Zines and short stories…
Whether traditional ones (Ellory Queen and Fantasy and Science Fiction are examples) or online ezines (eFiction is an example), have become as bad as many Big Five book publishers. The “good ones” that remain (many have died or will die) have editorial boards who waste authors’ time by requesting contributions they reject (for many reasons, but usually summarized by observing the zine is in a incestuous rut or simply a club of writers publishing their own stuff) and pay peanuts for royalties when they don’t (no one can live on what they pay). The bad ones are just bad. No wonder the grand tradition of short story writing is going the way of the dinosaurs.
Generally small presses that are more open than the Big Five to new voices and original stories at the novel level rarely risk publishing anthologies or short story collections. There are authors who prefer the short story form and there are authors like me who start a story without knowing whether it will be a short story, novella, or novel. While it’s an interesting question whether readers still enjoy short stories (readers are a disappearing species too), zines, anthologies, and collections have fewer readers with every year that passes. Add to that the fact that fewer authors want to waste their time with the editorial circus for a short story and you have a vicious circle that’s closing in and will disappear into a singularity of nothingness.
If this phenomena deserves to be halted (who can say?), what can readers and writers do? Readers must rediscover the pleasure of reading an entertaining short story. It’s that simple. If you want new voices and original short stories, don’t look for them in the zines. Those stories are censored for you by editors and editorial boards of persons who think they know how to write and really don’t. If you know what SOS means in the gross sense, that’s what you get from the zines in general. Readers must look among the indies and those few small presses that publish collections and anthologies. The NYC publishing houses won’t give it to you; neither will snooty literary zines who think “literary fiction” is a genre instead of a wastebasket.
Authors must stop wasting their time with zines and go indie too. There are various ways to do this. The first is using short stories for material for your blog. Fresh and frequent content is often recommended by the internet gurus. What better way to do that than with a short story? A really short one doesn’t take longer to write than a blog article. You can break up a longer one into parts. Might be a lot more fun to do this too. Or make your own collection. Submitting to someone else’s anthology works too if you know that someone and s/he asks you to contribute a story. More guarantees for the first, your own collection, but the second can be just as efficient, especially if you worked with the person in the past.
If you’re a writer and your goal is just to have someone read your short story, do NOT submit it to a critique group unless you know the people there. Many of them are loaded with sharks who at the very least will try to get you to write like them, thus destroying your own voice (many MFA programs are designed around the concept of critique group too—fair warning!). Just put your stuff out there—blog posts or upload to online sites where readers, presumably lovers of short stories, congregate. Wattpad and NewMysteryReader are two examples, and they’re free. They haven’t done anything for me, but maybe you’ll entertain some readers there—if they can find you.
I’ve stumbled onto a system that works for me and doesn’t take a lot of time. I give away short stories on my blog. That’s content that Google and all other search engines like and blog readers get some freebies every so often to reward them for reading my blog. Sometimes I compile the stories and make a PDF free for the asking (see the list) or a collection that I sell, usually for less than my novels. That’s a good way to introduce people to your writing. While I don’t have many reviews for any of my books, two collections have been reviewed (five-star Amazon reviews), so I have some good feedback. That’s what a writer needs—feedback from readers who read her or his stories, not from zine editors or critique group members.
When I say this works for me I’m implying I’m satisfied with my solution. It doesn’t mean people have an easy time finding my material or even desire to read it. That’s true of novels too. A novel is probably more likely to win an author the publishing lottery than a short story or novella, of course. But all three forms are a lot of fun to write. Moreover short stories are a wonderful place to hone your writing skills. And you’re not depriving the public of your new voice like the editors of those zines if you ignore them and go directly to the readers. Indie and small press publishing can do that for you—eliminating as much between you and the readers is a good goal to have.
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Muddlin’ Through. Mary Jo Melendez is an ex-USN Master-at-Arms who is ready to start her new civilian life as a security guard. She is framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murders. This mystery/suspense/thriller novel describes how she works to clear her name and pay back the group that framed her. In the process, she discovers the MECHs, Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans, and an intense romance as she runs around the U.S., South America, and Europe. Available in all ebook formats through Amazon and Smashwords and its retailers.
In libris libertas!
