Short Story Agents?

Unfortunately, from my understanding, that just doesn't happen. Think about it. The short story markets are so sparse, and so few pay. And even when they do pay, they typically pay so little (unless you're a famous novelist, usually), that it just isn't worth an agent's time and energy to submit. Even if a literary magazine pays, say, $1000 (so rare!) for your story, the agent would only make $150.

The exception: when you're already a published novelist. Then your agent can help you get short stories included in anthologies and similar projects closed to unpublished authors. For now, just do the research and submit yourself.... and start brainstorming ways to expand one of your stories into a novel.

The good news is, there are a lot of ezines out there--some even pay.

Have you heard of Duotrope's Digest? It's a great way to search for markets by genre:

http://www.duotrope.com/

Good luck and have fun!

I agree with mysterygrl. Publishing a couple short stories in lit journals never hurts, as long as the journals discriminate and only selection a portion of submissions. They don't have to be Atlantic Monthly. Even if you make little or no money, it'll represent an honest-to-goodness publishing cred (as long as we're talking an actual journal, online or off, not just a blog).

One of my first short story publications was in an nonpaying online journal. But that year, the editors selected my story for nomination for the Million Writers Award. And then they included it in that year's print anthology. So it was a great experience overall.

Actually that is not entirely correct- My agent represents several authors who write short stories and who have published short story collections- And they aren't famous either-
You have to write them and submit them AND get published in legit literary magazines-and then create enough for a collection -
BUT if you haven't created a body of work then by looking for an agent you are putting the cart before the horse...I just LOVE cliches...

Listen to Orion.

And maybe find out who Jhumpa Lahiri's agent is.

Like Orion said, if you publish enough short stories to make a collection, you can get an agent to then sell that collection as a book. You won't get an agent by writing one short story. You might be able to get one with a collection of stories -- a lot of writers publish a collection of short stories before a novel, particularly if you write literary fiction. However, you have a much better chance if you first publish the stories (or some of them) independently in literary journals.

mysterygrl said:

http://www.duotrope.com/

Click to expand...

Great link! Thank you.