Eccentric Flower:199906/Short stories and diminishing returns

I had to stop and rework the CGI. It wasn't just messing up the spacing of entries on the main page; it was removing some of them before their time. It was showing a bias for certain types of entries. My CGI is trying to tell me something, I think.

So you might do well to go back to the main page and see if there's anything you missed because of its mendacity.

Meanwhile, on with the rant promised in the previous entry.

I wrote a little story a few days ago. It was good. I was rather pleased with it. Several of you liked it too. I'm glad.

But the inevitable next question, from divers sources, was "So why don't you sell it?"

So. Bear with me here as I rant.

When you sell a novel, you generally don't try to sell it yourself. You get an agent. To my mind, the function of an agent is to prevent me from needing to market myself and my work. I hate selling myself and I'm no good at it. To me an agent relieves me of the necessity of having to wheedle publishers, of having to haggle over rates and rights, of having to print copies of my MS a zillion times and send them all over the place - the tedious business of marketing the written word.

This suits me just fine. I write first for the pleasure of writing, and second so that other people have the pleasure of reading it. Making the money is a distant third.

It wasn't that way once. Until I was about twenty-five I still thought that one day I was going to be able to support myself from my writing, to retire happy on my writing proceeds one day in the distant future. I no longer believe that (and it hurt a lot when I stopped). There are just too many people chasing too many titles.

The average first novel stays on the shelves for about a microsecond, and because no one ever gets a chance to see it, it earns a pittance. If you're lucky, by the time you sell a few more, you actually get some shelf time - by which time your earlier works are unattainable. (If you're Neal Stephenson, you consider this a Good Thing - rumor has it that he denies The Big U even exists.)

Meanwhile publishers are continually finding new ways to screw the writer, such as finding new arrangements of work-for-hire that cheat writers of their copyrights, and saying that online availability alone now counts as keeping the book "in print" so the rights - on a book which hasn't seen a bookstore in ages - won't revert to the author.

Oh, yeah, that's a game I can win.

So: I am no longer in it for the money. Why bother to try publishing at all, then? Because I want other people to see and enjoy my words, and frankly, as much as I love you all, you're a limited audience. Getting it in print, even if it stays on the shelves for a day, still reaches more people than it would on this website in a year. (One day, god help us, that might change, and that's when you say goodbye to the paper book. Don't wish for that.)

Point being: Since I'm in this game but I don't particularly enjoy playing it, I want an agent to put up with the bulls**t for me.

With short stories, on the other hand, the reality is that writers do not normally use an agent, because it's not worth the agent's time and fees. Nor is it usually worth the writer's time, for that matter, especially as you get more sales under your belt. Pro writers sell short stories as loss leaders these days, to promote their names so that people will market their novels. Amateurs, on the other hand, try to sell short stories because (in my opinion) they don't know better, or because they don't think they can sustain a novel. I think it may actually be easier to sell a novel under most circumstances than a short story - assuming you can get an agent.

Submitting short stories is a very different game if you have a reputation. If you're Joe Haldeman, you can send a short story to your single chosen outlet and have a good chance of getting it printed there. No problems, no real effort: You stick it in one envelope and attach a letter that says "Stanley - here's something for your consideration" and that's that.

Here's how someone like you or I has to market a short story: You print it a dozen times, not counting the first three attempts because it didn't look right to you, and the slushpiles are so swamped that the slightest irregularity, the slightest smudge, will cause your ms to be rejected. You find twenty-four envelopes and twenty-four stamps. If it's a long ms, you worry about postage rates and eventually have to go weigh the beast because you're sure that one stamp will not suffice.

Then you write twelve cover letters. These are the hardest writing you'll ever do in your life. They have to be very short, but not brusque, and they have to give the editor a reason to want to go past that page and read the ms ... in an environment that is such a buyer's market that there is absolutely no penalty to him for throwing it away unread. And you have to do this without seeming egotistical, or sounding like you're pleading.

Actually, twelve is high. I don't think there are twelve paying markets for that story.

Anyway. All this for a story which is not 500 words long? Writers get paid by the word, you know.

The reason for this long rant is that I get tired of people insinuating that I don't market short stories because I'm too scared or too lazy. The fact is, I don't because I have seen what it entails, and the return is simply not worth the work.

So I am concentrating on novels. If I write stories, they're a gift to you. Read them, enjoy them. Critique them if you like - I may revise them, even if I don't send them anywhere. But don't ask me to publish them.

Unless you're volunteering to shop them for me. And you'd be a fool to do that.