Musings and Meanderings

In fact, part of my decision to close LSS rested on my understanding that plenty of strong markets exist for the type of work I published in LSS. Otherwise, why did I have so much trouble filling bimonthly issues?)

Part of the problem is that each market has a very specific flavor, and the writers who fit in that niche die a little when that market goes away. I've never submitted to any of the ones that she spoke of (except the 2? times I subbed to LSS) so I'm less likley to be distraut by it. She's a horror writer, though, and is far more affected by it.

On the other hand, new markets keep stepping up. I suspect it's a matter of finding the right fit agian...




Edited at 2009-06-15 10:14 pm (UTC)

The question that leaped to my mind as I read the post was, are there really so few quality venues in the SF/F short fiction field nowadays?

The short answer, yes. Unless you want to give your work away--not metaphorically, but really give it away--the options are slim. Between reading periods and closures it's really hard.

And as the market tightens I see two things happening. Zines like Ideomancer, that are still operating and do their best to publish high quality work, are getting slammed with more submissions. We just took on two new junior editors in a effort to keep up and not lengthen response times.

I also see it becoming harder and harder for new writers to break into the pro markets, especially F&SF, Analog and Asimov's. There will be more and more for them to choose from and they will skim the absolute best off the top. Many times that best will be established writers.

If you go to the pro market section of Ralan, you can count 13 market closures, both permanent and temporary. The temporary closures run well into next year and those aren't reading periods, those are flat out closed to submissions until sometime in 2010.

The semi-pro list has 8. It is also a much shorter list to start with.

I can't disagree with a single thing she said in that article. It's a huge reason why I don't spend much time, if any on short stories. I have a better chance of my agent selling one of my novels than I do ever selling a short to a pro market.

To me there are a lot of markets out there, but not so many quality markets, esp when looking at those who don't pay pro. When it comes to places not paying pro, they're a dime a dozen, but the question of quality and name recognition becomes part of the process for the author at that point. And while I will send to places that pay that are new or not familiar, I would much rather get accepted by a known market with a strong reputation behind it. And THOSE are sadly becoming fewer.

Edited at 2009-06-15 10:36 pm (UTC)

Oh, it's horrible out there! All the magazines are either on hiatus, closing, non responsive, backlogged, etc, except for the very top ones. Or so it seems . . .

I'll echo what Jeannette said: One of the problems is that each market has a specific flavor and the stories/poems you reject affect that as much as the stories/poems you accept.

It's also about the niches the publications occupy. Like if Blackgate were suddenly to close down, there goes a good chunk of the sword & sorcery short fiction market.

Another factor is the reputation you've established. True, anyone can start up a new magazine in the same vein as LSS, but initially, it won't gather the crowd or the authors LSS managed to gather in its last year. Partially, branding comes into play here (look at Realms of Fantasy and Clarkesworld as examples--the former changed publishers but theoretically maintain their content while the latter has changed editors and feature different content but manages to keep its former rep).

And as a writer, LSS was always a market to aim for--even if my stories might never have been accepted (akin to the sentiments in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror honorable mentions list).

I do agree with you in the sense that there are a lot of strong markets out there--but strong markets in the general sense. If you're limiting it to a specific flavor and format, LSS suddenly doesn't sound so commonplace. (And it's why there are numerous "Best of the Year" anthologies, each with a different take on the same title.)

If you were having problems filling out your content, I think that's a good example of the unique niche you were filling. You're not the mass-market read but rather you're the equivalent of the mid-list, one with a focused but dedicated readership/contributors. It's not like the stories you rejected were passed on to other markets (Or were they? Obviously we're not privy to such details).

I do struggle to find markets that fit the stories I have, but there are a lot of reasons for that, including my current level as a writer, the fact that my stories don't always fit what I feel is the current aesthetic, etc. It does feel, though, like there are a lot of closures and backlogs plaguing the markets that are left.

An established-writer friend of mine has been doing quite well with writing stories specifically *for* certain markets, but that doesn't strike me as a very profitable tactic if you're doing it on spec and you don't have a familiar name.

I run a very specialized e-zine (Third Order; religion in sf) out of my own pocket, so I'm probably part of the problem -- I can only publish when I have pocket money. Perhaps it's just a phase, while new funding models fall into place. We are in the middle of a great shift, I think.

*crossing fingers*

There are lots of places that you could sell a story for $5-$10, and that a few people might read, but very few pro ones, or ones with reputations like, say, LSS' or Shimmer's. I guess it depends on how you define "strong."

And I agree about niches- it takes time to find out just what flavor a market likes, and find one that likes what your write. If they fold, you're back to the start again.

I've had terrible trouble in the last 12 months finding good markets for certain stories. I think it has to do with the increasing specialization of markets--ones dedicated only to near-future sf, or slipstream, or faerie/elephant pornography, or whatever else.

I wonder if part of the problem of shrinking markets is a tendency to limit subs to spec-specific markets. Do many people also sub to mainstream markets? I don't suppose a literary market would be open to out and out space opera or hard science fiction, but I could see a lot of slipstream or stories with certain fantasy elements going mainstream.

In the so-called "literary fiction" genre, a lot of prestigious journals pay nothing at all. People publish there to get noticed so that they will eventually make a novel sale.

...But no one has ever been able to make a living selling short fiction. Robert Reed or somebody did a calculation and basically proved it.

Stephen King pointed out that lots and lots of people are writing short fiction, but fewer and fewer people seem to be reading it -- except online.

Truthfully the future of short fiction depends on finding a consistent way to monetize the (large) appetite for online reading. Bruce Holland Rogers's tiny subscription model may be the way; Strange Horizons's donation model may be the way. But I am convinced that a way can be found to make money out of this.

I read something about a short fiction market soon publishing some issues as iPhone/iPod Touch apps. From what I gather they were going to wait until the OS 3.0 software arrived (this week), at which point in-app purchases become possible. Presumably you would pay for the initial app/issue and buy the rest through the app itself. I find the idea of the iPhone as a means of short fiction distribution intriguing.

Quality is the key and "open" means a lot too. Not all the markets are permanently closed, many like Apex are just on an unspecified hiatus.

I am trying to market primarily horror (in fact my Asimov's rejections have noted it's just too dark/negative for them) but that's in part because horror markets, in my experience, are more open to dark science fiction and fantasy than some SF/F markets are open to darker SF/F.

The market situation in horror is truly horrific these days, as the top payers (last time I checked) were closed, and there are quite a few semi-pros that haven't really proven themselves in quality and reliability yet (ie Shock Totem, which pays pro, but hasn't published an issue yet).

What markets are still open are also glutted (as I pointed out to ideomancer on Twitter the other day) which has made some of them close temporarily to catch up. What was a careful dance before ("Have I sent this story to that market?" "Am I sure they are open?" "I don't have another story already submitted to them do I?") has gotten more complicated just because there are more rules and restrictions. All of which have a purpose, but still make things harder on the submitter.

The dismal market in horror is making me focus more on SF/F (but I still have more dark/h stories making rounds). But I don't write too much to market. I write what feels right and worry about marketing it later. Years of writing to market (especially theme anthologies) has led to a depressing number of trunk stories that I think are good, but are still trunked.

I'm a proud LSS reject, by the way. :)

My 1.5 cents:

Writers will always want more paying markets to sub to, especially beginning writers who are trying to make their first sale. But I don't think magazines should exist to make writers happy. I hope they exist to make readers happy.

A little consolidation is not necessarily bad for readers, if there is a raise in quality for the remaining markets (i.e. not enough good stories to go around). If you were having trouble finding three stories every two months, that is probably the case.

And I also think the creation of niche markets is a good thing, as it makes it easier for readers to find what they want. As a writer, I've read every magazine I sub to, but as a reader I only keep up with my favorite half-dozen, the ones that consistently publish what I enjoy the most.