Pens and Swords » Market Report

Very Very Very Short Stories

Kameron — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:48:12 +0000

I grew up reading novels as my primary source of fiction. This influenced my perception of what a story was, and guided my steps as I developed my identity as a writer. The vision I beheld of my future career was filled with epic fantasy novels, not anthologies of short stories. How ironic that my first professional publication was a short story.

Short stories are a different animal than novels from a craft perspective. I didn’t appreciate that until forced to write one. The first short story I wrote was for my creative writing class my senior year in high school, the same one I submitted to a state contest later that year. (I don’t count those stories I wrote for Show And Tell back in the third grade, as I didn’t have a sufficient awareness of the differences at the time.) I remember trying to cram a handful of themes into just a few thousand words. The result was so diluted that none of them were really discernible. That was my first insight into what made a good short story. It takes a certain skill to distill the basic elements of a story into fewer and fewer words.

I believe my experience as a technical writer has contributed to my own development of this ability, and to my acknowledgement of the validity of shorter forms of storytelling. Technical writing is all about the use of concise language to get right to the point. It also helps that I’ve written shorter forms of fiction, honing my craft with each attempt. I remember scoffing at the thought of 500-words being enough to actually tell a story, then writing my first flash fiction piece in a thread on the now-defunct WotC Novels forum while waiting to hear the results of the Maiden of Pain contest.

Short fiction is extremely popular on the Internet. Flash fiction websites pop-up every week on Duotrope, and I know of several online markets that accept longer works in the form of serials. There are even sites that are looking for very short stories–the shorter, the better. My friend Richard F. Yates recently started such a site and is accepting submissions.

How short can a story be, though, before it is no longer a story? Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” is 633 words, putting it over the threshold for flash fiction. What about his apocryphal six-word story “Baby Shoes”? It’s credited as a “complete” story because it has “a beginning, a middle, and an end.” Those are rather vague terms, so I prefer to analyze it through the lens of the old plot graph I learned back in grade school. A “complete” story should have an introduction, a conflict with rising action, a climax, falling action, and a resolution.

It’s hard to convey all that in less than 10 words, at least literally. How “Baby Shoes” and similar very very very short fiction succeed in doing so is by inference. The text of the fictitious newspaper ad conjures up a vivid image of someone mourning the loss of an infant as they struggle with the decision of what to do with all the things they bought in anticipation. The conflict peaks when the ad is written and submitted to the newspaper, and resolves when it is actually printed. By engaging the reader, and requiring them to fill in the blanks, those few words turn into a story.

I wrote a very very very short story (and am working on a second) and submitted it to my friend’s website. Check out “Disconnected” and tell me if you think it qualifies as a story.Similar Posts:

Relvan Rescued

Kameron — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:00:29 +0000

Oh, man, I’ve been waiting a long time to use that title. So, let me catch you up on Janner Kohl’s adventures in publishing. The story sat at Tor.com for nearly a year (304 days, according to Duotrope’s Digest’s submission tracker) before I received a rejection at the end of January. At this point, I had run through my list of professional markets, and was considering resubmitting to a couple that I had sent an earlier version of “Relvan’s Rescue” over three years ago.

Then I saw a listing on Duotrope for a pirate-themed anthology to be published by Pulp Empire, a small publisher of pulp fiction that had been around in a couple different forms since 2003 (per the About section on their website). Payment would be in the form of royalties, but that wasn’t really a concern for me. What drew me to the market was the fact that “Relvan’s Rescue” had originally been written for a small press anthology of nautical sword-and-sorcery. If the story were to be accepted for this new anthology, Janner’s journey would come full circle.

And so it has. I received an email this past Thursday welcoming Janner Kohl’s tale to Pulp Empire Pirates & Swashbucklers Anthology (not sure if this is the actual title or a working one), due out May/June 2011, just after the release of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I am awaiting the contract to sign, and will post a table of contents, cover image, and link to buy as they come available. The publisher’s previous anthologies have been sold through lulu.com, so I’m expecting the same for this one. Similar Posts:

Discovering Duotrope’s Digest

Kameron — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:00:35 +0000

It’s finals week, and I have a couple more papers to turn in before I finish the marathon of academic writing that has been my first term back in school. That’s one down and two to go before I have enough credits for my English Language Arts endorsement and can enroll in the Masters in Teaching program.

For the next three weeks, however, I plan to spend some time on my fiction writing. I got a jumpstart on it this weekend by querying Tor.com about the status of “Relvan’s Rescue,” which I submitted back in April. I queried once already, in September, to ask if they still had it or if it had gotten lost in the transition to their new (at the time) submission process. Editor Liz Gorinsky confirmed “We still have it,” but now I’d like to know if it’s stuck in the slush pile, ready for rejection, or awaiting acceptance. Here’s hoping it’s option number three.

In the process of researching estimated response times for the market, I stumbled across a mention of Duotrope’s Digest. I’ve used Ralan and StoryPilot as my primary market listing tools in the past, and never bothered to investigate what other options existed out on the Internets.

Duotrope has been around since 2006, so it’s not exactly new, just new to me. What attracted me to the site, and got me to register, were the tools offered in addition to the market listings, but let’s start with the listings. Ralan was the first online market listing I was ever aware of and used. It’s a simple site with alphabetically listings of markets organized into categories by pay rate. The structure of the site requires a lot of scrolling and reading to find appropriate markets, much like using a print edition of The Writer’s Market. When a fellow author told me about StoryPilot, with its robust search engine, I thought I’d found the holy grail of market listings.

The market search on Duotrope is not quite as robust, but it includes all the important parameters. There is a form for fiction and another for poetry. One big difference is that Duotrope covers a wider variety of genres (StoryPilot is Sci-Fi and Fantasy only). Then there are your standard search parameters like pay rate and length.

My favorite feature of Duotrope, though, is its submission tracker. You add a submission, selecting its genre, length, and title. Then you identify the market it was submitted to, the date, dates of any responses, and what the response was. Duotrope compares this data to averages calculated from other submissions and from the market’s estimated response time as reported by the market editors/publishers. Your information is kept private, but Duotrope does offer a variety of reports based on the data, and you can export your submission data into Excel. I added “Relvan’s Rescue” and the four markets I’ve submitted it to in the last 18 months. No more need to search my Inbox for confirmation and dates of what markets I’ve sent to and whose already rejected my submission.

Another nifty little feature that Duotrope includes are a variety of RSS feeds for tracking market deadlines, updates and additions to markets, and even responses from favorite markets as reported by Duotrope members. Some of these feeds can be customized, and some of them are in “beta,” which means their functionality may be limited. I noticed that my favorites RSS was only reporting the first market alphabetically.

I know of one other website that combines market listings with a submission tracker, but it is entirely community-driven (writers submit and manage the market listings). Duotrope “is run by very small admin team…comprised of a few published writers and former editors, and is not affiliated with any outside businesses or organizations,” as it states on their FAQ. That gives me confidence in the accuracy and timeliness of their information, and makes Duotrope’s Digest my new home for market listings and submission tracking.Similar Posts:

Don’t be tossed to and fro by every editor

Kameron — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:16:07 +0000

I received another personalized rejection from the editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies for “Relvan’s Rescue” (return time: ~5 weeks). That’s 3-in-a-row, if you’re keeping count, though, from what I hear on the Internets, Andrew makes an effort to give feedback on submissions.

It’s encouraging–on one hand–not to be receiving form rejections. On the other hand, personalized rejections can serve as bait that lures unsuspecting writers into the nasty trap of perpetual revisions. Here are some rules I follow to help determine whether comments from an editor warrant a revision.

Follow the trends
Every editor has their own tastes and preferences. Revising your story based on one person’s input won’t necessarily make it more palatable to the next, and unless the original editor invited back a revision, the market you heard back from should now be considered closed for that story.

If more than one person is seeing the same thing, however, it’s probably something that should be addressed by a revision. The two comments I received about the pace at the beginning of “Relvan’s Rescue” raised a red flag with me, and resulted in some tweaking.

Reassess the market
Though I usually do my homework beforehand, sometimes I submit to a market I consider a longshot. If I happen to get a personalized rejection back, I view the editor’s comments in light of what they tend to publish. Sometimes, you don’t learn about obstacles to a particular market until you get rejected, like I did when Heroic Fantasy Quarterly told me that pirate-related stories were a hard sell.

Stay true to the story
“Relvan’s Rescue” is an adventure fantasy in the sword-and-sorcery tradition, about a mercenary captain who escorts a client across pirate-invested waters, is betrayed, and must rescue them from the clutches of an evil villain. Sure, there are undertones of lost love rekindled and the threat of a larger war looming in the background, but those themes are not the focus of the story. They may be more interesting to an editor than the main plot, however.

I’m not interested in radically altering the story to accommodate that interest. I want to sell the story I wrote. If someone wants to commission me to write the latter, I’m all for that, too.

It’s important as a writer to be open to criticism, but it is just as important to apply a filter to that criticism if you don’t want to spend more time revising than submitting. The above rules are my filters. Share yours in the comments.
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Too much talking makes Relvan a hard sell

Kameron — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:00:43 +0000

I heard back from the editors at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly over the weekend. Return time was ~2 months. They felt the beginning was “too talky” for their tastes. That’s the second comment about the start of the story, so I took a hard look and did end up cutting a couple lines of dialogue that really added nothing to the plot. I’m not sure it makes that much of an impact overall, like going from “too talky” to “kinda talky,” but it’s all I’m willing to prune at this point.

The editors also admitted that “pirate-related” stories are a hard sell for them. I can’t do much about that, but it is good to know for future submissions, which they invited me to send, and a nice nugget of information to pass on to folks considering this market.

Relvan’s next stop is Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I recently discovered this e-zine via an article I read somewhere online. They publish new issues roughly every two weeks, with two short fiction pieces per issue. You can download issues as PDFs or PRC ebooks if you don’t like reading from their website.

Unlike many similar markets, BCS pays professional rates. It appears their main source of income is donations (their parent company is a non-profit), though they do purchase an option to buy anthology rights, leading one to believe they have plans to sell collections at some point. Until then, the donation model appears to be working for them. They’ve been producing issues since October 2008 without a break in publication.

Their submission guidelines are pretty standard. I really appreciate the acceptance of manuscripts as attachments and simultaneous submissions. You’d think the former would be standard practice in today’s markets (it’s not), and the latter is a rarity. While return time is 5-8 weeks, BCS offers another unique feature in the form of posts to their forums that announce when they have replied to all submissions emailed by a certain date. If you’re submission falls into that slush pile, but you did not receive a reply, they welcome you to query them.Similar Posts:

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly publishes first issue

Kameron — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:00:25 +0000

I think I’ve found the next market I will submit “Relvan’s Rescue” to, barring acceptance from Black Gate. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, an ezine that began accepting submissions back in February of this year, published their first issue at the end of June. (I just heard about it last week via Grasping for the Wind.) HFQ publishes three pieces of short fiction and two poems per issue. I read all three stories and found them to be fun, entertaining examples of heroic, sword-and-sorcery fantasy (even if I could see the twist in “The Black Flowers of Sevan” coming from a mile away).

Their submission guidelines contain a couple items I thought worthy of mention. The first is their rate of pay. It’s not professional rates, but $100 is pretty significant for an ezine. If you view short fiction as a marketing tool, it’s icing on the cake. With no ads on the site or announced plans to publish anthologies, I’m intrigued by how they are funded.

The second item is their method of submission. They require a query/excerpt (first 10 pages) on short story submissions. This is unusual, from my experience, for pieces of 10,000 words or less. A synopsis, sure, but not an excerpt that could possibly be the entire story.

I know that the publishing industry is a late adopter of technology in general. Some markets won’t accept attachments, if they even take emails at all. HFQ appears to run on blogging software (hey, guys, if you’re reading this, you need to up the visibility on your RSS feed link; I can’t find it anywhere). I know WordPress allows the creation of “Author” accounts, which allow users to submit posts–stories, in this case–that need to be reviewed before publication. It’s a model I’ve considered when investigating opportunities for starting my own ezine. There are other online markets that use forums or online forms that allow the input of the story directly into a database from where it can be easily published once approved. These tools are one of the benefits of being an ezine; I’m not sure why any online publisher wouldn’t take advantage of them.

That small critique aside, I found HFQ to be a solid entry into the pulp fantasy market. Their choices of content reveal a solid editorial staff, and the site and rates are of semi-professional quality. I look forward to reading their fantasy fiction offerings, and submitting to them, in the future.Similar Posts:

My review policy

Kameron — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:00:37 +0000

I’m a voracious reader. If you watch my “Currently Reading” widget, or friend me on Goodreads, you’ll note that I cycle through a book about once a week or so. I’d probably finish quicker, but I limit myself to reading during my weekday commutes (I take a 15-20 minute ride on the light rail). Given my penchant for devouring fantasy fiction, you would think that reviews would be a regular staple of this blog.

They are not, however. The reviews I have written are restricted to genre classics. I’ve chosen to refrain from reviewing the work of my contemporaries. That wasn’t always the case, and I stirred up some trouble for myself in the process. I’m not to keen on repeating that experience.

It would also be likely that any criticism I might level as part of a review would be seen as sour grapes. I had a single novel published as a result of a fairly high profile contest, and have since fallen back into obscurity. Meanwhile, a handful of my fellow entrants are getting published for the second or third time. I would be terribly embarrassed if someone interpreted a review I wrote as the tantrum of a spurned writer.

That doesn’t mean I won’t say anything when a colleague gets published. I’m more than happy to announce new releases. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s been a while since I did so, and a recent comment asking about 4E Forgotten Realms novels reminded me that the self-styled “Young Dragons” have had quite a few books published that fall under that heading. So, if you’re looking for some post-Spellplague action in Faerun, try some of these titles:

I also want to take a moment to mention a site by WotC author Ed Bolme called christianbookvideos.com, where they host promotional book trailers. Book trailers have been around for a few years, but they seem to be coming into more use as a marketing tool.

Well, that’s enough plugging for today. Time to get back to my reading (and writing).Similar Posts:

Get your ham-sized fist here

Kameron — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:00:25 +0000

Awards serve two primary purposes: to stroke the ego of the award-winner and attempt to raise awareness. There are three major awards for fantasy fiction: the World Fantasy award, the Hugo, and the Nebula.

Both the Hugo and the Nebula do not differentiate between science fiction and fantasy in their categories. Nominations and voting are restricted to the members of the WorldCon and the SFWA, respectively. The World Fantasy award is strictly for fantasy works, and candidates are nominated and voted on by a panel of judges (nominees for the two “fan” categories are selected by members of the World Fantasy Convention).

All this is to say that while I think these awards have the ego-stroke covered, I question their ability to raise awareness. The methodology of the nominating and voting makes them insular by nature. I remember as a young reader seeing “Winner of the Nebula” or “Winner of the Hugo” on the cover of some of the books I checked out of the library, but I had no idea what that meant.

I’m not even sure if I’ve seen the tagline on anything I’ve read recently. More often, I see “New York Times bestseller.” That speaks volumes about the relevance of the awards, in my opinion.

Fantasy fiction is in dire need of some new awards dedicated solely to the genre. I would love to see awards broken into subgenre categories as well as formats. This strategy would go a long way to raising awareness that all fantasy is not the same.

The recently announced Ham-Sized Fist award is a step in that direction. The award focuses on heroic fantasy and sword-and-sorcery short stories or novellas (the qualifier is the publishing venue as opposed to a word count, though the stories must be at least 500 words long).

Awards like the Ham-Sized Fist that are dedicated to specific genres are better suited to raising awareness because they are not swayed by fickle editorial trends. You won’t see the categories dominated by the new hotness of the moment. You will see the best of the genre displayed prominently for all to see, and more visibility generally equates to a higher standard in the market.

Open nominations will also prevent “flavor of the month” syndrome. That’s right, the general public can nominate a story for the award. I’m not aware of any other fantasy literature award that does that.

The Ham-Sized Fist award has another weapon in its arsenal of genre promotion. It offers a monetary award to both the author and the publisher. Money is a wonderful motivator for businesses worried about their bottom line, and small press publishers, who comprise a significant share of the market, are driven hard by that line. You won’t find a much better way to promote the spread of a genre than paying someone to publish it. The HSF offers a sum to both parties equal to what most professional markets pay for a 6,000 word manuscript, and they are seeking additional sponsorship in order to bump that number up.

I applaud the sponsors of the Ham-Sized Fist award and look forward to seeing what gets nominated, and of course the ultimate winners. What is your opinion of literary awards? Do they influence what you read? What would you like to see from an award in terms of nominations, judging, and promotion?Similar Posts:

Writing fantasy fiction in a recession

Kameron — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:00:21 +0000

Is an economic recession a bad time to enter the world of writing? Alex Moore asked this great question in her comment to my reaction to a shrinking market. Intrigued, I decided to do a little research.

Are books recession-proof?
Conventional wisdom suggests that the entertainment-value-to-cost ratio of a book makes it an attractive buy during tough economic times. Families tend to stay home instead of going out, so their purchases shift to DVDs, books and games. Fiction books also provide an escape from the emotional turbulence of a recession.

Bookstore sales figures for the early part of 2008 revealed a 4-5% increase in sales, and the Spring Book Show in Atlanta noted an increase in orders from booksellers. Diamond Books, a distributor of comic books and graphic novels, moved their entire stock. An interesting detail from the sales figures was the drop in hardcover sales corresponded to an almost equal rise in the sales of paperbacks.

I noted several articles on the rise of e-books while searching for 2008 sales figures. Random House reported a 400% growth in their e-book sales, while audiobooks and e-books gained 17% and 21%, respectively, marketwide.

If these numbers aren’t encouraging enough for those wondering if this is a bad time to enter the world of writing, it’s also important to consider the publishing timeline. It can take 6 months to a year for the final draft of a manuscript to go from the editor’s desk to the bookshelf. Many experts are predicting 2-4 years of our current economic conditions. If you’re just getting started on the first draft of a 100k-word epic fantasy fiction novel, give yourself at least a year to get to the final draft. That puts the arrival of your debut within the range of when things are expected to turn around.

Are shrinking markets a sign that fantasy fiction isn’t popular?
Just because book sales in general don’t seem too affected by the recession, doesn’t mean that people are buying more fantasy fiction. What little I did find on sales figures didn’t give any sort of breakdown by genre, unfortunately. There are other indicators I could look to, however.

Closing markets, like Realms of Fantasy, might imply that fantasy fiction isn’t a viable genre. There are other possible explanations, though: a poor business model or a lack of interest in the short story format. The former, in particular, is key to me. The rise of online markets suggests that print magazines will need to adapt to this new medium if they wish to survive.

Another indicator that struck a chord with me is disappearing shelf space at bookstores. I walked in to my local chain store the other day and noticed that the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section had ceded an entire row to the neighboring genre. My first reaction was panic, followed by outrage. When I finally cooled down a few seconds later and gave it some thought, the reduction didn’t necessarily correlate to a decrease in the popularity of fantasy fiction.

First, I learned from my experience with arranging the signing for Maiden of Pain that even chain stores localize their inventories based on regional consumer tastes. It’s entirely possible for that while the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section downtown is shrinking, the same genre section is flourishing in south Portland.

The second factor that mitigates this indicator is online retailers. I’m going to make a broad, sweeping generalization: geeks comprise a large portion of science fiction and fantasy fandom, and geeks like technology. I wouldn’t be surprised if geeks buy more books online than at a brick-and-mortar. I know my spending habits are fairly evenly distributed between the two.

I’m also aware of small press publishers who sell direct via the Internet. Publishing giants who wish to break the industry-killing stranglehold booksellers have would be wise to look into this business model, as well, but that’s a whole other rant. Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla of online booksellers, with B&N and Powell’s having significant Internet sales to boost their physical retail locations. You must take these into consideration before ruling out fantasy fiction just because of shrinking floor space.

Who cares, just write
Whether the economy is good or bad, or whether the genre is popular or not shouldn’t matter. They aren’t factors in why I write fantasy fiction. If you love to write, they shouldn’t be factors in your decision, either.

I’m interested in your responses to Alex’s question. Is this a bad time to enter the world of fantasy fiction writing? Or could it be an opportunity waiting to be noticed?Similar Posts:

Reaction to a shrinking market

Kameron — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:00:18 +0000

The news that Realms of Fantasy will cease publication with their April 2009 issue has caused me to rethink the submission strategy I employed for my fantasy fiction short stories. The professional market is rapidly shrinking. “Professional” is defined as any market that pays a minimum of $.05/word (per the current membership requirements of the SFWA).

There aren’t many print publications that qualify. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is the only one that comes to mind, and they aren’t exclusively fantasy fiction. Black Gate has been closed to submissions for a while, and most professional anthologies are by invite only.

There are some e-zines that pay professional rates, like Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine. The latter isn’t what I consider fantasy fiction, but rather literary fiction with fantasy aspirations.

While print markets like Realms of Fantasy are slowly disappearing, the Web has birthed an explosion of online markets. A Google search for “fantasy webzine” returns over 200,000 results. Most of these offer little or no compensation, so I have avoided submitting to them.

Not any more.

The reason for this is a fundamental shift in my writing goals. I no longer view short stories as a means of income, but as a marketing tool. (Yes, I am one of those writers who believes we have a responsibility to promote ourselves.) I’m not interested in a SFWA membership, and my current publishing credits would qualify me if I was.

I am interested in increasing my footprint and name recognition. Any financial compensation on top of that is just bonus.

What markets do you submit to? Are pay rates a criteria? Do you read/subscribe to any of the publications I mentioned? How often do you read fantasy fiction short stories?Similar Posts: