About short fiction I find I read it when I have a limited amount of time and the chance to read. I used to read on the starmaster and the cycle at the gym until I switched to a cross trainer that kept my arms busy. I suppose I should go back and just learn to turn pages quickly.

Another reason people do not read short fiction as much could be that they have other entertainments now like ipods, cell phones, lap tops, computers in general to provide entertainment.

The current distribution of short fiction magazines is not so great these days. Try finding one in a Barnes and Noble. In my home town I can find them in news stands and corner stores but I think that might be an exception.

Some of this is in response, I think, to Ellen Datlow’s marvellous (and now sadly defunct, though the archives live) Sci Fiction. Either they were inspired by it’s existence, or by it’s end, or so I think.

So … some of these magazines aren’t going to go the distance, no doubt. Maybe it’s just a fad. But each one of the publishers and editors must believe they’re capable of getting enough buyers (in one way or another) to be a worthwhile endeavor.

For short fiction, I think print is going the way of the dodo. One of the major complaints about reading on a screen is that most people can’t stand to sit hours in front of the computer. But most short stories only take 30-60 minutes to read, and that’s entirely manageable. There’s also the sentimental, tactile argument for handling a new book with that new book smell and leafing through the pages, but I don’t recall many people gushing about thumbing through a digest-format magazine like Analog and Asimov (I assume they are still in digest format — I haven’t seen them since moving to Sweden), so that’s also not a problem.

Last but not least… see this aggregator, Free SF Online. They basically post links to every SF story that’s published for free on the Internet. “Free” has a lot of power. Heliotrope is a free magazine. Clarkesworld is a free magazine. Subterranean is free. Baen’s Universe is the only exception, I think, though all I’ve heard suggests that this isn’t a problem for them financially speaking (but I hear very little, so who knows).

How viable is this in the long run? No idea. But right now I suspect that there are more people reading SF short fiction on-line on a regular basis than there are reading it in print.

Now I just have to get up the nerve to write them. I fear the short story because I think they are really hard to write, and to write a good one is really, really hard.

Ian

Since writing short fiction comes as naturally to me as talking, and I seem to be chemically free of the ability to write novels, the conversation above does not bode well for my writing. I guess I could just post them all on a free website. Is it still considered a ‘loss leader’ if you don’t actually have anything to sell them afterward?

OTOH, people like Scott Lynch, John Scalzi, Peter Watts, Charles Stross, and a mess of Baen writers have done nothing but improve their sales (or, in Scalzi’s and Lynch’s case, actually land publishing deals) by giving away material for free. So there’s something to be said for the approach, whether you’re established or just starting in the business.