The Short Story Project, Part 2

Now that I’ve talked about the “sad news” with The Short Story Project (Part 1), let’s look at the problems, or “bad news,” before looking at the good news and beginning to explore possible solutions.

THE BIGGEST, BADDEST NEWS IS…

People want free content.  They want whatever they can get for nothing.  It’s human nature.  But people will pay for content and products that they feel have value to them.  

Providing content for free means that advertising dollars, ancillary product sales, and donations have to fill the gap.  Creating a product that people will pay for requires getting the market’s attention, though, and that, of course, costs time, money, and energy/effort.

Bottom line: In order to generate income for the creators and producers of a product or content, money has to come in the door somehow, someway.  Of course, there’s the reality of consumer economics — how many people make enough money to have the discretionary income to support paying for content and products. The smaller that demographic, the smaller and smaller becomes the potential market pool.

PROBLEMS PUBLISHING A SHORT STORY MAGAZINE OR EZINE

So getting operating capital (money) is the number one problem and contributes to every other problem facing the short story publisher.

Vetting short story submissions takes skill, knowledge, and time. That means that someone who has a solid grasp of what makes a short story good (called an editor) has to read and approve or reject each author’s short story submission.  Editors have to eat and pay their bills, so they can’t spend time doing something that offers no return.

Getting and retaining income is the biggest problem. A magazine can’t pay for editors and office staff, publication, copyrighting costs, and overhead, never mind paying authors, if they don’t have some sort of income. Advertising is tough to get without an established subscriber base, so the project runs in a deficit until a subscriber base can be established. To get that subscriber base, requires advertising and soliciting, all of which costs more out-of-pocket money.  Again, it comes down to paying staff and contributors enough to let them pay their bills and put food on the table.

There.  That’s the tip of the iceberg.  And it boils down to one thing: money.  The question, then, becomes, can short stories generate enough money to support their creators and producers.  Let’s look at some of the solutions available to authors

AMAZON’S KINDLE — A POSSIBLE SOLUTION THAT HOLDS A HUGE PITFALL

Amazon’s Kindle and similar e-formats offer one alternative — let the buyers pick and choose the winners and losers.  The problem with this is that good literature goes wanting and only authors and content with friends or an established fan-base win. Popularity has never been a guarantee of quality, though.  In fact, quality products usually aren’t those which prove most popular in the marketplace.  (Porn is an excellent example of this fact.  It’s very popular and reaps a high financial reward for its purveyors because a lot, and I mean a LOT as in billions, of people are willing to pay for it.)

AUTHOR COOPERATIVES AND ANTHOLOGIES

Author cooperative ventures which produce magazines, books, and anthologies, have all the problems associated with magazine publishing and book publishing…and more, usually because the project lacks of a good, reputable editor.  Advertising the resulting publication — getting the word out — is an huge obstacle unless at least one author has an established audience or somebody has very deep pockets to pay the tens of thousands to millions of dollars needed to grab national and international audiences in the quantities necessary to make a profit.

SO THE GOOD NEWS IS…

There is still a market for short stories.  There are still ways to succeed as an author of short stories.  I’ll be looking at some of the good news in my next installment of The Short Story Project.