Better hurry, kids: Tor.com closing to unsolicited subs Jan. 7

Bye bye, market. It was nice getting rejected by you umpteen times.

Seems like a number of short fiction markets have been shrinking lately. I gather that Tor.com isn't going under, just changing the way they obtain short stories. Still, it feels like this list of places to send shorts to has gotten steadily smaller this past couple years.

That's a huge bummer! Although it sounds like they aren't pulling much from slush pile these days, and decided to put our false hope out of its misery.

Yeah, I recently heard from someone near the issue, that Tor's slush was getting unmanageable again. They're getting a lot more (readable) referrals from professional consulting editors and agents, I've also heard. I have nothing in Tor's calibre right now. So any future sales I might make there will now have to go through my agent, and probably be related to the big fantasy thing we're pitching.

Too bad. It was an incredibly challenging market, but worth the trouble.

Well, crap. I had a near miss from them this year, have something in the works I thought they might like, but don't think I can finish it by then. Plus, I tend to "write long", and there's few enough markets for 10,000+ words SF as it is.

It's a business, and they must of course manage it however they see fit.

But as a reader, I wonder if I was really lacking in a source for shorts by established genre authors. It seems...an odd choice to me.

Quite a few authors I read in the 70s -- Niven, George RR Martin, to name two -- cut their teeth on short stories. The short form has been a kind of "farm team" for developing authors. If those markets are dying or being closed to amateurs, what takes their place? Self-pubbing on Amazon??

Is the obvious next question: Who has the best, up to date list of "consulting editors"?

And just think about what this does to their inboxes.

I gave it a shot. May as well be rejected by the best, right?

Tazlima said:

I gave it a shot. May as well be rejected by the best, right?

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Good luck!

I had noticed over the last few months that the times logged by the submission grinder had gone from about four months to over six months, and wondered if there was a problem. It's a shame it's going, I only submitted once but they provided really helpful feedback, which seems to be rare. I've had something in there for a couple of months so I guess I'll wait it out.

I can't figure out why short stories are less popular these days. With e-pubs and handy reading devices, plus our allegedly diminished attention spans, you'd think people would be reading more short stories, not less.

griffins said:

I can't figure out why short stories are less popular these days. With e-pubs and handy reading devices, plus our allegedly diminished attention spans, you'd think people would be reading more short stories, not less.

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I don't know why, but it may actually be that with so many more things competing for our attention, when we do make time to read, we want to sink our teeth into something meatier. There's also that thing about wanting to get pulled into a world and characters. If I want a light, skimming the surface SFF experience, I can watch a movie or TV episode. But if I want to really immerse myself in a character and world, I want to read a big, fat novel.

If someone I know gets a story accepted somewhere, I'll read it. And I read critting partner's shorts. And I like many of them, but they don't give me that "pulled into another world" feeling that a novel does.

Inevitably, when I try to write a short, I'm told it reads more like the first chapter of a novel than something completely stand alone

I've got some things I think that I could send them, there's some stuff that neeeds polishing and some stuff that's almost finished which would fit for them. I'll be sad to see them go.

ETA: Ok. Looks like I'm going to have to look harder because I know I have something, but I can't find that something.

ETA2: Found it. I have a second canidate, but I think this one will work.

I can't help but feel this is a step in the wrong direction. Innovation and heterogeneity suffer the fewer paths there are to publishing. Those consulting editors with their backgrounds will have a strong idea of what they're looking for, and they'll be less prepared to take chances by offering something out of the mold.

Tor must be having lots of submissions, then? (Which is understandable. It is Tor, after all.)

griffins said:

I can't figure out why short stories are less popular these days. With e-pubs and handy reading devices, plus our allegedly diminished attention spans, you'd think people would be reading more short stories, not less.

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Yeah, that is interesting. You would think short stories would be more popular.

But, like Roxxsmom said, maybe people would prefer longer stories because people want more "meatier" stories or stories that have more...world building or more time spent with the world and characters, thus leading to more immersion?

Even as someone who now has a short attention span (compared to my younger years) and with lots of mediums getting my attention (ie. lots of books, comics, manga, Internet blogs or videos, TV shows, movies, etc), I don't read much short stories when it comes to my reading tastes.

I always feel more absorbed in novels vs novellas and short stories.

I can't explain it, but most short stories/novellas I have read feel too short for me. I just can't get into the characters or world long enough to get attached to them.

I mean, I can read a short story or novella waaaay faster than a TV episode or movie. That's not enough time for me to get used to the characters, or get immersed into a speculative (or secondary).

I'd want to keep reading about the characters (and the worlds in speculative fiction) for a longer time. I can always take breaks as I read, and then return to where I left off. I feel more easily satisfied with a book vs a short story, for the most part. I rarely read short stories that satisfied me (unless it's a fanfic or a doujinshi or manga piece.)

But that's just my personal preference, of course.

Nuts! The only story I have that fits their requirements is a rewritten version of something they rejected a year or so ago. Doubt they'd take it. I'm sad. That was a market I had hoped to crack.

As to why short stories aren't popular as they used to be...

The way it was explained to me is that back in the day when radio was just coming out and TV didn't exist, magazines and newspapers were still the best medium for advertising. As a result, every magazine had ad space to sell, which they used to buy lots of fiction. Then, radio became better and TV went into every home. Then the internet came along. Probably lots of other reasons, and I by no means like every short piece I've ever read.

I'm always sad and disappointed when a market either closed or shifts to unagented/unsolicited. Granted, I have a long way to go before I have material that most professional places would accept, but it makes me sad nonetheless.

Taylor Harbin said:

....
As to why short stories aren't popular as they used to be...

The way it was explained to me is that back in the day when radio was just coming out and TV didn't exist, magazines and newspapers were still the best medium for advertising. As a result, every magazine had ad space to sell, which they used to buy lots of fiction. Then, radio became better and TV went into every home. Then the internet came along. Probably lots of other reasons, and I by no means like every short piece I've ever read.

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Could be part of the reason. Several print magazines have folded/are folding.
Maybe another reason is that when someone spends, say, $1.99 to read a short story online, it doesn't make sense when you can buy an
e-book on Amazon when they have their daily deals for the same amount.

I love reading (and writing) short stories, so this affects me.

I'm thinking... and this is just my impression of how it'll go... I'm thinking that more and more, the publishing companies are going to draw back from easy entrance for beginning writers. They're going to leave that to agents and self-publishing, and try to skim the cream of the crop there.

Funny thing is, that's not going to work too well unless they can either sell the prestige of signing on with them, or they can offer a better deal than the various self-publishing services.

Tor probably can, enough to survive through this period. Marketing, brand name weight, professional editors, advances, a decent royalty, the works. But smaller publishers? Not so much.

ASeiple said:

I'm thinking... and this is just my impression of how it'll go... I'm thinking that more and more, the publishing companies are going to draw back from easy entrance for beginning writers.

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Hm. Not sure I agree here.

Tor.com is not a magazine or a subscription site. Everything they buy is free to the public to read - and their pay rate for fiction is really high. I'd guess the site a loss leader for them.

I'm not convinced this is a great business decision on their part, but I'm willing to bet it's 99% motivated by economics. It takes time (aka people and salaries) to go through subs.