Monday, June 29: The Scribbler
HABITUAL OFFENDERS
by James Lincoln Warren
Why have so many short story publications gone the way of all flesh?
This isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been happening gradually for several decades. When I was a kid, there were lots of short story magazines on the newsstands, and “slick” magazines regularly printed short fiction. Most of the fiction magazines have ceased publication and you won’t find anywhere near as much fiction in slicks anymore. How did this happen?
One answer may be that the American public’s tastes underwent a sea change, and that readers no longer attach the importance to short stories that they once did. According to this theory, the novel, especially the mass market paperback, supplanted the magazines in the public favor.
Except that there really don’t seem to be that many more novels on the shelves, and they’re not as widely available as they used to be. I used to buy most of my paperbacks from wire racks at the neighborhood ice house (that’s Texican for “convenience store”) or from the books section in department stores. No more, although you can still find paperbacks in large drugstores.
The novels are also a lot longer—and relatively more expensive—than they used to be. When I was a kid, you could buy a paperback for 45 or 50 cents. (Comics were 12 cents.) Those books were usually not longer than 50 to 70 thousand words, about half the length of most paperbacks these days. All of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee stories originally came out in mass market paperback until The Turquoise Lament, the fifteenth in the series. Today, there are very few mystery series that are at home in that publishing segment, and from what I can tell, almost all of them seem to be cozies. (Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the mix of available genres has certainly changed.) Have tastes changed that much?
Well, maybe, but it doesn’t look like the mass market paperback is exactly having a renaissance.
So I don’t think the paperback novel displaced the short story magazine. But something has influenced people to buy fewer of them. I think the reason fewer people are reading short stories is because fewer people are reading for their daily pleasure. They save their leisure reading for vacations and weekends and other laid-out blocks of time. In other words, they save their reading for that novel they’ve been waiting to get into.
My theory is that there are two main culprits: leisure time competition and changes in publishers’ priorities.
The latter of these is the simplest to explain. Publishing houses underwent a revolution in the eighties and nineties as imprints combined into large mega-houses or were acquired by multi-level transnational corporations, run by business-trained MBAs instead of by executive editors. These tycoons demanded changes in the bottom line. This meant that instead of being satisfied with a wide range of modest successes, they wanted fewer titles with higher returns—the so-called “blockbuster syndrome”. The same thing happened in the film industry at about the same time—and many of the big corporations were the same, too. The proximate result of this was the abandonment of the midlist title—and that includes anthologies, especially original anthologies. (Some of the slack has been picked up by the recent proliferation of small specialty houses and regional publishers, but not enough to restore the previous landscape.)
There has always been a sort of symbiosis between original anthologies and magazines. It works something like this: you see an anthology featuring a story by one of your favorite writers, say, Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. You buy the book, and discover a story you really like by a writer you have never heard of before. A month later, you see that new writer’s name on the cover of Ellery Queen, so you buy a copy. You enjoy the magazine so much you subscribe, and also start looking for Alfred Hitchcock. And then you encounter a new name in one of the magazine issues, and when you see that writer’s name on the cover of a mass market anthology—or even a novel—you buy it. And so on.
This admirable system collapses, however, when the only books being published are doorstops by megastars.
True, the laws of supply and demand state that big houses would publish more anthologies if there were a sufficiently large audience for them, but since no anthology will ever be a blockbuster, they have no motivation for publicizing anthologies. So they act as if that “market segment” doesn’t exist. No publicity, no custom. So much for rapacious publishers.
The former reason, though, is where I really lay the blame. Competition for leisure time has never been fiercer. There are lots of reasons for this, from urban sprawl and increased transit times in automobiles from home to work and vice versa, to eyestrain and fatigue from overwork once you’re at home, to the undemanding soporific of late night television. Also, of course, there’s the internet, where gratification is almost always instantaneous and easily within reach.
First, the automobile. If you don’t take a train or a bus to work, you’re not going to read on your way into town. Even if you do take a train or a bus to work, these days you’re just as likely to be listening to your iPod or actually working before you get to the office by flying your thumbs over your Blackberry’s keyboard. But if you do read on the train or bus, the ticket is short fiction. Novels are for airplanes and weekends.
Second, eyestrain and fatigue. Reading requires effort on the part of the reader. My Dad used to read the evening paper when he got home from work, as regularly as the phases of the moon. Evening papers don’t even exist anymore. It’s much simpler to plop down on the La-Z-Boy and turn on the telly. I don’t hate television, not really. But I do hate mindless, undemanding TV.
Which brings me to Point the Third, late night broadcasting. I don’t have a TV in my bedroom. Before I go to sleep, I read. Short stories are perfect fare for bedtime reading—you start a story and 20 minutes later, it’s lights out. But most folks are watching something, anything from The Tonight Show to Friends reruns to Nightline. Not mindless, except for Friends, but still easy of access, and if it makes you think too hard, you’ve already got your thumb on the OFF switch on the remote.
Finally, the internet. The reason the internet is so seductive is that gratification is almost instantaneous and surfing virtually effortless. Not a lot of people do any serious reading on the internet, but most of us read short stuff like, say, Criminal Brief. (I was interested, by the way, to see how many people would actually listen to the 75-minute discourse of last week’s “Selling Shorts”—as I suspected, there were fewer visits, since few folks have an hour and a quarter to spare.) You don’t have to go looking for the internet. It’s right there all the time. And it yields up serendipitous treasures all the time.
In short, I think American reading habits have changed. We’ve all turned into habitual offenders. As a consequence, people who would otherwise read and enjoy fiction have no motivation to do so—they don’t have time, they’re too tired, they’re too lazy. And it’s a shame, because short fiction might just be the best thing for them, without interfering with all the other demands made on them—it doesn’t take much time, it isn’t exhausting, and it takes no effort to pick up the magazine from your mailbox once a month and stuff it in a purse or coat pocket.
I have expressed to the Gentle Reader my worry that sometimes I’m preaching to the choir. On the other hand, the main reason churches have choirs is so the congregation will join in on the hymns—the choir is spreading the Gospel in a communal way, a way that the sermonizer can’t. So my question is, what’s the best way to get the choir to sing? How do we get the word out that short stories can enrich lives as easily and more profitably than the forces competing against them?
Yes, that’s the reason I created CB in the first place. Excuse me while I play an “A” on the church organ. It’s time to tune up.
Over on my blog, I preach to the choir, too. But those folks? They listen and they read because all they have to do is click on the link and they’re in short story wonderland.
Yeah, print is nice, but the world is turning away from print and going “green”. There are more markets for short stories than ever before and they’re on the internet, from zines to podcasts the world of short stories is exploding with a new generation of writers.
Sure, many of them don’t pay, but more and more are, and some of them are even paying professional rates, all you need to do is look. Some of the zines print anthologies and guess what? They’re selling to people who read on the ‘net.
When crime writers only focus on the big two print magazines, they’re loosing out on a whole new world of writing. Publishing is changing and writers have to change with it. From ipods to Kindles people are reading and listening to short stories.
Hi Sandra,
I’ve visited your blog several times and noted the kind mentions you’ve made of Criminal Brief.
I personally distress at giving up two things, (a) a real book/magazine I can hold in our hand (I like the look and feel)) and (b) getting paid!
I’ve seen at least one paying web site fold recently, but blogs like yours and Hope Clark’s might help bridge the gap, bring the mountain to Muhammad, so to speak, helping to keep us myopic word-slingers apprised of markets.
I tend to prefer the print magazines to the online ones, but I’ve seen and enjoyed — and posted stories in — the e-zines as well. (I think I still have 20 or more available via Amazon Shorts.) Like Leigh, I do like to hold and feel the book/magazine in my hand.
As Sandra said, though, we seem to be more and more receptive to online markets, and as readership increases I’m sure the authors (and more payment to the authors) will follow.
… some of them are even paying professional rates …
Which ones?
A librarian told me that today no one checks out the books of an area writer, Louis Bromfield. Why? No explicit sex. That, I believe, is because imaginations no longer are developed or even necessary. Reading requires imagination. A hundred years ago people listened to storytellers and visualized the scenes in their minds. Then came radio dramas and they, too, required imagination. Television eliminated that need. Now people (and this is not meant as criticism) have developed a need for constant contact and participation. I recently saw a late 1950s video of The Big Bopper singing Chantilly Lace. What was remarkable was the well-dressed young people sitting and listening. Today there is a desire to participate, a need to be in the mosh pit. Cell phones texting, the internet with Twitter, My Space, Facebook and an endless number of message boards have created the need for unbroken contact and an abhorrence of solitude. Reading is a solitary endeavor. Perhaps that is the next step in writing – participation. JLW will write a story and a hundred people will change the ending or kill the protagonist. It’s a different world and I can understand the changes in reading habits and material. I don’t like it, of course. The short story should be ideal for today’s short attention spans if only that could become apparent to more people.
I’m with Sandra. I discovered ezines just over 6 months ago and have found some great stories at Beat To A Pulp, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist Of Noir,Thrillers Killers ‘n’ Chillers, Shoots & Vines oh and loads of others.
I’ve been thinking about this most of the morning and started wondering what novelists thought when the movies came along. Many of them jumped to screen writing but I’ll bet many more complained about the new media. Each new generation of writer has to adapt to what’s available to them.
And these new guys coming up have the zines much the same way that the previous generations had the pulps. And let’s face it, if they wait to get published in the few slots available in EQ or AHMM, they may never see their name in print or have their stories read and that would be a great loss.
This was a great post. In my opinion, one of the best Briefs of the year so far.
Yup, I think the “Blockbuster Syndrome” has hurt literature and has zapped the integrity of the publishing world. JLW said that the same thing happened with the film industry, but ironically (considering the higher production costs of film) a non-blockbuster film is more likely to see light than a non-blockbuster book. This is because there are more venues open to film (direct to DVD to name one), and because people today are more apt to watch (as JLW pointed out) than to read.
I, too, find televisions in the bedroom as a Golden Calf.
Again, great post.
Paul, none of the sites you mentioned pay the authors. They are not therefore professional markets — they’re for hobbyists. I have nothing against hobbyists and I think that e-zines have their place, just as mimeographed fanzines had their niche back in the day, but as a professional writer I expect to get a check.
That publishing is changing I cannot deny. Having said that, I am far from convinced that electronic media will supplant print as the primary choice for readers. Even electronic book readers such as Kindle essentially reproduce works that appear simultaneously in print — they are alternatives, not replacements. (N.B., electronic versions of both AHMM and EQMM are readily available.) Most of the folks I know who actually have a Kindle, and there are only a few, only use it on airplanes.
As far as fiction websites are concerned, despite their availability, they do not have anything like the circulation figures that AHMM and EQMM do. A story online may be read by hundreds of people. At an extremely conservative estimate, a story in a magazine is going to be read by more than ten thousand people.
Also, I was troubled by the disclaimers on the websites you mentioned, which universally state that the author retains all rights to the material — but first electronic publication rights have already been usurped by the sites themselves in the very act of putting the stories on line.
I forgot to add that the decline of print markets for short stories antedates the web by several years, as I pointed out at the beginning of the article. So even if web-based fiction has made a lot of stories available that don’t have the good fortune to find their way into print, the essential problem of decline in readership remains.
To emphasize a point James hinted at, full membership in professional organizations require publication for pay and generally by a recognized publisher.
Most major publishers have eBook divisions. It’s going to be interesting to see how professional societies and publishers handle that shift and distinguish themselves not so much from eZines, but from the self-published eBooks.
On Sandra’s site, pattinase (abbott) writes “What’s happening to the short story mirrors the plight of newspapers. Young people read online in bite size pieces. I doubt we will go backward in this although I hope we do.”
In one of Agatha Christie’s novels, Miss Marple remarks sometimes progress doesn’t seem very much like progress.
Like Sandra, I’ve been thinking about the situation and causal relationships. I’ve complained on Criminal Brief about the dumbing down of boys and the failure of males to read much more than cereal boxes, sports stats, and beer labels.
I think there’s another underlying culprit. For decades now, television has become babysitter, playmate, friend, lover, companion, conspirator, consolator, educator, entertainer, game competitor, and emotional drug dealer. Add internet and we add librarian, collaborator, study guide, and many other roles. For generations who haven’t known anything else, it’s a tiny step to getting reading material from a screen.
I made a point (a New Year’s resolution actually) to read more short stories this year, and I’m glad I did. I’d forgotten how much fun the short form is. Now I’m disappointed every time I pick up a magazine because there is almost no short fiction in magazines anymore. I have to go to the Net where the quality is mixed (though worth wading into; I’ve read some gems) or I have to buy an entire anthology.
Competition for leisure time has never been quite so competitive as now. In fact, this comment is cutting into my reading time so, see ya!