The Long and Unprofitable Life of the Short Story Collection

https://laurabmcgrath.substack.com/p/the-long-and-unprofitable-life-of

by ilamont • 2 months ago

4 2 2 months ago

laurabmcgrath.substack.com

KurSix• 2 months ago

Short stories often seem less like a mass-market product and more like a writer's demo reel

PaulHoule• 2 months ago

Back in the day (before 1970 or so?) short stories and serialization were the bread-and-butter of science fiction. I have a huge number of paperback and hardcover anthologies of sci-fi stories, sometimes by a single author (say Element 79 by Fred Hoyle) and others by many authors (say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Golden_Age) and given that many of them were reprinted many times I can't believe they didn't make money.

Interesting directions are:

- Maybe literary fiction is trash and genre fiction is treasure. I mean, there are readers for genre fiction which is more than you can say for literary fiction. I spent enough time going through the remainder racks at bookstores to be convinced that "A NOVEL" is a curse you can write on the front of a book to make sure it will never sell, and if I ever do publish a novel I am going to put it in my contract that the publisher owes me $20B if they ever write "A NOVEL" on the cover.

- I used to think serialization was for the birds. Like it was something that hypnotized Victorians to think slow-paced novels by the likes of Dickens and the Bronte sisters were interesting. Lately though I've gotten deeper into the pipeline that puts anime stories on television which involves serialization of light novels and manga and it does have me thinking that bringing back serialization might wake the culture industry in the US up from the failing business of nostalgia.

The Long and Unprofitable Life of the Short Story Collection

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