End of the Golden Age ?

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NoirSuede

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Back in the 50s-60s, pretty much all the big novel writers like Ray Bradbury and Issac Assimov got big from writing short stories before going on to make legendary novels. But now, it seems that the market for short stories are so small (even though theoretically everyone would prefer reading a short story since they're short) that it's impossible to become big from just making short stories. Why is so ?
 

Curlz

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Today we have many more sources of entertainment which take up our time. We have the same amount of spare time, but now we have to divide it between your favourite tv series, the occasional non-series tv programme, facebook, internet forums, jogging, playing pokemon on your phone, shooting monsters on Playstation, following The X factor... Even if some of these existed in the 50s and 60s, today we have many more tv channels, many more tv series, programmes, celebs, many more gossip magazines to read, new entertainment like tamagochi or sudoku occasionally pops up to take our time... So, less time to read short stories, which in turn means less magazines who publish them. There are still anthologies out there, but how many of those have you yourself read in the past five years? Well, there you go.
 

JCornelius

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In literary fiction across the world it is still very normal to become "big" through a collection of short stories, before doing a novel.
It's genre fiction in the English-speaking world that has become novel-obsessed, but that is probably changing right now as we write these posts, due to the influence of digital publishing combining with small-screen devices people constantly fiddle with.
 

draosz

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Short story has also adopted another function: for bestselling authors to publish their mediocre leftovers.
 

Sagml John

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Today we have many more sources of entertainment which take up our time. We have the same amount of spare time, but now we have to divide it between your favourite tv series, the occasional non-series tv programme, facebook, internet forums, jogging, playing pokemon on your phone, shooting monsters on Playstation, following The X factor... Even if some of these existed in the 50s and 60s, today we have many more tv channels, many more tv series, programmes, celebs, many more gossip magazines to read, new entertainment like tamagochi or sudoku occasionally pops up to take our time... So, less time to read short stories, which in turn means less magazines who publish them. There are still anthologies out there, but how many of those have you yourself read in the past five years? Well, there you go.

Yep, Candy Crush is killing the little time I have for reading.
 

Super_Duper

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Back in the 50s-60s, pretty much all the big novel writers like Ray Bradbury and Issac Assimov got big from writing short stories before going on to make legendary novels. But now, it seems that the market for short stories are so small (even though theoretically everyone would prefer reading a short story since they're short) that it's impossible to become big from just making short stories. Why is so ?

I'll have to disagree. Take any popular literary author today, Jonathan Franzen, Haruki Murakami, etc., most have a body of short stories and/or essays. Writing novels is obviously the way to make money as a fiction writer, but there are many writers that have "become big" from writing short stories, e.g., Kelly Link, Brian Evenson, and so on. Also, not sure where you are looking, but from my vantage point there is still a fairly large market for short stories (both to submit to and r4eadership).
 

Roxxsmom

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I read (and try to write) SF and F, and a number of respected authors in those genres published short stories before they did a novel. I don't know how the actual percentages break down, as I certainly know of some who are only novelists, or who didn't publish short stories until selling their first novel or so. The biggest awards in the genre--Huge, Nebula etc. have categories for short fiction.

I think it's probably true that no one makes a living, or much more than pocket change, as a writer of short fiction alone in SF and F, and the SFF writers who are household words these days are best known for their novelists. However, it's also true that most published novelists in the genre don't support themselves with writing alone either. As I understand it, the current market doesn't allow most mid listers to live on the money from writing alone, and even writers whose books are "lead titles" when they come out can struggle to earn enough, unless they're very prolific, or their books become breakaway bestsellers. The issues that accompany taking the plunge to being a full-time writer has been a subject some have blogged about.

I guess my question for the OP is do you read a lot of short fiction in your favorite genre? If so, where do you obtain your short stories and how much are you willing to pay for access to magazines, short story collections, or online access to such? Would you pay for access to a stand-alone short story (sold on Amazon or somewhere) by an author you don't already know well, and if so, how much?

I'm guessing it's always been hard to support oneself on short fiction alone, unless one is really famous and their stories fetch prices that are far beyond market rates. Modern "pro rate" SFF markets (according to the membership qualifications for the SFWA) pay six to ten cents a word (most are six cents or just above). I don't know how this stacks up with other genres of short fiction, but it seems like there's a limit to how much a publication can pay per word without becoming prohibitively expensive and losing its readership.

Doing the math, this means that the highest price a 5000-word SF or F short story would fetch is 500.000 if the author sold to a top-rate market (and not many pay ten cents a word in SFF, at least, and they're brutally competitive markets). A novelette or novella-length work could be more lucrative, but you'd still have to sell a huge number of stories to top markets to make, say, 50k a year, or whatever is regarded as a middle-of-the road income. There aren't that many short fiction markets to sub to, at least not in SFF (which still has the rep for having a pretty active and robust market for short fiction).
 
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cmi0616

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I get the feeling that the general public's interest in short fiction has waned over the last few decades, but that's not to say short fiction isn't being written. God knows MFA programs love students who can publish short story collections, and there's more MFAs now than there's ever been (don't quote me on that, but that's the way it seems). There's also seemingly hundreds or thousands of magazines with a decent circulation who publish only short fiction,

It seems to me that short stories are going the way of poetry: they're no less artful or compelling than they used to be, but they've fallen out of favor with the public, which means the form will become insular, if its not already. Short stories will be read--by and large--by people who write short stories. And that seems fine.
 

Taylor Harbin

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I personally love writing short stories, but I haven't been able to break into the top-tier markets (despite years of effort, though I think I'm closer with BCS than Clarkesworld). My work has always sold to Bards and Sages Quarterly for about $15-$25 a pop, depending on word count. You won't make a ton of money, but you might gain a reputation for quality. Harlan Ellison has written thousands of short stories and dozens of novels, but it's his 1965 short "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" that was and still is his best-known work.

It's fascinating to study publishing trends from way back when, but don't obsess over it. Things have changed. Write shorts to get better and sell where you can.
 

TheBlueBandit

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I've thought about this subject often over the last few years as I tried to learn how to write short fiction effectively. My goal was to make a few professional sales of shorts, learning how to be economic with my words in the process, before shifting back to the numerous ideas I have for novels. My opinion on the whole matter boils down to this: I think the perception that short stories are dying is due largely to the crumbling of print media. Short fiction was the bread and butter of magazines, and the magazine market was huge for most any genre. They acted as stages for writers and focal points for the communities that consumed their work. All of that has made the shift to the internet now, and is still in the process of being reinvented. Many of those magazines (or at least their spiritual successors) are still finding their audiences. Instead of subscriptions, most seem to offer content for free on the web and rely upon donations and crowd-funding to operate at a professional level. Short fiction is finding its place in the new reality of the publishing world, and even though I don't think there's nearly as much available, there seems to be a lot if one is willing to search it out.

That said, I also think there's a strange relationship between people having little time for reading these days and what they choose to read. Short fiction, on the surface, seems to be the perfect solution. Only have half an hour of time to read? Perfect for a short. But the sentiment I often see among many readers is that they would rather devote that time to reading a novel because, ultimately, novels tend to give more satisfying, fully realized stories and character arcs.

All opinion, mind you, but all I can really do is offer my own perception, right?
 
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deafblindmute

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Back in the 20s, Will James, a noted cowboy author-illustrator put a downpayment on a house with one of his early short stories. That would be kind of hard know unless you won a MacArthur Grant or something like that.

...was it at least a good story?
 

Joseph Schmol

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Back in the 20s, Will James, a noted cowboy author-illustrator put a down payment on a house with one of his early short stories. That would be kind of hard know unless you won a MacArthur Grant or something like that.

Back in the 20's you could get a house from the Sears Roebuck catalog.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Back in the 20s, Will James, a noted cowboy author-illustrator put a downpayment on a house with one of his early short stories. That would be kind of hard know unless you won a MacArthur Grant or something like that.

Magazine illustrators had similar incomes at the time. One hears of illustrators being able to pay for an entire month's rent and food from a single article.

I suspect part of the problem is that the pay rates per word for short fiction -- and, for that matter, for illustration -- are very close to what they were in the 1920s, almost 100 years ago, in absolute penny amounts.
 

JCornelius

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I think these days short story markets have a different function for the beginner writer--not the actual money--but rather credentials.
If you have at least one story published by a non-paying publication--with this on the CV it's easier to get a foot through the door to a paying publication.
Once you have at least one story published by a paying publication--it's easier to flog someone a novella or even a novel.
Sometimes you reach a certain level with short story markets, and simply can't break into a "higher" market. In that case this is your short story level for now so make your peace with that and either work with those markets that do accept your work, or concentrate on the longer forms. And perhaps after a bunch of novels and novellas, if the mood strikes you, you can revisit the short form and maybe this time, after all the additional practice, you can finally break into the top-tier short story markets. Or not.
Some of my favorite writers, like Robert McCammon or Martin Amis, are not very good at short stories. They have like 1-2 brilliant ones, and a dozen meh ones and that's it.
And that's OK.
They are loved for their novels, just like other writers are loved not for their novels, but for their short stories.
 
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SJ Gordon

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I have learned quite a lot just from this discussion! I'm afraid I don't have anything to add to it, but I wanted you all to know how much I appreciate your thoughts and insights. :)
 

noirdood

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The Saturday Evening Post is gone, as we knew it. How many great writers started there, and in many other magazines that have died or nobody pays attention to them any more. It is sad. But every era challenges their artists.The pictures Van Gogh and his pals put out were considered pornographic, as was ragtime music. The word "Jazz" was a nasty word until the makers of that music perservered. We need to hang in there.
 

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Most of the golden age Science Fiction is easier to obtain now,than when it was being published. There is a demand for short stories and Publishers like Orion have a acquired a back catalogue going back nearly a hundred years. A lot of their publications are available on Amazon as a download or in printed omnibus editions . It is all good news for me as a reader . But it makes it hard for new writers and publishers
 
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gbondoni

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The New Yorker still pays book-advance money (albeit low to midlist book-advance money) for short stories. That means that someone appreciates the form. Also, as noted above, many of today's biggest names write short fiction (and I disagree that it's a place for them to drop their trash - the big names often write good short fiction, too).
 
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