[Laer Carroll]

For the last year I had subscriptions to the four regularly published SFF print magazines. I also got copies of the several on-again off-again print magazines. And I read several online magazines. At the bookstores I sampled all the fiction anthologies. All this I did as market research. I was looking for a home for my shorter fiction.

To my taste, I found the CRAFT in them (almost) uniformly bland. There seemed little attempt to do more than write schematically.

And to my taste I found the CONTENT (almost) uniformly boring. Boring people, boring places, boring events.

Obviously there are people who disagree. Else the markets would not exist. But they are sadly reduced from what they were at the mid-century mark when I began reading SFF. Then there were well over a dozen print magazines with much larger circulations and print anthologies flourished.

As late as 1980 Analog and Asimov's, the two most successful SF magazines, had circulations of 100,000 copies. F&SF (which publishes some SF but much more fantasy) had a circulation of 60,000. The numbers have declined steadily since, leveling off in the last few years to about 25,000, 17,000, and 15,000. These last few years Analog and Asimov's published 10 issues a year, with two fatter "double issues." F&SF went to bi-monthly (and larger) issues in 2009.

Wikipedia has a complete list of current SF magazines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_magazine#Current_magazines) (with links to the magazines) and current fantasy magazines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_fiction_magazine#Current_magazines).

Another useful source of information is Locus Magazine. Here are a couple of links to excerpts of short reviews in the magazine, one for late July (http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2011/07/lois-tilton-reviews-short-fiction-late-july-2/) and the other early August (http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2011/08/lois-tilton-reviews-short-fiction-early-august-2/).

Is it still worth your while writing and submitting shorter fiction? Only you can answer that, for you alone.

[EMMAXIS]

For the last year I had subscriptions to the four regularly published SFF print magazines. I also got copies of the several on-again off-again print magazines. And I read several online magazines. At the bookstores I sampled all the fiction anthologies. All this I did as market research. I was looking for a home for my shorter fiction.

To my taste, I found the CRAFT in them (almost) uniformly bland. There seemed little attempt to do more than write schematically.

And to my taste I found the CONTENT (almost) uniformly boring. Boring people, boring places, boring events.

Obviously there are people who disagree. Else the markets would not exist. But they are sadly reduced from what they were at the mid-century mark when I began reading SFF. Then there were well over a dozen print magazines with much larger circulations and print anthologies flourished.

As late as 1980 Analog and Asimov's, the two most successful SF magazines, had circulations of 100,000 copies. F&SF (which publishes some SF but much more fantasy) had a circulation of 60,000. The numbers have declined steadily since, leveling off in the last few years to about 25,000, 17,000, and 15,000. These last few years Analog and Asimov's published 10 issues a year, with two fatter "double issues." F&SF went to bi-monthly (and larger) issues in 2009.

Wikipedia has a complete list of current SF magazines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_magazine#Current_magazines) (with links to the magazines) and current fantasy magazines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_fiction_magazine#Current_magazines).

Another useful source of information is Locus Magazine. Here are a couple of links to excerpts of short reviews in the magazine, one for late July (http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2011/07/lois-tilton-reviews-short-fiction-late-july-2/) and the other early August (http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2011/08/lois-tilton-reviews-short-fiction-early-august-2/).

Is it still worth your while writing and submitting shorter fiction? Only you can answer that, for you alone.


You make some valid points, Caroll. When I was a young whipper-snapper, I was divided by whether to first submit to magazines as a stepping stone OR whether to go directly to book publishing. There were even some people who told me that publishing first in a magazine was a requirement for moving on to books. But that attitude has changed. The golden age of magazine fiction is certainly over; some of my favorite authors wrote mainly in mags, particularly Lovecraft and Robert Howard. I also found that my stories worked best within longer mediums. Squeezing my 12,000 word story into 8k or 5k didn't work out.

Nick

[virangelus]

Perhaps you could start your own SF Magazine, Laer? You seem more than competent enough to pull it off, and I'd love to see what you'd put together.

Question: Would you mind elaborating on what it is you mean by "craft?" Is this the raw prose you are referring too?

[Laer Carroll]

I [have] found that my stories worked best within longer mediums. Squeezing my 12,000 word story into 8k or 5k didn't work out.

All the magazines I know about publish novelettes and novellas as well as short fiction. So for magazines: write the length your story needs.

(SFWA defines a short story as less than 7500 words, a novelette as longer than that but less than 17,500 words, and a novella as less than 40,000 words.)

[Sterling13]

@ Laer - Depends on what 'worth your while' means, I suppose.

I do get the impression that the only people that read print short fiction are the same ones that write it. So, while you might gain some notoriety by those 'in the biz', I really doubt you'll get any reach to the general public.

For what it's worth, last year I had subscriptions to both F&SF and Bull Spec... this year its just Bull Spec. I've found the online boys (Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, sometimes Fantasy and Lightspeed) have stuff more to my liking, and at a fraction of the price (free!). And, because of length, I can read them pretty much anywhere on my phone/ipad/laptop.

I know I've turned my submission attention towards online magazines. Though I would obviously kill to be in one of the big print boys, for short fiction, online seems to make a lot more sense.

As to the state of short fiction in general: I really don't have a reference to compare it to (just started reading it about a year or so ago). I find that there are stories that I don't follow through to the end, but that's yet another advantage to the online magazines: I don't feel compelled to read each and every story (like I do with a print magazine), only the ones that really grab me.

[Laer Carroll]

... what [do] you mean by "craft?"

In all the arts there is the medium and the message the medium conveys.

You can look at a painting and see brush strokes and textures and blocks of color and so on, especially if you look at it close up. Unfocus your eyes, or step away from the painting, and you will see the subject. With experience our imaginations conjure a 3D image though the painting is 2D. The painting becomes a window through which we see some portrayed or imagined reality - which in impressionistic art is an emotional and esthetic "reality" rather than a physical one.

We can separate the two: craft and content, style and substance, window and windowed. But only analytically. The final work of art becomes (artists hope) an immediate, visceral experience rivaling reality.

A footnote: self-styled "literary" magazines often value style over content, and celebrate novel styles and self-referential and highly allusive prose. For more info on them go to this list of the "Top 50 Literary Magazines" (http://www.everywritersresource.com/topliterarymagazines.html) (with links to each).

[KatG]

Well, the magazine market took a big dive in the Great Paperback Depression of the 1990's when the wholesale market of newsstands and stores on which the mags relied and which often produced them collapsed. The newsstands didn't want them anymore, so people didn't buy them because they didn't see them. This has happened to all magazines, not just SFF ones. This was followed by the rapid development of the Internet, which meant fans were connecting through websites and blogs rather than through the mags. And finally, the field simply got too large and reliant on books, not magazines as it had been in the past. Where once fans read the major magazines because you couldn't be seen as making valid arguments without being knowledgeable about them, now even being aware of major magazines was not really critical to discussions that went on. You have fans running around saying that all of fantasy has turned grim because they read five big sellers that they felt were grim while being pretty much oblivious to everything else that was going on or even was also super popular, and certainly not aware of short fiction. A lot of the media attention turned to comics (though sales there also encounters problems.)

So the magazine market shifted. Print magazines went for a niche approach, where they go for a small, dedicated audience that likes a particular thing or revive an old respected magazine to attract new readers. And while many print magazines go under doing this; that was the same in the past, and a number of them have done quite well. And online fiction became the new game. A lot of really cool ventures failed in the oughts and a few years ago, it was looking rather grim with the Great Recession. But because a lot of writers are self-publishing short fiction for cheap or free, and because there is now a lot of free fiction online, including a lot of magazines and website fiction sections that offer content for free and are finding new ways to finance it -- everything from Tor.com to game tie-ins, and because now companies are marketing e-readers and e-fiction as if it would cure cancer, things are actually looking kind of interesting. It's still small scale and niche, but it's very active -- and interestingly enough, it may be a lot more international than it was -- the World SF Blog, etc.

I only kind of realized this because I thought I might as well take a closer look at all the free online fiction that sites like SFSignal and others were trying to alert fans to and who was providing that fiction. And so I discovered a nice, growing nucleus of magazines, more and more of which seem to be managing semi-pro or pro rates for authors. But even when they aren't, there seems to be that let's mimeograph that sucker and see what flies sort of attitude of the early magazines. So I'm considerably more positive about the market for short fiction than I was say in 2008. But it's still going to be an area that only appeals to some fans and some writers. It's supported by an increase in anthologies, and I'm seeing a bit more short story collections too. It's not going to be large -- there's much more money in novels, but it will probably stay active.

[RedMage]

I wonder how right Sterling is. Are the readers of shorter fiction the same as those who produce it?

KatG made a good point there at the end of her post; there are a lot more anthologies out there. So that's great! But, then, I harbor an attitude toward them that is similar to Sterling's where, should I purchase one, I'd feel compelled to read all the stories, whether I liked them or not. Therefore, I do not buy them. (I do look through them though to see if there is anything I find interesting in them.)

Despite this, I am in the process of writing novellas as well as full length novels. And yes, I worry about how many readers I will have for the novellas. I'd like to have a lot, but I don't think that will happen.

So, perhaps, the question should be, how do we, as writers, encourage the short fiction market?

[expatrie]

I won't pretend to be objective, with two sales to small anthologies.

Once upon a time I was reading the class reading from Joe Haldeman's Fiction class at MIT, but in all honestly, disliked the stories quite a bit. What is it with (A) Dinosaurs and (B) Rats that sci-fi magazines find so appealing and that fandom votes for and they win awards? ("Think like a Dinosaur" and "Soon there will come great days" come specifically to mind).

Pout. pout.

Online - there are pro-pay online markets (unless daily "I can't believe you call this" science fiction dropped their rate).

I would claim I'm trying to sell novels and short stories at the same time, but the reality is I haven't submitted a novel, other than to ABNA twice. Both times the novel didn't pass the blurb phase so it didn't even get read. I could have tried Angry Robots when they had the open subs, but essentially found out far too late. There was another hypothetical market, but they launched a spec fic line and the fellow author I know who's already with them is now having royalty breach of contract issues with them and they've had a Gingrich-style mass defection. So I decided not to submit there.

***I am looking forward to the Rocket Science Anthology, in terms of submitting.

***I haven't read the other stories in State of Horror: Texas, even, and I got a cc of that one. I want to, I intend to, but I just haven't done it yet. Something about the 28 other books I'm "currently reading" is slowing me down. It is also an electronic cc, so I have to open the file and I'm not a big 'read on the computer' guy.

Laer - you make a good attempt to explain what you like and dislike, but all I can hear is "I know what I like and I'll tell you when I see it." -- I do better with examples. Do you like "None so Blind"? "Flowers for Algernon"? What old stories in general circulation particularly strike your fancy vis-a-vis current stories.

Long form, why not approach Doc over at the Library of *.* and see if he'd be interested in pitching an anthology targeted at the works you like. You have a following here you might be able to leverage.

--Brian.

As to encouraging short fiction markets - submit stuff to them and buy their stuff.

As to literary magazines, that reminds me, I should subject myself to... er. Read the latest UMAA fiction contest winner.

[MrBF1V3]

Market or not, writing short fic is of value. There are things about writing I can't learn unless I'm actually writing--ask anyone in the ff or short story contests. My longer stories and novels in progress are almost all based on my short stories. It's my idea factory and practice all in one.

If there's a market--great! I'll edit one last time (or a couple of times), send it off and see what happens. There's a number of markets out there that don't pay, or pay little, but if you have a novel published, getting a short story published can give you a platform for advertisement. With the smashwords explosion, anything that sets you apart from the e-vanity press crowd is good.

So yeah, I'll keep writing short stories, I'll occasionally submit them, and I'll read some of them. And I'll do my best not to be bland or boring.

B5