Guest Post: David S. Grant

The state of short fiction and short fiction markets

David S. Grant

Short fiction today is at an interesting place. On one hand the volume of short stories being written are plentiful and there are more markets than ever before to have your work viewed. However, the amount of paying markets, especially print, is pretty small in comparison to the submissions. In my opinion, more written stories in the marketplace (paying or not) is a positive for both the magazine market as well as literary markets as a whole.

Often I hear the short story market is saturated as more and more people use community sites to promote their work. Given this, most publishers are either unwilling, or do not have the resources to pull multiple shorts into books. I do believe though that this is changing. Those in the publishing business are beginning to see this so called saturation as an opportunity. Through literary magazines, online magazines, and community sites a lot of talent is waiting to be discovered. Instead of seeing this as a negative, this is the chance to bring in new voices and new ideas into the literary journals and magazines.

My new short story collection, Emotionless Souls, now available through Brown Paper Publishing contains many stories that first appeared either online or printed in literary journals. The exposures from these various areas were enough to peak interest from my current publisher, and package them into the book Emotionless Souls. Predicate, a literary journal through Brown Paper Publishing also uses short stories from their authors as a way to promote their current book catalog. Available in both print and online, authors promoting current novels as well as promote their writing overall use Predicate as a resource to reach a wider audience.

Persistence is important when submitting short fiction to journals and magazines. Often, the rejection is not a reflection of the writing, but rather the content the publisher is looking for. Continue submitting, and if your stories are interesting (and written professionally) you will have opportunities to see you work printed, and if lucky possible a collection of your work printed.

David S. Grant, the author of Corporate Porn, is the author of Emotionless Souls, a short story collection published by Brown Paper Publishing. David’s rock and drug fueled double novel Bleach|Blackout is now available through Offense Mechanism, an imprint of Silverthought Press. For more information on his writing please go to: David S. Grant.