,083. Lot of money. But at ten nickels per word, it works out to a mere 4,166 words. Do you really believe there aren't enough ten nickel or better markets out there to allow a writer to sell 4,166 words per month? Or even enough five nickel per word markets to allow a writer to sell 8,332 words per month? Goor grief, I'd have to be dead runk twenty-five days a month before I wouldn't be able to write 8,000 words of publishable fiction.

If you really believe this, you haven't studied markets guides properly, and you certainly aren't reading enough magazines to know what they want and don't want. And who the heck cares how many markets there might be for a story. If you any good, one or two or three should be plenty. If you aren't any good, a hundred wouldn't be enough.

When writing only short stories, I can easily write 80,000 words per month. It's true that I couldn't find markets for so many words, but I can certainly find markets for ten percent of what I could write, and I can certainly find markets for a good deal more than ten percent.

And I've made this sound tougher than it really is for a good writer. I haven't even touched on the dozens of primarily NONFICTION magazines that do use the kind of fiction I write well, and that pay from twenty to thirty or more nickels per word. At twenty nickels per word, I need sell only 2,083 words per month to hit 25K. This works out to no more than eight to ten average length short stories per year. Nor have I touched on the reprint market, which generally doesn't pay very much, but does pay enough to add a nice bunch chunk of change.

Now, it gets worse. I have, at one time or another, written short stories for nearly every genre there is. And no matter what the genre, I've never had to submit that story to a magazine that didn't pay, or that paid only pennies. Because I don;t play odds, I write good, publishable stories that fit the top magazines. But I also know that if you write well enough, you can make enough money off secondary markets, reprints, anthologies, and collections, to make a lot of money off any story that's good enough to sell anywhere, for any amount of money.

It amazes me how many genre writers have no clue how to find and submit to anthology markets. Or who think only science fiction magazines buy science fiction, and only fantasy magazines buy fantasy, etc. But if you go only by market listings, this is usually what you end up believing.

Look, you can't just sit down and write a story, then go through market guides and hope to find a market. Real life simply does not work this way. Doing so is, at best, a crapshoot, and you'll be lucky to find more than two or three markets for any story you wrote before doing your research. And reading market guies alone is NOT research. It's failure waiting to happen.

I'll tell you one reason I am not average, and it isn't an abundance of talent, though like any selling writer, I do have enough talent, and enough skill, to get the job done properly. It's because when I submit a story to an editor, I'm already at least 90% sure that he will want it, and I'm 100% certain that he hasn't seen anything like it in at least two years. Sometimes a lot longer. Maybe never.

There is no possible way of knowing these things from reading market guides. It can't be done. But if you can write well, if you can build realistic characters, if you can write good dialogue, all of which you have to do if you want to sell anywhere, for any amount, then you can know these things from reading, from studying, enough issues of a magazine.

Now, before anyone says it, this is not writing to the market. If you want to sell, you write away from the market. You come up with something that's different in every possible way, something the editor wants, but that no one else has ever given him. If you can write well, and if you can do this, you can always be 90% sure he'll want the story, and 100% sure he's never received anything like what you're sending. But only if you've read enough issues of the magazine to have a clue.

And this leads directly to number of markets. That's just "odds" talk put another way, and odds do not exist. If there are ten paying markets for one story, and only two paying markets for a second story, do you really think this gives you five times the chances of selling the first storystory? Not hardly. It just doesn't work this way very often. Yes, sometimes you can just write a story, send it to enough magazines, and through pure luck, it will fit one of those magazines well enough for an editor to buy it.

But far more often, it won't. If the first couple of magazines reject it, the rest will probably reject it, as well. You sell a lot of stories, and a very high percentage of stories, not by having a lot of possible markets, but by writing stories that perfectly fit the first market or two that sees a story. You do this by reading, by studying, a lot of issues of each magazine, and by then writing stories that fit that particular magazine, and if not it, that will perfectly fit, maybe with a bit of rewriting, the second or third magazine.

The vast majority of my short stories sell to the first editor who sees it. Nearly all the rest sell to the second or third editor. In all my years writing, I've only sold two or three stories that moved down the line much farther than this, and then usually only after I ran out of markets and went back to the beginning, rewriting the story to perfectly fit a new market.

It amazes me how readily writers agree that if you want to sell novels, you have to read novels, but who also seem to think you can sell short stories without reading the magazines you want to sell them to.

It's also dumb in another way. There are enough wannabe short story writers out there to make most of the magazines in this country healthy again. But they don't want to buy the magazine, they just want to sell to the magazine. And then they complain about lack of markets.

But that's another story.

[Jamesaritchie]

If you compare selling a short story to a high-profile magazine to selling a used CD on eBay, it's probably valid to keep saying there's not much of a paying market in short fiction (though "none" would be inaccurate), even considering the success stories.

Knowing that "short story writer" is no solitary career goal by a long shot -- beyond whatever fun or self-satisfaction I get out of writing some myself -- I've gathered a few excuses to consider various additional earnings one can get out of the short fiction business (considered more holistically) once you get past the dues-paying stage and can publish a few short stories a year on a professional basis.

I invite anyone with experience relating to these points to comment on, correct, or add to them. As a beginner still schlepping market to market, I'm just repeating points I've read elsewhere that I employ for self-encouragement:

-- For many (or most) writers, the most lucrative prospects as a novelist mean getting a good agent who can reach the top publishers and make the best deals, and the best agents normally respond to a publishing track record, often meaning a list of pro short stories.

-- Some short stories are expanded into successful books; at least this is common for spec-fic magazines, from which quite a few classic novels have sprung (and perhaps hundreds of moderate successes I've never heard of).

-- As a new novelist, you can't expect much publicity you don't generate yourself. Sales will be an uphill battle. A novelist who keeps publishing short stories has a steady stream of advertising to a perfectly targeted audience. Again, I'm relying on the genre magazine example -- mags like F&SF typically plug the author's latest book in intros appearing above the title of the short story, although publishing your name alone should help regardless. This makes perfect sense to me because I've discovered some of my favorite authors strictly by reading their short stories first, then looking for their books as a result. It makes me wonder how most non-celebrity novelists could succeed without shorter work popping up in magazines during their print runs.

-- Various other sources of income such as teaching writing classes and workshops or writing more lucrative nonfiction articles can be linked directly to one's fiction experience. One can't necessarily separate the other sources of income and say they're not from short fiction writing, if one's reputation and expertise is dependent upon being a pro fiction writer. That's like saying the sales of Darth Vader masks have nothing to do with whether anyone liked the Star Wars movies. The movies had to be made first, and they had to be very good (well, at least a few of them).

-- Many writers gather their short stories into compilations to sell from the book shelf. I hear they're a harder sell but worthwhile for those who get respectable sales from novels first and have some loyal readers to attract. Even if the profit margin is lower, any profit at all might be considered gravy after most of those stories were already written, published, and paid for years beforehand. Still other successful novelists persist in publishing anthologies of new short stories. That means they might have spent a recent year of their career making a living on short fiction alone.

-- Many other short story writers are published in anthologies and "Best of" volumes that continue to generate income from the book shelves and stretch any publicity you need to sell additional work. Awards listings and "best of" lists work similarly for publicity as well. The frequency of such opportunities for short fiction far exceeds that for novel-writing alone, for obvious reasons.

-- Much of this list is in the "dream on" category, so why shouldn't I mention that many films are made from short fiction properties?

Yes, it's clear that only a small minority of writers "make a living" on it so it's unrealistic to count on it... Just wanted to point out that it seems equally unrealistic to narrow the business of short fiction down to one particular transaction (and disqualify the rest) when many aspects of a full writing career might revolve around this art form.

What you say is pretty much dead on, particularly for genre writers.

Secondary sales can be incredibly important. All you say is true, and a singel short story sale can generate anything form a couple of dollars to a couple of million dollars.

There are a lot of reasons to write short stories, and there are plenty of markets for short stories, buty money has never been a good reason. The money is in novels, and I also write and sell novels, and a fair number of articles, essays, etc., so I don't need to make much money from short stories.

But the plain truth is that thousands of short stories sell each and every year, and someone writes and sells each and every last one of them.

[Jamesaritchie]

I must not understand what is meant by "contemporary" short stories. The biggest share of markets out there want what I'd consider "contemporary" short stories. From the hundreds of literary magazines, to such biggies as The New Yorker and The Atlantic, to Glimmer Train, to Zoetrope, to you name it, contemporary short stories pay the frieght.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

JR: that is without doubt one of the spiffiest writing essays I've read recently.

Just yesterday I finished reading Walter Campbell's Writing Magazine Fiction, from 1948. Though the markets have certainly dried up significantly since that time, he would have agreed heartily with most of what you said.

I laughed with delight when you mentioned "selling fiction to nonfiction markets." Yep, BTDT; two of my best short-short pieces were bought & published as op/ed. My guess is that anyone who'd have to have this spelled out in further detail isn't capable of writing it in the first place.

Anyway, tnx for the evening's inspiration.

[ShapeSphere]

Third, if you really can't find a market for the particular story you wrote, and I don't care what genre it is, there are a fair number of markets where it might fit, then why in blazes did you write it? I suppose it's the old, "Well, I'll just write something and hope I can find a market for it later" notion. Works real well, doesn't it? If there really aren't any markets, then don't write the story. Or maybe it was, "I know what magazines want. I read the guidelines, didn't I?" Yeah, that works real well, too, doesn't it?
Disagree with this. Some readers and editors don't know what they want. If a writer is so good they would be given more leeway anyway. Some magazines are open to a wide range of genres. Hasn't this thread been all about showing determination and finding the right market?

Apart from that, agree with almost everything the optimists and experts have said. This thread has been ultra-intelligent and fantastically helpful as I have published non-fiction, but want to break into the short fiction market.

Philip Pullman also agrees with me in a way: ;)

What advice would I give to anyone who wants to write?

Don't listen to any advice, that's what I'd say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they're not. Especially don't listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want. Readers don't always know what they want. I don't know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself. So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone. That way, you'll have a chance of writing something that other people WILL want to read, because it'll take them by surprise. It's also much more fun writing to please yourself.

http://www.philip-pullman.com/about_the_writing.asp

[abominationerupts]

www.thuglit.com (http://www.thuglit.com)

I think this ezine proves a point of mine. I just found this site when I went looking for markets.

The stories in this ezine are just as good if not better than what you'll find in say Ellery Queen magazine. Read "Riding a Moped."

All they pay is a t-shirt.

[Lyra Jean]

So don't send your story to them. Send it to a market that pays money.

[Del]

www.thuglit.com (http://www.thuglit.com)

I think this ezine proves a point of mine. I just found this site when I went looking for markets.

The stories in this ezine are just as good if not better than what you'll find in say Ellery Queen magazine. Read "Riding a Moped."

All they pay is a t-shirt.

I think you need to raise your standards a little...no, a lot.

[PeeDee]

Exactly. So what if it's as good as anything you'll find in EQMM? It's not in EQMM. It's in.....ThugLit.

So what is your point? That stories for both EQMM and ThugLit are picked by human beings, and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad? Good job.

Also, this is your opinion. I read it and I wasn't terribly impressed. But then, I've read EQ and not been blown away by every single story either. I'm thrilled to death that you have an opinion, but your opinion is not law.

So what exactly is your point here? THat short story market is dead because this one site pays a t-shirt? That doesnt' prove your point, that means you're just too stubborn to look up from the ground at the world around you.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

Some readers and editors don't know what they want. If a writer is so good they would be given more leeway anyway. Some magazines are open to a wide range of genres. Hasn't this thread been all about showing determination and finding the right market?

Philip Pullman also agrees with me in a way: ;)

What advice would I give to anyone who wants to write?

Don't listen to any advice, that's what I'd say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they're not. Especially don't listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want.
Blah, blah, blah... it's still the same old canard:

person who wants to "write for the sake of Art" goes & cranks out screed
with fingers bloodied & toes frostbitten, Artist screeches defiantly, "My Work will find its own audience & shake the foundations of Society!"
Artist gripes that "nobody gets it" & gets a steady job writing ad copyYou can write in order to be an Ahtist or express your inner wa or the inescapable agony of the Oversoul or whatever...

... or you can write for money or reach a maximal audience.

That's it -- that's the choice.

Yah, sure, it's not totally rare that some of us manage to score a work that does a pretty good job of nailing both. And the motivation can shift over time.

But anyone who refuses to decide between the two is most likely doomed to thrashing endlessly between the two poles, never to fully reach either.

In short, if it's most important for a noob writer to be an Ahtist, then s/he gives up any right to whine about how hard it is to sell. But if s/he wants to sell copy & make money, while creating good product that might even be good craft, then there's advice to be had that can improve the likelihood.

[PeeDee]

What's an Ahtist?

(Oh. Is it mispronouncing "artist," as in "I'm an ahtist, dahling?")

[Jamesaritchie]

www.thuglit.com (http://www.thuglit.com)

I think this ezine proves a point of mine. I just found this site when I went looking for markets.

The stories in this ezine are just as good if not better than what you'll find in say Ellery Queen magazine. Read "Riding a Moped."

All they pay is a t-shirt.

You make a lot of statements that you really can't back up. Are these stories good because you say they're good? You may love them, but the ones I tried to read were not only far below Ellery Queen in quality, they were the type of stories no one, anywhere, is going to pay good money for, even if they were "good."

But it doesn't matter. Even if these were the best stories ever written, it only proves that some writers are dumb enough to sell stories for a T-shirt, and some magazines are owned by people who will let them.

If you really believe these stories as as good or better than anything found in Ellery Queen, the discussion is over. You're right. For you the short story market is dead, and you're never going to make any money selling stories.

[Jamesaritchie]

Disagree with this. Some readers and editors don't know what they want. If a writer is so good they would be given more leeway anyway. Some magazines are open to a wide range of genres. Hasn't this thread been all about showing determination and finding the right market?

Apart from that, agree with almost everything the optimists and experts have said. This thread has been ultra-intelligent and fantastically helpful as I have published non-fiction, but want to break into the short fiction market.

Philip Pullman also agrees with me in a way: ;)

What advice would I give to anyone who wants to write?

Don't listen to any advice, that's what I'd say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they're not. Especially don't listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want. Readers don't always know what they want. I don't know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself. So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone. That way, you'll have a chance of writing something that other people WILL want to read, because it'll take them by surprise. It's also much more fun writing to please yourself.

http://www.philip-pullman.com/about_the_writing.asp


In a way I agree with Pullman, and in a way, I think he's dead wrong.

It's true that editors and readers don't always know what they want, but you, as the writer, had darned well better know what they want, or you'll never sell anything to anyone. Philip Pullman's advice sounds nice, but every last thing he goes to a bookstores and sees is something an editor decided he wanted, and something a publisher allowed that editor to buy. Pullman may not have known he wanted it. . .until he picked it up and started reading, but at that moment, of course he knew he wanted it.

And if you don't please the publisher, the reading public is never going to see your work because it will never, ever be in a bookstore. Publishers buy what they think reeaders wnat. Publishers reject what they think readers don't want, and there isn't a thing writers can do to change this.

Now, having said this, I'm a firm believer in writing for yourself. I always write for myself. I write the kind of story I want to write, and the kind of story I want to read. But if what I write for myself pleases readers, it is not because I'm smarter than they are, and it's certianly not because editors and readers don't know what they want, it's because I have the same taste in reading as they do. It's that simple. I'm not a genius. Neither is Pullman. Far from it. I'm a common writer with common taste in reading, which means that when I write to pleae myself, I'm also writing to please throngs of editors and readers because we have the same taste in fiction. If we didn't, they wouldn't like what I write.

What I write MUST please editors and publishers, or it isn't going to sell, and no readers will ever have the chance to know whether they want it. No matter how much a writer wants to believe that he isn't writing to please editors and publishers and readers, he's wrong. Pleasing editors and publishers and readers may not be his goal, it may not be something he does consciously, but the finished product must, in fact, be something an editor wants, something a publisher is willing to pay for, and something large numbers of readers will buy because they want it. And if it is something they want, it's ONLY because you, as a writer, have the same taste in reading as do editors and the general public.

And the moment a writer thinks he knows more than readers, he's in trouble. Most readers know exactly what they want, and how they want it. So do most editors. And, no, as writers we are NOT geniuses. This way there be dragons. The readers are the geniuses, not the writer, and it's always, without exception, the readers who get to say whether writing is good, bad, or indifferent.

But I think Pullman may really be saying, "Give them something they didn't know they wanted until they read it." This I can agree with, and it's exactly why you have to read magazines in order to sell to magazines. It's my entire philosophy. It's why I said you write away from the market, rather than to the market. The best way to sell is to give an editor something he wants that no one else has ever given him. He does have to want it, it does have to please him, or he won't buy ot, no matter how much of a genius you are. But, ideally, it should be something he didn't know he wanted until he reads it, and something no one has ever given him before.

Probably the biggest mistake new writers make is giving editors same old, same old. If an editor has already seen it, why would he want to buy it again, or even read it again? Even when new writers do read the magazines, they're likely to copy what they've read, rather than using what they've read to understand what the editor hasn't seen before, what he wants that no one has given him, and going along with Pullman, I think, what he didn't even know he wanted until you show it to him.

[Birol]

Thoughts on this market:


The website is poorly designed.
The entrance, with the brass knuckles and the sound of someone being hit is cheesy.
The color scheme layout is not designed as if someone were trying to be artistic and not with the reader in mind. Yellow on black provides a poor contrast for readability.
Overall, I'd say this is strictly an amateur endeavor. It's not a market I'd submit to.Thoughts on "Like Riding a Moped":

I don't care about the main character. There's nothing compelling there.
The story describes things to the reader (telling) but it doesn't reveal them (showing).
As the reader, I'm not drawn into the character's life. She's not sympathetic. I really don't feel anything for her or see any reason that I should.On the story, I stopped reading after the first page and skimmed onto the second page. I only made it that far because I wanted to see what you were enjoying about the story. As an editor, I would have rejected it between the first and second scene break.

[Bartholomew]

Thoughts on this market:

The website is poorly designed.
The entrance, with the brass knuckles and the sound of someone being hit is cheesy.
The color scheme layout is not designed as if someone were trying to be artistic and not with the reader in mind. Yellow on black provides a poor contrast for readability.
Overall, I'd say this is strictly an amateur endeavor. It's not a market I'd submit to.Thoughts on "Like Riding a Moped":
I don't care about the main character. There's nothing compelling there.
The story describes things to the reader (telling) but it doesn't reveal them (showing).
As the reader, I'm not drawn into the character's life. She's not sympathetic. I really don't feel anything for her or see any reason that I should.On the story, I stopped reading after the first page and skimmed onto the second page. I only made it that far because I wanted to see what you were enjoying about the story. As an editor, I would have rejected it between the first and second scene break.

Like Riding a Moped has a very strong narrative voice, but I just didn't care. The first paragraph works. But the second scene really doesn't drag me in further, and my eyes start wanting to skim.

[lostlore]

First, it's far easier to sell a novel to a commercial publisher than it is to sell a short story to a national magazine. It's so much tougher, and you have to be so much better, to sell a short story that the two aren't even in the same class. First of all I want to thank you for a fantastic post. This was all so valuable and I'm very glad you took the time to write it. I agree that if you're smart and you know the market, and you can write for the market, you can make 25k a year at it. I broke into magazine writing with nonfiction, and it's still my bread and butter, and I put all the elements of fiction into it, but your post hit me as a wake-up call. I've got a couple of questions for you, if you'd be so obliged: I haven't even touched on the dozens of primarily NONFICTION magazines that do use the kind of fiction I write well, and that pay from twenty to thirty or more nickels per word. Can you please touch on them? But I also know that if you write well enough, you can make enough money off secondary markets, reprints, anthologies, and collections, to make a lot of money off any story that's good enough to sell anywhere, for any amount of money. I've never done this. I have a large backlog of stories sold to magazines but none of them have been reprinted, collected, or anthologized. I don't even know what an anthology market is, or where to find one! Can you give some good pointers? And do you have a Web site?

[PeeDee]

I believe Ralan.com has a section for anthologies.

[lostlore]

Now days, there are not even ten paying magazines to send short stories to.

I make a living selling to magazines, a modest living mind you but I do it. However, I'm going to take a stab at what I think you were getting at in the original post of this thread, and I'm going to say that I agree with it.

I've never been published in the New Yorker. I think they are the top market in the world for short fiction. Beneath them but also in that top group are a handful, including the Atlantic (who've recently pared down their fiction considerably), Esquire, Harpers, Paris Review, a few more.

Then there are the top 'pro' markets, including Playboy, who pay low four-digit for their pieces, going down to the markets that pay $250-500 a story.

Finally, there are hundreds of markets that pay from $1-100 for short fiction. There are lots and lots of them. These are the tiny, mostly academic, "literary" magazines.
I don't write for the literary mags. I don't even read them. Many are prestigious I suppose, but I'm not building a CV, I'm building an IRA -- I'm a commercial writer not a teacher -- so I don't pay any attention to that market.

But you can sell dozens of stories a year to pro markets. You can also make a living a it, at least a modest one. So the pro mags are where I stay. And the trade mags which is my bread and butter, really.

But no one in the world makes a living today by EXCLUSIVELY selling stories and poetry to the New Yorker and the few other outlets that pay five-digit sums. At least, I don't THINK anyone does this. Even the top writers today are only published X number of times in any of these magazines, so it simply isn't possible. You know, Richard Ford had a short story in the NYer a few months back. I bet that was his only appearance there all year. I don't know how much he was paid but I think (help me here folks) it was certainly not less than $10,000. That's a nice sum for a nice story. But even Richard Ford can't expect to do that every month year in and year out. (Right, or am I missing something?)

However, looking back to the first half of the 20th century, there were many more high-paying markets for stories. There was a regular demand for a 5-10 thousand word short story, and the pay was huge, a dollar a word. You could sell a story to The Saturday Evening Post and make $10,000 in 1930. And, even better, you could sell 3-4 stories to the Post in a year. Then there's Colliers and Vogue and Cosmopolitan and several other big mags that paid a lot for short fiction.

There are no mags in the world, web or print, that pay those kind of rates -- that I know of at least. I don't know how much a 1930 check for $10,000 would mean in 2007, but I know it would mean more than everything I made in 2006. Like ten bucks a word, but probably more like 15. Unbelievable! And I know that nobody makes that kind of money writing short fiction.

I have a lot of hope for the Web. I'd like to know what all you other folks think about this. Considering how popular and ubiquitous the web has become, and how it's replacing newspapers and magazines and everything else, I'm very surprised that there aren't more web publications that print short fiction -- isn't there a demand for it? Not among readers of Slate, Salon, and Conde Nast pubs I guess. But I do have hope that we'll see something like the Post, on the Web, one of these days. Am I dreaming?

[lostlore]

I believe Ralan.com has a section for anthologies. It looks like it's just scifi/horror. I don't write genre at all, I only write general or mainstream fiction.

[PeeDee]

I'm not much help, then, but I just bet there's a site like ralan which appeals to things besides genre.

[ShapeSphere]

Blah, blah, blah... it's still the same old canard: etc.

heh-heh.

But Pullman has achieved both. He writes what he wants to and reaches a maximal audience. "His Dark Materials" is very successful. Soon to be a film I think.

He also says on his site:

What inspires you? (http://www.philip-pullman.com/about_the_writing.asp)
Three things. (1) Money. I do this for a living. If I don't write well, I won't earn enough money to pay the bills. (http://www.philip-pullman.com/about_the_writing.asp)

He's not an Ahtist, more of a pragmatist. Unless you meant Ahtist as in Atheist. That he most certainly is.


It's funny how when a writer expresses something going against the norms, they are sometimes labelled as a pretentious snob or overly precious. (Ref: Oversoul, etc.)


Yet lots of articles or bits about 'renegade writers' encourage the aspirant scribbler to approach matters in a new way, be bold and be creative.

I think Pullman is just stubborn. It works well for him.

EDIT: for spelling.

[PeeDee]

Money is a wonderful reason to write. It really is. Nothing motivates you to write something that will sell like wondering Will I be able to eat anything next week?

[ShapeSphere]

But I think Pullman may really be saying, "Give them something they didn't know they wanted until they read it." This I can agree with, and it's exactly why you have to read magazines in order to sell to magazines. It's my entire philosophy...

I think Pullman meant that.

Probably the biggest mistake new writers make is giving editors same old, same old. If an editor has already seen it, why would he want to buy it again, or even read it again?

But some editors are looking for the next Annie Proulx or DBC Pierre. I think they would like some of the old stuff - just repackaged slightly differenty.

I get what you're saying about geniuses and readers. I am no genius either (my previous posts will prove my point), but I think a lot of readers will just follow the crowd. A story starts to sell well, gets attention and so everybody joins in. The reader thinks "Well, it must be good - it's successful".

It's not short fiction but I wonder what market James Joyce had in mind when he wrote Finnegan's Wake?

[Silver King]

I don't know how much a 1930 check for $10,000 would mean in 2007, but I know it would mean more than everything I made in 2006. Like ten bucks a word, but probably more like 15.
Your estimate is pretty close: The story would bring you 120 grand in today's dollars.

There's a very cool calculator located here (http://minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/) that's based on the US Consumer Price Index from 1913 onward.

[PeeDee]

It's not short fiction but I wonder what market James Joyce had in mind when he wrote Finnegan's Wake?

Whatever market it was, it existed on a different plane of reality than the ones my brain works on.

[Bubastes]

Money is a wonderful reason to write. It really is. Nothing motivates you to write something that will sell like wondering Will I be able to eat anything next week?

Ya know, I hear this and understand it. But if you're able to make better money doing something other than writing, then this doesn't work quite so well. Looks like I'm not quitting the day job anytime soon.

[PeeDee]

It's the sheer joy of it. It may only support you in a studio apartment eating Ramen noodles once or twice a day, if you're lucky, but it's the sheer joy of realizing that what you're writing is paying for how you live.

I would do it. If I didn't have a family to think about, I really would.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

It's the sheer joy of it.
Reasons to Be a Writer

fame
notoriety
serious buckage
hot babes
...& as I've been semipro on&off since like 1986, I gotta tell you that ain't none of that happening.

I started an ill-fated rock band, & accomplished all four of those to my satisfaction within three months. Seriously: you can make more at bashing out three chords as a "guitarist" for a two-hour warmup gig (more if you're female, & even more if you can actually play the instrument) than you'll likely make from a story that's taken two weeks of your life. Very few venues care a whit whether you've got a college education (much less an MFA). A guitar & amp are cheaper than the next Windows upgrade, don't crash, & aren't vulnerable to viruses or spam.

It sucks. Get used to it, or get a different hobby.

[Jamesaritchie]

I make a living selling to magazines, a modest living mind you but I do it. However, I'm going to take a stab at what I think you were getting at in the original post of this thread, and I'm going to say that I agree with it.

I've never been published in the New Yorker. I think they are the top market in the world for short fiction. Beneath them but also in that top group are a handful, including the Atlantic (who've recently pared down their fiction considerably), Esquire, Harpers, Paris Review, a few more.

Then there are the top 'pro' markets, including Playboy, who pay low four-digit for their pieces, going down to the markets that pay $250-500 a story.

Finally, there are hundreds of markets that pay from $1-100 for short fiction. There are lots and lots of them. These are the tiny, mostly academic, "literary" magazines.
I don't write for the literary mags. I don't even read them. Many are prestigious I suppose, but I'm not building a CV, I'm building an IRA -- I'm a commercial writer not a teacher -- so I don't pay any attention to that market.

But you can sell dozens of stories a year to pro markets. You can also make a living a it, at least a modest one. So the pro mags are where I stay. And the trade mags which is my bread and butter, really.

But no one in the world makes a living today by EXCLUSIVELY selling stories and poetry to the New Yorker and the few other outlets that pay five-digit sums. At least, I don't THINK anyone does this. Even the top writers today are only published X number of times in any of these magazines, so it simply isn't possible. You know, Richard Ford had a short story in the NYer a few months back. I bet that was his only appearance there all year. I don't know how much he was paid but I think (help me here folks) it was certainly not less than $10,000. That's a nice sum for a nice story. But even Richard Ford can't expect to do that every month year in and year out. (Right, or am I missing something?)

However, looking back to the first half of the 20th century, there were many more high-paying markets for stories. There was a regular demand for a 5-10 thousand word short story, and the pay was huge, a dollar a word. You could sell a story to The Saturday Evening Post and make $10,000 in 1930. And, even better, you could sell 3-4 stories to the Post in a year. Then there's Colliers and Vogue and Cosmopolitan and several other big mags that paid a lot for short fiction.

There are no mags in the world, web or print, that pay those kind of rates -- that I know of at least. I don't know how much a 1930 check for $10,000 would mean in 2007, but I know it would mean more than everything I made in 2006. Like ten bucks a word, but probably more like 15. Unbelievable! And I know that nobody makes that kind of money writing short fiction.

I have a lot of hope for the Web. I'd like to know what all you other folks think about this. Considering how popular and ubiquitous the web has become, and how it's replacing newspapers and magazines and everything else, I'm very surprised that there aren't more web publications that print short fiction -- isn't there a demand for it? Not among readers of Slate, Salon, and Conde Nast pubs I guess. But I do have hope that we'll see something like the Post, on the Web, one of these days. Am I dreaming?

Well, there are still quite a few dollar per word mags around, and even a few that pay a fair amount over a dollar per word.

The last writer I know that actually earned a living from selling primarily literary short stories was Paul Darcy Boles. The only living writer I know who can be said to make a living from short stories is Patrick McManus, but like any other good writer, he doesn't limit himself.

The trouble with a lot of this is teh word "Exclusively." Other than Boles, I'm not sure any writer has ever earned a living exclusively from short stories because if you can earn a living by selling short stories, then you don't have to earn a living from selling short stories.

Even those mostly literary writers from the thirties and forties who were paid such huge amounts by Saturday Evening Post and the like usually wrote novels, screenplays, etc.

Just as today. There are many writers who earn what most would consider a small fortune from short stories. Writers such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, etc., earn a big bunch of money from short stories, but the short story money is just a sideline, despite the amount they bring in.

When it comes to money, I think many new writers just look at the rate magazines pay and think it's impossible to earn much money from short stories. But earning a living from short stories has, with a very few exceptions, never been about earning big chunkc of money from single magazines. It's about earning small amounts of money from lots of magazines, and then seeking secondary markets such as collections, anthologies, movies, etc.

Roger Zelazny once told about a short story he wrote that sold for very little money, but the anthology markets allowed that single short story to pay for an Alaskan cruise. From personal experience, I sold a short story called "The Real West" to Ellery Queen. I can't remember what they paid, but it was something over three hundred bucks. Now, that isn't much money, though it's hard to complain about three hundred bucks for less than eight hours writing.

The thing is, I was then asked to write a screenplay based on this short story. I got a nice chunk of change for writing the script, and another nice chunk of change for an option on the rights to the script. Even though it has yet to be made into a movie, and may never be, I still earned one heck of a lot more than I would have earned by selling a story to The New Yorker or anyone else.

But do you count all of it as short story money? It certainly is indirect short story money. There would have been no screenplay and no option money were it not for the short story. But what column do you put the money in?

And what is earning a living? Is it minimum wage, is it one dollar above the poverty level, is it the national average income of about $37,000, or is it just whatever it takes to make an individual happy?

Anyway, back to my original point. If you can earn anything resembling a living by writing short stories, then you almost certainly don't need to earn a living by writing short stories. If you're good enough to sell short stories to national magazines at all, you're good enough to write many different things that will sell, and sooner or later, many such opportunities come along. Short stories then usually get pushed to then back burner.

[PeeDee]

Reasons to Be a Writer

fame
notoriety
serious buckage
hot babes
...& as I've been semipro on&off since like 1986, I gotta tell you that ain't none of that happening.

I started an ill-fated rock band, & accomplished all four of those to my satisfaction within three months. Seriously: you can make more at bashing out three chords as a "guitarist" for a two-hour warmup gig (more if you're female, & even more if you can actually play the instrument) than you'll likely make from a story that's taken two weeks of your life. Very few venues care a whit whether you've got a college education (much less an MFA). A guitar & amp are cheaper than the next Windows upgrade, don't crash, & aren't vulnerable to viruses or spam.

It sucks. Get used to it, or get a different hobby.


I have no idea if you're arguing with me or not, so I'll just reply, you know, general-like.

1) I don't think I've ever had a short story take me two weeks to write. If conditions are good, I usually finish the story the same day, usually in under two or three hours. Maybe a little longer, if I don't figure it out until I'm halfway done writing it.

2) I played rhythm guitar in high school for a band, despite my general lack of guiter playing prowess. What you say is, to an extent, true.

3) If hot babes are part of this writing package, then I probably need to have a sit down and a talk with my wife, so's she's not caught off guard when groupies show up at my door, swooning over my latest entry in Realms of Fantasy.

That's it. I'm not really arguing, because I'm not really sure if you were arguing with me in the first place (I don't think you were, actually; I think we're somewhere on the same page).

I'm worried less about fame and noteriety than I am about finishing the story and sending it to someone who wants it. I think that fame and noteriety, much like concepts of "great art" and "timeless endurance" are things that generally take care of themselves, and it is no business of mine what occurs there.

[PeeDee]

Anyway, back to my original point. If you can earn anything resembling a living by writing short stories, then you almost certainly don't need to earn a living by writing short stories. If you're good enough to sell short stories to national magazines at all, you're good enough to write many different things that will sell, and sooner or later, many such opportunities come along. Short stories then usually get pushed to then back burner.

Which, honestly, I think is a shame. I write novels, screenplays, serials, whatever, but the short story has remained my first and most favorite medium over the years. I think there are a lot of things you can do in a short story that you could never manage in a novel (well, that I never could). Things with tone, points of view, and fooling the reader. You can play with the reader over the course of ten pages, but if you did the same thing over a three hundred page novel, it would come off as cheating the reader.

Mostly, I'm nostalgic for an era which I did not live in: the golden age of the short story market (particularly genre) when you'd have Harlan Ellison, Bob Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, and so on, all contributing to fiction magazines which surfaced and blazed for a little bit before vanishing and giving birth to something new.

The history of the SF/F short story markets fascinate me, and I have all manner of books on the subject that I've enjoyed to no end, and I wish it were that way now. It won't be, not unless the internet suddenly causes a serious paradigm shift in how short stories are sold and read (which it might; I haven't given up all hope).

There is still a short story market, no matter what area you're looking for. It may not be huge, but I think at the moment it's a little more stable than it was forty years ago (to an extent). You still see the occasional short story appearing in a magazine that's written by Stephen King, or Neil Gaiman, or Gene Wolfe. Ray Bradbury, if I recall, is writing an ongoing story about time travel and F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Strand Magazine.

I'm nostalgic for the idea of the short story golden age, I suspect, rather than any semblence of what it actually was. Scraping by a living in a small apartment and rooming with your buddy Robert Silverberg and struggling to make the rent is much more romantic to read about from here than it would actually be to live.

[Jamesaritchie]

Reasons to Be a Writer

fame
notoriety
serious buckage
hot babes
...& as I've been semipro on&off since like 1986, I gotta tell you that ain't none of that happening.

I started an ill-fated rock band, & accomplished all four of those to my satisfaction within three months. Seriously: you can make more at bashing out three chords as a "guitarist" for a two-hour warmup gig (more if you're female, & even more if you can actually play the instrument) than you'll likely make from a story that's taken two weeks of your life. Very few venues care a whit whether you've got a college education (much less an MFA). A guitar & amp are cheaper than the next Windows upgrade, don't crash, & aren't vulnerable to viruses or spam.

It sucks. Get used to it, or get a different hobby.


Well, only one of those reasons ever played a part in why I write. I had a taste of fame when I first started writing, and I ducked out fast. 98% of what I've written over the last six years has been under one pseudonym or another, and I try to keep all of them quiet.

The hot babes might be nice, but I've been married to one for twenty-seven years, and one is enough.

I enjoy the process of writing, I really do, but I'm a money writer. I sat down the first time to make money, and I made it.

As for time, if it takes me two weeks to write a short story, I know I've written a truly lousy short story. The vast majority of my short stories take a few hours to write, and anything over two days would scare me to death.

And I never really pay for a Windows upgrade. It's a write off. Either the IRS gets the money and I get nothing, of Bill Gates gets the money, and I get the upgrade. Either way, I don't get to keep the money, so I'd rather get something in return.

I do disagree about the college education and the MFA. Venues may not ask or care whether you have either, but having them should mean you stand a much better chance of writing something that will sell.

And having the right college degree and/or plus an MFA will get you past a lot of slush piles and land you directly on the main editor's desk, if you know how to use your credntials properly.

[PeeDee]

You know, until I fell in love with this latest MS Word, 2007 Beta, I couldn't be bothered to upgrade my writing software. I would still be on Windows 98 if I hadn't bought a new computer with XP. I don't generally upgrade anything until the "things it does for me" outnumbers the "things it does that I don't need."

If I had my way, I'd probably still be hitting a typewriter everyday.

[Jamesaritchie]

Which, honestly, I think is a shame. I write novels, screenplays, serials, whatever, but the short story has remained my first and most favorite medium over the years. I think there are a lot of things you can do in a short story that you could never manage in a novel (well, that I never could). Things with tone, points of view, and fooling the reader. You can play with the reader over the course of ten pages, but if you did the same thing over a three hundred page novel, it would come off as cheating the reader.

Mostly, I'm nostalgic for an era which I did not live in: the golden age of the short story market (particularly genre) when you'd have Harlan Ellison, Bob Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, and so on, all contributing to fiction magazines which surfaced and blazed for a little bit before vanishing and giving birth to something new.

The history of the SF/F short story markets fascinate me, and I have all manner of books on the subject that I've enjoyed to no end, and I wish it were that way now. It won't be, not unless the internet suddenly causes a serious paradigm shift in how short stories are sold and read (which it might; I haven't given up all hope).

There is still a short story market, no matter what area you're looking for. It may not be huge, but I think at the moment it's a little more stable than it was forty years ago (to an extent). You still see the occasional short story appearing in a magazine that's written by Stephen King, or Neil Gaiman, or Gene Wolfe. Ray Bradbury, if I recall, is writing an ongoing story about time travel and F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Strand Magazine.

I'm nostalgic for the idea of the short story golden age, I suspect, rather than any semblence of what it actually was. Scraping by a living in a small apartment and rooming with your buddy Robert Silverberg and struggling to make the rent is much more romantic to read about from here than it would actually be to live.

I think it's a shame, as well, but honestly, it's what I've done. Once people are willing to pay you bigger bucks for longer projects, it's just very difficult to find time for writing short stories, and diversity is, well, both fun and profitable.

Not having lived bback in that Golden Age, I can't say, but from all I've read about it, I wonder if it didn't resemble the internet in many ways.

Many of those old genre magazines paid as little as webszines pay now, and came and went at about the same rate websines seem to come and go now. There are paying webzines here and there, and some few pay pro rates. It may be the internet is becoming the same sort of minor league for writers as many of those Golden Age genre mags were for writers of that time period?

And does anyone know how Card's webzine is doing? They pay six cents per word up to $500. Not bad at all for a pixel place.

[PeeDee]

I talked about it at greater length somewhere else on these forums. Or hell, this thread has wandered so freely that I may have talked about it here. I do believe that the internet will, in time, become a major contender for short stories, in very much exactly the same way that magazines were, during the golden age. I think that once internet webzines, as a whole, get their metaphorical feet under them, they're going to take off.

It may not be a world-of-writing-altering paradigm shift, but with the internet, there definitely are changes in the wind. For short stories and for audio short stories. I doubt we'll properly be able to identify it until it's born and walking around. It won't be properly quantifiable until then.

Scott Card's Medicine Show reminds me very strongly of the early days of something like Isaac Asimov's Magazine, or some of the early Joseph Cambell magazines. (I have a wonderful book on all this stuff, and it's in a box somewhere, and if I had it out, I would be using names here. Damn it.)

I don't know how it's doing, but I hope it does well and I hope others follow suit.

[PeeDee]

1)Peedee,

You accuse me of being thick like a cement block, yet I have to explain my point about thuglit.

Those stories were probably rejected by the few mystery magazines that pay. The stories were just as good as the ones that are published for money. (I recently bought a double issue of Ellery Queen--I'm having a hard time getting through it because the stories are so dull). For a publication credit the writers are relegated to submitting their story for a t-shirt. And it's all because the paying short fiction market is dead.

The choices fiction editors make are subjective.

2)Birol,

I'm sure I could go through your ezine and give you some bad mouthing criticism but I won't because I have more class than you.

3)Ritchie,

You are a jackass. You just insulted every writer who was ever published by a nonpaying ezine which includes probably dozens of writers who post on this website.

1) You have to explain your point because it makes no sense by itself. ThugLit is not on the same page as EQMM. I bet they're nice guys, and I bet the writers are good folk too, and I bet that's not the point.

Have you any PROOF that those who published through ThugLit have done the circuit, reached your conclusion that the market is dead, and then regulated their stories to ThugLit for a t-shirt? How do you know they didn't submit there first?

2) You have yet to display a bit more class that Birol, or my kitty for that matter. You are being obtuse, and rather than debating your point with us, you have continued to restate your point over and over again, uninterested in any other viewpoint. I'm sure you could go to any ezine or magazine out there and bad mouth them. Good job. I would like to see exactly where you're qualified to judge a magazine or a short story slush pile, though.

Go work for a magazine, read the slush pile, and then come back and complain. You'll have credence then. Otherwise, you're just another writer going "My story is brilliant, an' it's in a slushpile, an' so all the stories in the slush pile must be brilliant too, an' der mean ol' editor just don't realize all the goodness they're sitting on!" That attitude's common. It pops up everywhere.

3) Since you're not obtuse and are explaining things, care to point out the bit where he insulted all of us? 'Cause I must have missed it.

[Lyra Jean]

There is no reason for personal attacks.

Does the webzine make money off of the stories it prints and doesn't pay the author? If it does then um yeah the writer is stupid for sending it to that market. That's like saying oh I'm going to go work at my day job but hey you don't have to pay me.

On some good news. I just sent a previously published short to a podcasting zine if it is accepted I'll make $100. I'll know in a month to six weeks. :D

[PeeDee]

Does the webzine make money off of the stories it prints and doesn't pay the author? If it does then um yeah the writer is stupid for sending it to that market. That's like saying oh I'm going to go work at my day job but hey you don't have to pay me.

Exactly. "I'll flip your burgers and serve your fries, but you don't pay me six dollars an hour, just give me the sweet McDonald's T-shirt and we'll call it good, kay?"

[Sheryl Nantus]

Exactly. "I'll flip your burgers and serve your fries, but you don't pay me six dollars an hour, just give me the sweet McDonald's T-shirt and we'll call it good, kay?"

I've never understood the logic that somehow the web zine can't afford to pay the writer. They BUY the domain, PAY to design the website and then ADVERTISE it all over the place, but can't give the writer anything?

that old mantra of "exposure" only goes so far when trying to convince me to give my writing away for free.

as it is, I think we're dealing with a dead horse here. Obviously if you want to believe in the Big Conspiracy then you won't be persuaded by anything posted here and feel much better whining about everything and everyone being against you.

it's obviously much easier to believe that your work, along with thousands of others, is *much* better than the published stories and that the editors just have it in for you. Or that they're paid off to only push the big names or some such thing.

of course, we've got posts to the contrary, but hey... whatever. If it makes you feel better to believe in the Big Conspiracy, then so be it.

the rest of us, of course, will continue to submit and be published in legitimate publications and deal with legitimate publishers for more than a t-shirt in return.

[Jamesaritchie]

Peedee,

You accuse me of being thick like a cement block, yet I have to explain my point about thuglit.


The choices fiction editors make are subjective.



Ritchie,

You are a jackass. You just insulted every writer who was ever published by a nonpaying ezine which includes probably dozens of writers who post on this website.


You are being incredibly dense. Saying the decisions fiction editors make are all subjective is not only being dense, it's just plain foolishness. It's the most nonsensical thing I've ever heard anyone make, and no one who can read their own name should ever make such a truly silly statement.

Sit down and write a piece of fiction you know is pure garbage. Make it as bad as you can possibly make it. Write incoherent sentences, leave huge holes in the plot, and have all the characters speak like utter morons.

That's what fiction editors see in slush piles, but by your reasoning, thinking these stories are far worse than the ones they buy is merely a subjuntive decision. There is such a thing as good writing, and there is such a thing as truly horrible, illiterate writing. Slush piles are packed with the latter, and it's the height of foolishness, to be polite, to think the decisions fiction editors make are subjective. Writers get rejected because the stories they send in stink on ice. And whether or not you like or dislike stories in any magazine, on in a slush pile, has noting at all to do with the quality of those stories. This is guaranteed failure thinking. No one who thinks this way stands a prayer of ever writing good fiction.

No, dense as a cement block doesn't begin to describe you.

First, no, I'm not a jackass, I'm an elephant. But you probably won't get that, either.

I didn't insult any writers. I simply spoke the truth. There are far too many wannabe writers out there who are more than willing to give their work away, and it's almost always a terrible and silly decision. But, gee, since some of those writers are on this forum, I shouldn't tell the truth?

Submitting fiction to almost all of the no pay magazines, print or web, is simply not a smart thing to do.

And there are far too many magazines out there, print and web, that somehow manage to pay everyone else, but not writers. Can't afford it, they say. Well, trying telling your internet provider that you can't afford to pay them, or try telling your website host that you can't afford to pay them, and see how long your webzine lasts. And if you have a print magazine, trying telling your paper supplier or your ink supplier or your printer that you can't afford to pay them. You'll have to use a crayon on toilet paper for your next issue. But, sorry, writers, we can't pay you.

Now, there are a handfull of no pay mags out there worth submitting to, but 99 out of every 100 are as useless as teats on a boar. They don't help the writer, and they do hurt the industry as a whole. Why pay for stories when so many new writers are willing to give you their work for free? Sure, it may be inferious work. It almost always is inferior. But, heck, it's free.

But, really, if you honestly believe the decisions fiction editors make are subjective, then one thing I know for certain. . .you can't write fiction well enough for it to matter how good or bad the markets are, and you never will. Only those who can't write, and who simply can't tell good from bad, would ever say the decisions fiction editors make are subjective.

As for thuglit, get a clue. I couldn't find much on that site that was of professional quality, and almost nothing that wasn't a fifteenth generation clone of things I'd read a hundred times before I was thirty. They're about as original as dirt. Many of the pieces don't even quality as real short stories. The couple of well-written, professional quality pieces I found on the site simply are not appropriate for any paying magazine I know. Nothing subjective about this. They do not fit, the editors would not want them, and the readers of these magazines would not read them.

You also make the incredibly silly mistake of thinking that because you like something, it must be good, and if you don't like something, it must be bad. You think that because you like the stories in thuglit, they're good stories, and because you don't like the stories in Ellery Queen, they're bad stories. Life, and editors, do not work this way. Thank God. Objective criteria for good writing and good storytelling does exist, and so does objective criteria for horrible writing and poor storytelling. But you don't know what they are, or you wouldn't think for a heartbeat that fiction editors make many subjective decisions.

Yes, sometimes an editor needs five good stories, and of the hundreds and hundreds that come in, he gets eight, so he does have to make something of a subjective opinion concerning three. But those three WILL find a good home somewhere else, if they really are any good.

And like it or not, believe it or not, most of what any fiction editor sees is pure garbage. There's nothing subjective about it. It's junk. It's crap. It's a pure waste of paper, ink, time, and sanity.

But have a good life. It won't be a writing life, but I hope it's a good one.

[Silver King]

Birol,

I'm sure I could go through your ezine and give you some bad mouthing criticism but I won't because I have more class than you.

Ritchie,

You are a jackass.
Is this what's called being classy?

[Birol]

Birol,

I'm sure I could go through your ezine and give you some bad mouthing criticism but I won't because I have more class than you.



It would be difficult for you to go through Coyote Wild and do so today, because our first issue isn't scheduled to be released until 16 days from now. However, once that first issue is released, I'm certain you could. I'm certain someone will. If the feedback is honest, we will welcome it, as it will help us improve.

Where you and I differ is in our approach to criticism. What you refer to as "bad-mouthing criticism" and "personal attacks," I call honest critiques.

The majority of readers are not writers and those non-writing readers are more fickle than any editor or writer. They are the reason that editors must be harsh. A non-writing reader will not give a story the same chance that a writing reader would. And, without the non-writing readers, publications would fold. They are the ones who must be catered to if a publication is to survive and continue to be able to purchase fiction from writers.

As for my earlier comments on your fiction, they were not personal either. They were not about you the author. Your fiction is not you. The few comments I made were nothing compared to what an editor would give you or what a critiquer should give you.

There is nothing you can say about my writing that would compare to what my writing group has said and will say about it, and they truly love and believe in my talent and skill, often more than I do. They do not offer honest criticism to hurt me, but because they want me to reach the potential they see in me.

I do the same for them and for anyone I take the time to critique. To do otherwise is a waste of my time and a disservice to them.

[Rolling Thunder]

Since the short story market is soooooo dead I guess nobody would be interested in subbing to Glitter Train by the January 31 deadline?;)

I mean, if they publish your work, it's only a measly $700. :rolleyes:

Besides, non paying markets are where you cut your teeth. Bands don't get top venues right off the bat and surviving long term as a full time band in the music circuit is achieved by only a very few.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Reasons to Be a Writer


fame
notoriety
serious buckage
hot babes

...& as I've been semipro on&off since like 1986, I gotta tell you that ain't none of that happening.

I started an ill-fated rock band, & accomplished all four of those to my satisfaction within three months. Seriously: you can make more at bashing out three chords as a "guitarist" for a two-hour warmup gig (more if you're female, & even more if you can actually play the instrument) than you'll likely make from a story that's taken two weeks of your life. Very few venues care a whit whether you've got a college education (much less an MFA). A guitar & amp are cheaper than the next Windows upgrade, don't crash, & aren't vulnerable to viruses or spam.

It sucks. Get used to it, or get a different hobby.



Ooo! Wanna be in a band with me? :D

[jdkiggins]

Peedee,

You accuse me of being thick like a cement block, yet I have to explain my point about thuglit.

Those stories were probably rejected by the few mystery magazines that pay. The stories were just as good as the ones that are published for money. (I recently bought a double issue of Ellery Queen--I'm having a hard time getting through it because the stories are so dull). For a publication credit the writers are relegated to submitting their story for a t-shirt. And it's all because the paying short fiction market is dead.

The choices fiction editors make are subjective.

Birol,

I'm sure I could go through your ezine and give you some bad mouthing criticism but I won't because I have more class than you.

Ritchie,

You are a jackass. You just insulted every writer who was ever published by a nonpaying ezine which includes probably dozens of writers who post on this website.
Abomination,
In just this one post you’ve managed to insult three members of this community. Please step back and consider not taking comments and constructive criticism as personal attacks.

The number one rule here at AW is respect your fellow writer.

Please don’t use the meanings of your username to attack those who are simply giving their views of a subject.

Abomination:
A person who is loathsome or disgusting.
Hate coupled with disgust.
An action that is vicious or vile; an action that arouses disgust or abhorrence.

[blacbird]

Since the short story market is soooooo dead I guess nobody would be interested in subbing to Glitter Train by the January 31 deadline?;)

I mean, if they publish your work, it's only a measly $700. :rolleyes:



I'm afraid if Glitter Train publishes your work, you're likely to get paid nothing.

caw

[Rolling Thunder]

I'm afraid if Glitter Train publishes your work, you're likely to get paid nothing.

caw
Hah! Good catch there!


GLIMMER TRAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :ROFL:


(Bet Dawno would like Glitter Train though.)

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

PeeDee: not arguing with you in the least; mostly running off at a tangent. For some reason, it seems much easier for beginners to define "success" in something hands-on & immediate like a cheezy band than from delayed-gratification stuff like writing.

Of course, that just brings the whole thing back-yet-again to the beg-question "What the heck do you mean 'success,' anyway?"

JARitchie: there's likely big swathes of stuff over which we disagree, but this certainly ain't one of 'em.

I certainly "get" what you're saying in providing something different for the editor. My feeling is that there'll always be at least one thick brick who responds, "Well, I sent my best twenty splatterpunk stories to Field & Stream, & guess what, smarty -- they didn't buy a single one!!!"

[PeeDee]

You know what always impresses me is when I butt heads with a kid author, and they respond....by using well reasoned and patient statements to explain their viewpoints, and in the end we make a couple of jokes and enjoy our discussion. My respect for them is enormous, and I am firmly in their court.

The reason it impresses me is that mostly what I get are kids like you, abomination, who show up and get snitty when someone argues. Did I accuse you of being dense? Not particularly, but you're denser than some nuetron stars out there. You've got a damned gravity field.

If James here were so horrible and unimaginable as you make him out to be, how's he managed a lengthy career? He's no fool. I'd consider how someone's doing before you dismiss their arguments, particularly when they're in the form of lengthy and well-reasoned articles.

Birol is not only a damned good editor, but a sight better writer than you have thusly proved yourself to be.

Muddy Waters tells, "Dont' write no checks your tail can't cash," and I suggest you listen to him. If you're going to talk big, you'd better back it up.

And as for slamming me.....come on, kid. My teeth are sharpened. I can rumble with you all night. I've even got my stretchy pants on.

[PeeDee]

PeeDee: not arguing with you in the least; mostly running off at a tangent. For some reason, it seems much easier for beginners to define "success" in something hands-on & immediate like a cheezy band than from delayed-gratification stuff like writing.

Of course, that just brings the whole thing back-yet-again to the beg-question "What the heck do you mean 'success,' anyway?"


I was pretty sure that's what you meant, but I'm relieved to see you state it. The startup band is a great analogy for beginning writing.

In a band, I qualify success to mean, more than one gig. I would call solid success (the "I'm getting good" level) to be playing at the same joint a couple of different times.

On a writing level, it's when I'm writing something and then finding it a home. Very infrequently these days do I write something that doesn't have a home before I send it out. Even when I do write something that no one's expecting, I still expect to find a home for it in short order. I write to be read.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Unworthy Sailor is sorry to report that this one keeps reading the thread title as "Face it! The paying short fiction market is DEAF."

:eek:

[PeeDee]

Unworthy Sailor is sorry to report that this one keeps reading the thread title as "Face it! The paying short fiction market is DEAF."

:eek:

"It's a short story about deaf people."

"WHAT? I DON'T HAVE A DEAD PEEPHOLE!"

"What? No, I think you didn't hear me right."

"I FEAR YOU'RE NOT BRIGHT TOO!"

"Cripes! It's a piece of life fiction!"

"WHAT?? YOU WANT A PIECE OF WIFE FRICTION? GET OUT OF MY OFFICE, YOU CAD!"

[ShapeSphere]

Whatever market it was, it existed on a different plane of reality than the ones my brain works on.

:D Heh-heh. Yes. After I finished Finnegan's Wake had exactly the same feelings as after watching David Lynch's movie Mulholland Drive - "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT!?"

[Jamesaritchie]

PeeDee:

JARitchie: there's likely big swathes of stuff over which we disagree, but this certainly ain't one of 'em.

I certainly "get" what you're saying in providing something different for the editor. My feeling is that there'll always be at least one thick brick who responds, "Well, I sent my best twenty splatterpunk stories to Field & Stream, & guess what, smarty -- they didn't buy a single one!!!"

God help us if we ever start agreeing on everything. It will almost certainly mean we're both dead wrong. Writing, like most of the arts, is a place where two people can disagree completely, and both of them can still be right. But when everyone agrees, watch out.

[Jamesaritchie]

"Success" is one of those words we probably each have to define on our own. For me, "success" has always meant no more and no less than setting goals and meeting them.

I am also a firm believer of the old expression, "Success is easy. Just set you goals so low you can't fail."

It bugs when when people insist they are successful, no matter what happens, or how things work out. Failure is not a crime, not a sin, not even a bad thing. If there can be no failure, there can be no success.

Trying hard is a good thing, and to be applauded, but trying is not succeeding.

A person is not a failure because they fail at something, a person is a failure because they refuse to move on, to try something new, to set new goals.

The trick, of course, is setting goals that are not so low you can't fail, and not so high they can't be reached.

[Del]

I'm a common writer with common taste in reading, which means that when I write to pleae myself, I'm also writing to please throngs of editors and readers because we have the same taste in fiction. If we didn't, they wouldn't like what I write.



I'm screwed.

[blacbird]

I'm screwed.

Me, too. But I've known that for quite a while now.

caw

[Mustangpilot]

My favorite books to carry when traveling are collections of shorts except when traveling in Alaska. There you need a big thick novel to tide you over between weather events. (grin)

MP

[blacbird]

My favorite books to carry when traveling are collections of shorts except when traveling in Alaska. There you need a big thick novel to tide you over between weather events. (grin)

MP

Up here in Anchorage we've had a 12-18 inches of good powder snow in the past 24 hrs, more up in the ski areas. That on top of 8-12 inches last week. After three or four dry winters in a row, them ski resort folks are sooooooo happy. If you're coming up, bring Proust.

caw

[Mustangpilot]

Abomination, your posting history on this board suggests that you believe the publishing industry is a closed system, that it is, somehow, against you as an individual. It's not. The publishing industry is a business. It's a thing. It has no emotional stake in anything. It doesn't care about you as an individual one way or another. To it, you are just another component to the system: a writer. If you work -- if you turn out salable stories that fit its needs -- great! It will use you, it will buy your work. It doesn't care who you are or who you're not. If you don't work -- if your work is slush -- then it won't use you, you will be rejected.

That's it. That's the entire system in a nutshell. If your writing fits the needs of the market you are submitting to -- and those needs are more complex than just how good your writing is -- and given the bittery quality of your posts, I'm doubting that you've got this fiction writing thing down -- you will be published. If your writing doesn't fit the market needs -- if it's of poor quality, either mechanically or from a story perspective, if it doesn't fit the market's parameters, if it's too long or too short, if it's too much like what was published recently, if it's not enough like what was published recently, if it doesn't fit the publications budget -- you won't be.

Who you are or who you aren't just. doesn't. matter.


I'm new to this. However, the above quote is right on target. I think I see the problem. Abominations stated early on that he spent a lot of time arguing with neanderthal conservatives. I suspect he's a socialist type who believes corporations exhist to provide him with a living. I have no idea what kind of writer he may be having, to my knowledge, never read any of his work. He would be wise to understand that the purpose of business is to make a profit not to provide jobs or ego satifying comfort zones.

Mustangpilot

[batgirl]

Umm, I'm a pale-pink socialist (west-coast Canadian, believer in universal health-care etc., votes NDP and so on) and I have no problem with researching magazines and publishers, following guidelines, and accepting rejections.
The gov't exists to help those who need help, so it isn't all up to personal charity and chance. Corporations and businesses are about making money.
My suspicion is that ab is more upset about his personal genius going unrecognised than about the paying market shrinking, but that is just suspicion.
I do think there are fewer short fiction markets than, say, the 1940s, when there were heaps of different pulp magazines, but we live now. The online market is expanding, and some of them pay decently. (Hi Birol!)
-Barbara

[Silver King]

The gov't exists to help those who need help, so it isn't all up to personal charity and chance.
Ahem. I was going to make a political comment here, but then this wonderful thread might get catapulted over to TIO.;)

It's difficult to add anything new to what's already been said, but I'm reminded of a guy I went to college with who was forever complaining about the lack of affection he was shown by the ladies who attended our school. He never once seemed to consider it might have something to do with his approach, or how he carried himself, or something as simple and obvious as personal grooming. No matter how we tried to advise him, he always argued it wasn't his fault, but rather the women he encountered, who simply couldn't appreciate his virtues.

He was a lonely person, and remains so to this day, some twenty years later.

[PeeDee]

It's not socialist, or conservative, or anything else. It's laziness and arrogance and sheer bloody-minded stubborn stupidity. Writer or not. I could find snowplow drivers as moronic.

[blacbird]

Oh, come on, Pete, don't hold back. Say what you mean.

caw

[bsolah]

I suspect he's a socialist type who believes corporations exhist to provide him with a living. I have no idea what kind of writer he may be having, to my knowledge, never read any of his work. He would be wise to understand that the purpose of business is to make a profit not to provide jobs or ego satifying comfort zones.

Pardon?

Since when do socialists say that corporations exist to provide people with a living. I agree with you, they're there to make profit and that's the problem. You ought to know something about socialism before you open your mouth.

I suspect you're picking a political argument in the wrong place (this is a writing forum) because he called Conservatives neanderthals and you go offended. Ooga booga to you.

I'm a socialist (the real deal - I read Marx) and I have no qualms in submitting my stories to magazines. Though I do have my criticisms of an increasingly profit-driven publishing industry, we don't live in a socialist society and we can't just ignore the way the system works to suit our dreams.

[Jamesaritchie]

Pardon?

Since when do socialists say that corporations exist to provide people with a living. I agree with you, they're there to make profit and that's the problem. You ought to know something about socialism before you open your mouth.

I suspect you're picking a political argument in the wrong place (this is a writing forum) because he called Conservatives neanderthals and you go offended. Ooga booga to you.

I'm a socialist (the real deal - I read Marx) and I have no qualms in submitting my stories to magazines. Though I do have my criticisms of an increasingly profit-driven publishing industry, we don't live in a socialist society and we can't just ignore the way the system works to suit our dreams.

Well, I know quite a few socialists, and I've studied socialism a good deal, but I'd never call Marx a socialist, except on the surface. Of ocurse, I'd never call any form of socialism intelligent, workable, or logical.

Especially when a socialist thinks making a profit is not a good thing. Even most socialists have learned that a system without profit is doomed to failure.

[bsolah]

You're really meeting the wrong 'socialists.' They sound like Stalinists, which is what everyone mistakes for socialism nowadays. Marx not a socialist? Right, I'll just leave that one alone. You ought to read some Marx before you say that.

Socialism is a system based on human need and not profit. Any socialist who says otherwise is not a socialist. It's what the whole ideology is based on; even the weird factions agree on this.

[veinglory]

Time, I think, to stop talking about socialism.

How 'bout them markets?

[Sailor Kenshin]

You're really meeting the wrong 'socialists.' They sound like Stalinists, which is what everyone mistakes for socialism nowadays. Marx not a socialist? Right, I'll just leave that one alone. You ought to read some Marx before you say that.

Socialism is a system based on human need and not profit. Any socialist who says otherwise is not a socialist. It's what the whole ideology is based on; even the weird factions agree on this.

Not to hijack the thread or nothin'----but profit IS human need.

Who do you think rescues all those hurricane victims? Where does the money come from?

[Birol]

Thanks, Vein. I had written a post that said much the same, but it got eaten without appearing.

If the political discourse continues, the thread can be split and moved to TIO/CE.

[Lyra Jean]

I have both of my short stories sent to two different magazines. I would have more out if I had more written. Hopefully, I'll have one finished by Monday and a second finished by the end of next week.