Switching Focus To Short Stories To Make A Fortune
Or a pittance. Time will tell…
The popularity of short stories has waxed and waned over the decades. They have always been around as myths and fables like the Arthurian tales or 1001 Arabian Nights. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are essentially a collection of short stories. Short stories really rose in parallel with the modern novel and other publications like magazines and newspapers. Dickens wrote lots of short stories alongside his serialized fiction, as did Arthur Conan Doyle. Later others like Hemingway and PG Wodehouse wrote short and long stories. Hemingway quite rightly won the Pulitzer Prize for literature for the utterly superb novelette The Old Man and The Sea.
In more modern times, from the perspective of a science fiction and fantasy writer, there was a golden age in the 50s to the 70s (roughly). Philip K Dick was famously prolific, as were other sci-fi writers like Asimov, and later, horror writers like Stephen King.
But then, during the 70s, publishing seemed to get more expensive and it was hard to get known as a short story writer. People didn’t seem to like short story collections from newer writers, (but were weirdly more open to novels by them). So, for a quarter of a century, there was the odd short story collection and a handful of struggling magazines trying to publish and keep afloat.
But now they are back! And I want in!
Technology is bringing back short stories
These days, people wander around with Kindles, iPads, or just their phones. They can read anywhere and are often short on time and attention spans. Consequently, short stories have seen a surge in popularity. When Kindle Singles – work that is usually 5000-30,000 words – launched in 2011, it sold two million in its first year. That has since gone up.
There has also been a rise in online fiction magazines and places to submit work. I subscribe to Duotrope and the amount of places you can send stuff to is astounding. Sites like Royal Road help people write whatever they want and find an audience, although it seems to be mostly LitRPG serialisations. Substack has a fiction section now (you can check it out here). (I will chuck in a sneaky link to my Substack Intriguing Times here.)
I have written quite a few short stories over the years and I keep finding them in weird corners of my hard drive. It is time to start doing something with them. I think they are also a great way to introduce people to your longer work. I am writing a couple of books (I don’t know why I started two at once, I’m a glutton for punishment), and it will be good to have even a tiny readership when they come out.
Writing short stories is also a lot of fun. I could be sitting on a gold mine already. But possible a crap one.
I will update here and share how it goes. Hopefully, if it goes well, I can help others do the same.
In the meantime, I have some short work already out, which you can check out here.
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