Today’s reblog is Lincoln Michel discussing the sorry state of short fiction magazines, which isn’t exactly anything new, but still worth paying attention to.
Check it out on Counter Craft.
I’m only just now learning of the fact that Amazon is no longer “publishing” periodicals on their Kindle platform. This seems bad, but they wouldn’t shut it down if it was making any significant money (although who knows where that line is at Amazon). It’s probably more a symptom of shrinking short fiction markets than a cause.
I have a few samples of these magazines on my Kindle. And I’m not subscribed to any of them. So I suppose I’m part of the problem.
When I first started writing, the fiction magazine landscape had already contracted quite a bit from the golden age, but it still seemed fairly strong. Magazines were the place to cut your teeth—standard advice was to submit short stories until you got good enough to publish, then publish short stories to build credibility for getting an agent to sell novels.
That old pipeline of short fiction into traditional publishing isn’t gone, but it seems like the funnel continues to narrow. Meanwhile, indie publishing has become a legitimate alternative for novels and novellas, but it’s no easier to stand out or make money as an indie, and I suspect hardly anyone is making money on indie short stories.
Maybe I should be grateful that I write SFF and there is still a professional short fiction scene at all. Maybe eventually they’ll all be non-paying or barely-paying markets.
Words Deferred 