Magazine Closings
From BookLove:
Talebones and Lone Star Stories are both closing down. Both are good magazines with a history of good stories. Both owners site a loss of passion for the amount of work the magazines require. Talebones owner Patrick plans to continue the Talebones name as a yearly anthology in 2010.
This reflects a similar decision by Apex Publications owner/editor, Jason Sizemore, who has stated in several interviews that running the magazine, in print and digital form, has been the most time and money consuming aspect of his business and with the least return. Sizemore, showing more transparency than other places, cites the distribution system for print magazines as the main problem of running a magazine while most others on the front and back sides cite diminishing subscribers and interest in short fiction.
And further added for here:
So I do understand that the economy is making things tough, but Talebones, Lone Star Stories and Apex didn’t say money was a primary reason for the closure/hiatus. All three cited time strains and little return for the effort. Again, Jason Sizemore has repeatedly, publicly stated that the magazine side of Apex Publications took up far more time, effort and money than the book side (which is why he made the decision to concentrate on books).
I understand stress and burn out, and think it’s good of these publishers to admit up front that they are just burning out and need a break (I also understand from personal experience, how hard it is to find reliable assistance and worse, someone to take over for you should you need a break).
But as a writer I can’t help but be incredibly frustrated. I made a goal to send out 100 submissions this year, but things are absolutely dismal out there. Half the problem is a glutted, tired market with publications folding, closing or getting overwhelmed because of the closures. It is almost impossible, for example, to find an open, pro or semi pro paying market. All three of these magazines where ones I really wanted to see my work in. Ones I read, enjoyed and regularly aimed stories at.
The other half of the problem is I’m becoming a snob. I’ve gotten incredibly tired of getting pennies for full stories, plus, bolstered by some pretty positive rejects from managing editors I feel confident that I can, or am close to selling to pro and higher level semi pro markets. This in turn has made me want to wait for good markets rather than settle for a low paying market. I mean, when the editor of Asimov’s gushes about your story, how do you turn around and sell it for $10 or give it away 4theluv? You don’t. Not if you want to build a real career. (Hobbies are different, so if you are a hobbyist please feel free to disregard this.)
So a lot of my stories are sitting rather than circulating, because the market is closed off and I refuse to accept whatever I can get anymore. I really think my stories are better than that.
So when I see good magazines closing, it really hits hard. It’s the sound of doors slamming shut. What’s worse is that any starts ups will face the distribution and subscriber problems as well as having to build a positive reputation up for themselves in a tough, tiring time. It’s not something that’s easy to get started right now (or ever).
As a writer with two dozen or so shorts to sell and only one novel it’s seriously contributing to the stress of trying to establish myself. Why keep writing short stories when there seems to be no room for them?
But even that is bunk, because there’s been a revival of sort of the anthology. Look on any bookshelf and you’ll more anthologies and collections than 5 years ago (or maybe I’m wrong and I’m just more aware of them) as publishers embrace brands and name recognition as a way to introduce the fan bases of established authors like Laurell K Hamilton, Neil Gaiman and Jim Butcher, to new voices in popular spec fic.
So is the readership there or not?
Well I haven’t got an inside look at the sales of anthos like Many Bloody Returns, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe and Bite, so I can’t say for sure, but it looks like the short story market is good…for novel writers. If you’re lucky enough to have a nice number of already published shorts now might be a good time to push a collection rather than new magazine submissions. And if you aren’t that lucky, then maybe it’s time to just hold off for a better market environment.
Of course, like an agent said on Twitter the other day, “There’s always a market for awesome.” So maybe it’s just time to push ourselves and try to step up our game. Even if nothing comes from it it’s good to learn not to become complacent as writers, to always push ourselves to be better, whether we have a reader base, or are still trying to break in.
I’m really going to miss LSS–but at the same time hope that this means his writing output is going to pick up. Talebones is a mag I’d always wanted to get into, as well, but, well–I guess we’ll see how their anthos shape up. Maybe it will be a similar feeling.
But that said, maybe now’s a good time to do a quick run over to Duotrope and do a quick sort-by-pay-decreasing search. There _are_ still a fair number of other semi-pro to pro magazines out there fighting the good fight. And I’m not just saying that because I run one.
The market is shrinking, mags are dying day in, day out, and the economy is in the crapper–but there are always new folks, unsullied by the 800-submissions-a-month slushpile and some reasonable pocket money still hopeful to get the best short stories out there.
Anyway, I’m familiarizing myself with new markets (and old markets I just hadn’t gotten around to knowing well enough), writing, submitting, editing, hoping…
Well said. I actually have talked about the same things on my own blog recently, although not as eloquently as you have stated them. It is a scary time in the publishing game. Marketing short works has become a crapshoot at best and the novel somehow became king in the last 50 years. My hope is that with the advent of e-readers like Kindle we can find a new market for short fiction in a paying world.
Kaolin~ Not all the markets are closed as in not functioning, some just require dancing around submission periods, which I understand, but again, makes things harder. I do still have a nice list of magazines I want to get into (including GUD) I just have to balance having more viable stories than open markets when I’m looking to submit.
Jamie~ Thanks for the compliment
I just hope that the Kindle are a market doesn’t end up like the amazon Shorts program has, which everyone trying to capitalize on it and glutting the market with first drafts and lackluster stories, choking the potential it has. If you haven’t already you should check out A Konrath’s experiment with selling a Kindle book. His was a massive success, but then he’s not only a good writer, he has a reader base established already. But how many people do you think will see home much he’s making on his Kindle book and try to do the same without considering quality and market desire?
Lee Goldberg had a blog about Joe Konrath’s Kindle earnings saying much the same – that Joe Konrath’s situation in the marketplace is not Joe Everywriter’s.
My own short fiction is primarily microfiction and flash, which helps on the market situation (although it hurts to have LSS closing and never have made it through the door!) but Kaolin’s right, we can’t get lazy about searching out new markets and sharing them with others. We’re in a business that’s changing minute to minute, not just day to day.
Congrats on the props from Asimov!
Thanks
And yes, you do always have to look at the larger picture. Like when there are small press authors with a ton of credits but they’re all friends and 4thluv markets. It means something.
I hear you on dancing around submission periods and such–I’ve got reminders programmed into Writer’s Planner and I still seem to miss them more often than not. I was loathe to close GUD to submissions, given that, but was eventually talked into it–and it’s probably for the best, in the long run, to close to subs for a few scatted months a year.
Bill Ward also put up a sort of eulogy for print zines that tries to find an optimistic tone. There are markets there that I’m sad I’ll never crack; but other new markets I’m still hoping for (Murky Depths, for instance, which I got a lovely rejection from today… :heh: )
I think part of the problem is that we writers in SF spend all of our time writing stories designed to meet the approval of other SF writers. Readers, those with no literary aspirations at all, often come in second if at all in any consideration when a story is written. I think the result is often a story that, while it picks up awards and wins the approval of your writing peers, often bores the daylights out of your average reader.
The average reader, I might add, really only wants to be entertained. They don’t want to fight with a style monkey narrative (one of my pet peeves as a writer AND a reader). They don’t want to fight with some experimental nonsense and most important of all, most readers hate being preached at.
Lastly, I think the magazines all mainly put out the same thing. I can’t honestly tell the difference between a story published by Asimov’s and a story published by FSF or Strange Horizons.
Frankly, I find it depressing. There are all of these published stories yet I do not care for 90% of them. There are these markets, but I don’t care for what they publish.
What is one to do?
Respects,
S. F. Murphy
I share your frustration Michelle, I’m often wondering why I bother writing short fiction at all with so many of the good markets either dead, frozen, or essentially unobtainable. Like you I have a bunch of unsold stuff making the rounds, and it seems like every few months my options get narrower — and I have several stories doing nothing, because I can’t even imagine what market to send them to. But, as Kaolin says, there are still some good ones out there; but for any aspiring writer that had hoped to see his work in Talebones, Paradox, or Apex it’s pretty depressing to see them vanish.
Kaolin, I think most writers understand that magazines need to close sometimes. I think the best policy by far is to have regular reading periods — writers can still plan to hit you with a sub, and it really beats the alternative of a magazine buying a year’s worth of stories and shutting down for nine months as a result.
And thanks for the link and good luck getting into Murky Depths — that’s a magazine I’m really proud to have my work in, as it’s just brimming over with graphical gorgeousity.
Too true SF Murphy — one of the reasons I really lament the passing of so many semi-pros is that they are the ones publishing the fiction I find interesting, stuff outside the established mold of the Big Tree, which I tend to find more ‘miss’ than ‘hit.’
Kaolin~ I love Murk Depths too. They’d don’t pay great, but I really love their look, their style and their product. I’d love to get into their pages.
S.F~ Good point, and also what is popular (like urban fantasy) is likewise ignored by the more prestigious members of the genre.
Magazines printing the same thing is why I love (and already miss) places like Apex and LSS which had their own style. LSS, for example was the only place I commonly found urban/modern fantasy shorts. I wrote a few of these and now I’m not sure how to market them because parts of the genre seem to want to remain unsullied by what is popular.
Bill~ I ask myself that too, then I answer that I write short stories because that’s the length it takes to tell the story. And I write [insert subgenre here] because that’s what the story also wants to be. I would rather have a beautiful, unsold story that I’m proud of and can sell later, than to have one that I’ve tried to shoehorn into a market or trend.