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An interesting roundtable discussion of whether the SF/F short story market is in trouble/decline.
I enjoyed the discussion, though the back and forth made me feel like the genre might either be really dead or just calling out from the cart that it feels happy and wants to go for a walk.
I don't know if I can judge the short story market because I'm probably part of the problem. The thing is? Given a choice between a short story magazine and a novel, I'll go for the novel every single time.
Why? Because a) the novel, just from the cover, gives me clues as to what I'm getting into and b) novels are easier for me to get my grubby hands on in a convenient way.
At least with a novel I can judge if it's supposed to be vampire p0rn!romance or hard SF or space opera or whatever the subgenre of your choice is. I can check out a brief summary on the back that lets me know what the heck is going on. I know if I'm likely to get a good return on my investment of both time and money.
Short story magazines, who knows? *shrug*. I like short stories, and if I see that an author I like has either written or highly recommended a story, I'll go check it out. I enjoy podcasts of SF/F short fiction that is read. I sometimes enjoy short story collections/anthologies in book form.
I just can't get excited about the magazines. Especially since my brain (and I suspect the brains of my generation) are wired such that magazine = pretty pictures, few words and books = no pictures, lots of words. And a magazine full of words just sort of confounds me.
On another note, I don't know if it was regional or generational, but growing up, I had very few short stories read to me. I was always taught that proper reading meant books. It was very rare that I came into any contact with any piece of short fiction at all in school. Fiction has always equaled books in my mind.
That could be my age, could be that I grew up in Tennessee.
Also? When I wasn't living in NYC, it was damn hard to come by ANY SF/F short fiction magazines to begin with, even the big ones. Because in the towns I've lived in my reading material has come from the library and from big chain bookstores or occasionally drug stores/grocery stores. Dude, when I was in my "I must absorb all writing advice" phase, just trying to get my hands on Writer's Digest was a safari of epic proportions in which I had to wade through the stacks of Cat Fancy and Cosmo to hope that maybe, somewhere in the back, there was a copy of it somewhere.
Usually there wasn't.
By the by, I didn't know that independent bookstores that weren't in malls/shopping centers existed until after I went to college. Living in midsized Southern towns really fucks with your economic sensibilities, yo.
The point of all this is that I can understand why the short fiction genre market might be in trouble. I just don't think it's so much that demand or demographics have changed. I think it's a question of distribution and display.
I hate to say it, but if you can't find it well displayed at a Barnes & Noble or Borders (or whatever big chain is in your area), most Americans just won't know it exists or be able to come by it. Sad truth, but there it is.
I enjoyed the discussion, though the back and forth made me feel like the genre might either be really dead or just calling out from the cart that it feels happy and wants to go for a walk.
I don't know if I can judge the short story market because I'm probably part of the problem. The thing is? Given a choice between a short story magazine and a novel, I'll go for the novel every single time.
Why? Because a) the novel, just from the cover, gives me clues as to what I'm getting into and b) novels are easier for me to get my grubby hands on in a convenient way.
At least with a novel I can judge if it's supposed to be vampire p0rn!romance or hard SF or space opera or whatever the subgenre of your choice is. I can check out a brief summary on the back that lets me know what the heck is going on. I know if I'm likely to get a good return on my investment of both time and money.
Short story magazines, who knows? *shrug*. I like short stories, and if I see that an author I like has either written or highly recommended a story, I'll go check it out. I enjoy podcasts of SF/F short fiction that is read. I sometimes enjoy short story collections/anthologies in book form.
I just can't get excited about the magazines. Especially since my brain (and I suspect the brains of my generation) are wired such that magazine = pretty pictures, few words and books = no pictures, lots of words. And a magazine full of words just sort of confounds me.
On another note, I don't know if it was regional or generational, but growing up, I had very few short stories read to me. I was always taught that proper reading meant books. It was very rare that I came into any contact with any piece of short fiction at all in school. Fiction has always equaled books in my mind.
That could be my age, could be that I grew up in Tennessee.
Also? When I wasn't living in NYC, it was damn hard to come by ANY SF/F short fiction magazines to begin with, even the big ones. Because in the towns I've lived in my reading material has come from the library and from big chain bookstores or occasionally drug stores/grocery stores. Dude, when I was in my "I must absorb all writing advice" phase, just trying to get my hands on Writer's Digest was a safari of epic proportions in which I had to wade through the stacks of Cat Fancy and Cosmo to hope that maybe, somewhere in the back, there was a copy of it somewhere.
Usually there wasn't.
By the by, I didn't know that independent bookstores that weren't in malls/shopping centers existed until after I went to college. Living in midsized Southern towns really fucks with your economic sensibilities, yo.
The point of all this is that I can understand why the short fiction genre market might be in trouble. I just don't think it's so much that demand or demographics have changed. I think it's a question of distribution and display.
I hate to say it, but if you can't find it well displayed at a Barnes & Noble or Borders (or whatever big chain is in your area), most Americans just won't know it exists or be able to come by it. Sad truth, but there it is.
