[Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!]

For me, probably DOA. I have three collections (not counting the one I offer as a PDF free for the asking), and they sell zilch. Two are even priced low in order to serve as an introduction to my writing. It doesn’t matter. They don’t do well. I have a short story in a crime anthology too. But whether crime/mystery/thriller or sci-fi, it just seems readers aren’t interested in short stories or novellas.

That’s hard to understand. In our current hectic lifestyles, I can understand that a reader doesn’t want to start a long novel. I barely got through the last Harry Potter novel (verbosity is always Rawling’s friend), had a terrible time with Eco’s Name of the Rose (I kept losing track of the story line), and never could finish Tolstoy’s War and Peace (maybe we could get rid of Putin if he read it?). But short stories and novellas—maybe one day for the former and two or three for the latter. And, while I never set out to write a story of specific length, I can also write a short story in a couple of days. (When I had a day-job, I’d often write them out on napkins when I went for coffee.)

If you read my review of the movie Arrival, you saw that I made reference to Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” the novella the movie is based on. It’s contained in a collection with another five stories (both of my inexpensive collections have six stories too). OK, it’s a twist on the alien invasion theme, but many authors have written twists on that (including me)—how was he noticed? That collection is now on my TBRoR-list (“To Be Read or Reviewed”), but I’ll have to wait awhile because the Kindle version is far too expensive. (The Kindle version is $11.99 for an equivalent 306 print pages. My Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape is $2.99 for an equivalent 234 pages. If you do the math, I should be selling mine for $9—but who said ebook pricing is logical?).

Here’s where my thesis about winning the lottery comes in: Some of Chiang’s reviewers admit they’d never heard of the guy, but some Hollywood fellow or fellows read that novella and decided to make a movie out of it. I bet that collection will take off (Amazon has already declared it a “bestseller”). Of course, the fact that Chiang won several awards for his fiction might have helped along the way too—his stories have won the Nebula, Sturgeon, Campbell, and Asimov awards, all prestigious but not indicative of quality, only popularity. Vinge’s 1991 Hugo award-winning Fire Upon the Deep is an unmitigated unscientific disaster with the speed of light changing with the distance from galaxy center, for example. Sci-fi authors CAN extrapolate known science but SHOULD NOT try to change it!

People CAN take notice of good writing, but most good writing is NOT noticed, and much bad writing is TOO noticed. Just getting noticed isn’t a likely occurrence in this competitive environment where there are so many good writers and stories. Did people notice Chiang’s stories because he writes “literary sci-fi”? First, I don’t know that that means exactly. Second, he doesn’t seem to be writing schlock like The Time Traveler’s Wife, a romance thinly disguised as sci-fi but often called literary sci-fi. Third, although I only saw the movie and have yet to read any of his stories, it seems that what he is doing is just spinning a good yarn—he’s writing short stuff that are good stories (if you believe in the awards) and, I would suppose, having fun doing it.

But the idea of releasing a collection of short stories or contributing to an anthology does seem to fall into that literary category of stories people might talk about but no one reads in general. Does literary mean unpopular, and popular just mean trash? Hard to tell—the Hugo isn’t exactly in the same category as the Man Booker or Nobel prizes, but they might support those definitions. I used to read the pulp sci-fi magazines. I stopped because the stories were often scientifically naïve (like Vinge’s entire novel) and formulaic. There were also obvious bandwagons authors jumped on—nanomachines, for example—so I objected to the fads. (I tried to get some stories in one—the editor was a nasty sort who encouraged the bandwagon-writers…sigh.) I tended to read more in the science sections many of them had, but those are all completely inferior to Science News. Online ezines have suffered the same fate, although I’ve had a wee bit more success publishing in them.

The short story and, to a lesser extent, the novella are disappearing into that vicious circle of fewer readers ßà fewer stories. Some of the latter is due to the fact that the old pulps and the newer ezines pay next to nothing…or nothing—so many cents per word, including zero, as if monkeys were writing sci-fi instead of Shakespeare. I think the number of readers of collections and anthologies has always been small, though. The few recent successes—Chiang, Weir, Howey and others—might motivate authors to write shorter stories, but most authors never make much money doing it, no matter what the form. In many cases, they can’t even give their stuff away.

The situation is similar in the music world. I went to a concert last Sunday and heard a wonderful little choral piece, “Nyon Nyon” by Jake Runestad. Let me make that “wonderful” stronger: the piece is a brilliant and unique little gem like a blue diamond. The composer sells the score for $2.25. I can’t imagine how he makes a living doing that! I guess he does other things—as most writers do…until they win the lottery. And that’s another vicious circle: readers and listeners are spoiled—they want everything to be free or cheap. If you don’t sell large numbers, you starve.

So, why do I keep writing short stories and novellas? Because I can, because it’s fun, and because I do NOT have to make a living doing it, although it’s nice to be in the black. I can declare a story a success if it just entertains one reader. But I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to other creative people, the ones who don’t win the lottery but still try to make a living doing it. Will the arts just die out? It seems to be going that way for short story collections and anthologies. Time will tell if that perception rings true.

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Added note: When I was writing this article, I checked out some of the details about Vinge’s novel on Amazon. I was immediately blasted by an ad for his book on Facebook! First, the Amazon computers’ assumption that I was looking at the book on Amazon in order to buy it was wrong. I would have bought it while I was there if that were true. Second, I hate the book. I bought the paperback years ago. When we moved to NJ seven years ago, it was tossed into the dumpster. It’s bad sci-fi. The lesson learned here? Amazon can be damned annoying sometimes! Maybe Black Friday anticipation?

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For all those interested in free and low-cost reading material, you’ll find free short stories archived in the blog category “Steve’s Shorts,” and a short story collection and novellas as PDFs free for the asking—see the list on the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests.” Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape introduces you to the Dr. Carlos stories about a medical officer on the starship Brendan and contains the novella “From the Mother World” and many other short stories.  Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java contains early cases of my detectives Chen and Castilblanco. Fantastic Encores! contains four stories about characters from my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” and two more Dr. Carlos stories. All of these represent a great opportunity to get to know my fiction.

In libris libertas!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 24th, 2016 at 4:00 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.