I have just read through the ‘women writers beware’ thread with fascination.
Two things interest me; the manipulation of a writer’s work by a publisher just to make it ‘fit’ that publisher’s known market, for one. And the whole well-trodden battlefield of female versus male and which is ‘weightier’ in any scenario.

But to return to the first. I am one of that dying breed, an English short story writer. Worse, (from the commercial viability aspect) I do not write for those markets in the UK which still publish short fiction on a regular basis; the women’s magazine market for example.

It used to be considered a real skill, creating a world within a few pages, transporting a reader, giving them people and situations to engage them, people about whom they cared.

For some reason, the skill has been devalued in the UK to the extent that only a few small presses keep it going. Although some publishers are sticking their necks out and trying to turn the tide. Compare the situation here to that in the US, where many Universities publish a quality reviews of contemporary fiction, where the short story form is celebrated annually by the giving of awards, (for both print and web), where quality anthologies abound, not the least the Best American Short Stories series.

I recently heard William Trevor give a reading, at the Charleston Small Wonder Festival. (Now in its third year, this is another intiative aimed at regenerating interest in the short story).

William Trevor held an audience in the palm of his hand for the best part of an hour, reading a story that was as yet unpublished. Unpublished in the UK. It had been published in The New Yorker.

Why? What’s happened such that one of the greatest writers of the form alive today has to go to the USA for first publication?

One answer has to be the publishing houses, who know that they wont ‘make much money’ on his work, and therefore don’t go that way. But isn’t it the case that it is the puiblishing houses themselves that have skewed the market? If the public is fed an endless supply of glitzy glossy novels, and never any anthologies, wont the public get used to that diet?

I’ve had it said so many times… “Short stories? That’s nice. When are you going to write a proper book?” And that’s from intelligent friends.

And from an agent or two. “No money to be made in what you are writing. Come back when you’ve written a novel.”

Back to the other thread.

Why should that writer have to accept that her work had to be changed by the publishing industry?

And why should a writer of short fiction have to abandon her craft and write a novel when her work wants to be written short, if she wants to be read?

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Apologies! This has ended up far longer than I had intended. And me a 'short' writer too.

It's maddening, isn't it, when the short story is such a wonderful form. As you say, there are mags, but they're small. I knew when Good Housekeeping and She stopped having a good story every month by good and respected writers that it was in trouble. Though I notice that there's a certain amount of very very short story around in the weekend broadsheet supplements. But writing those isn't to everyone's taste.

I think, like poetry, anthologies do sell, specially when they're themed, and the smaller and regional presses do a great job on these, but collections by individual authors don't just sell, any more than they don't for poets. My theory is that book buyers on the whole want novels they can sink into like a good big meal, absorb them, live in. By definition a collection isn't that - it's usually slimmer than a novel, though no cheaper, and you actually don't want to read them all at once, and if you do you feel as if you've had not a meal but a surfeit of chocolates. Anthologies, on the other hand, do what they say on the tin - you know you're getting The Virago book of Detective Stories, or Sexy Shorts, or whatever.

But yes, collections don't sell. Most publishers would love to sell more but it doesn't work. After all, (you may be a special case, Nessie) but how many short story collections do any of us have on our shelves, relative to novels? According to Helen Dunmore, who writes in all three forms, even an established writer's collection will sell about a tenth of what their novel would sell. That's even true of - say - Rose Tremain, who'll get as much puff for Wallis Simpson as any short story writer could hope for. And yet in big-publisher terms it just won't sell. Then when the next novel comes along, the booktrade will look up the BookScan figures for the last book, see 10,000 instead of 100,000 sold, and order correspondingly less. That feeds back to the decisions publishers make about promotions, which feeds back to what agents will take on, and so on. In fact, most publishers will admit that they only publish short story collections at all to keep their big-name novelists happy.

Thinking of your William Trevor story, I fear that dedicated short story writers will have to recognise that the market for their work is becoming aural. That's hard on the ones who read badly, and will undoubtedly change the short-story tradition, as it has the poetic tradition. The competitions are there for short fiction, and I hope that story writers will get together to make the poetry venues take prose in as well - the open mics, the slams, the poetry-and-jazz becoming words-and-music... It's worth it: I bent the ear of the woman who runs mothly gigs at the Poetry Café on this subject, and got a slot there myself! And there's Tales of the Decongested, also at the Poetry Caff, though I think all-prose makes for not so much a decongested as an indigestible evening.

Emma

Hi Emma

You make some very insightful points, thanks.

When I posted, I thought'Oh god, Im going to come over as a Whinging Winnie"!

I know exactly what you mean about 'meal' versus' 'indigestion from box of chocolates'. You do have to approach a short story with a slighly different mindset, don't you?

(and yes, my shelves are full of anthologies, from the Bridport and successes, to individuals... Trevor, Munro, Updike, Byatt).

When I have read a good short story, I coulld no more turn the page and just carry on reading than fly! There has to be aperiod of 'doing something else' to let it sink in.

Tales of the Decongested is great. I have read there once, and I think they are doing a fantastic job. But, looking at it as a writer trying to earn a little... although the audience have to pay to hear you, the writers get nothing, for a fresh, unpublished piece. And the work is then 'lost' for further potential earnings, as it is published on their website.

It cost me £30 to get there, sandwich in a caff, etc. So... I was out of pocket pretty heavily, just to have my work heard.

Litro, (literature for the underground) is great too. They take previously published pieces, and distribute them. Again, writers get nothing, but at least they wre previously published.

I wonder how much 'good' actually is being done by writers giving stuff away like this? I wonder if it is devaluing the short story form even more?

(Just thoughts as I type)

But without them, we'd be unheard, many of us.

vanessa

I find this thread very interesting. I've always had difficulty with short stories. I don't know why. I suppose because I've always had the idea that somehow they are cold and dry in comparison to novels because they are not necessarily so much about characters. However this point of Emma's is interesting

Thinking of your William Trevor story, I fear that dedicated short story writers will have to recognise that the market for their work is becoming aural.

I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival this year and the best thing I went to was some morning short story readings (over coffee - very nice) by Ewan Morrison and Laura Hird and I was blown away. For one thing they perfectly suit this sort of event because you get an entire work, but for the other, they had the quality halfway between poetry and longer forms - and the intensity and (I hate to use the word edginess but) edginess of the material seemed to be perfect for sharing with others in an audience and somehow heightened the experience. With the emergence of reading and author talks in recent years I wonder if Emma is right and this is the way forward. And Nessie - just to reassure, I instantly went off and bought their books off the back of it.

I have to say though I am enjoying reading the stories, there was something about the event that worked even better for me - I think perhaps because the stories are intense, which can sometimes be difficult to get into in normal life, lying around your house, but have the quality of a really good theatre experience when shared with others. And maybe that's not a totally bad thing.

By the way Laura Hird also has a very good writing site people might like to look at where she showcases lots of other writers. She seems to be quite a literary livewire.

Hi Snowbell

Fascinating, all of this.

your insight into how you have veiwed the short story is really mindblowing for this writer. I've always felt the opposite, entirely. I have found that the looser prose of the novel makes for a longer, sure, but shallower relationship with the work.

What novels to I recall with the same intensity of emotional response as a short story like 'The Ledge' (Lawrence Sargeant Hall)? I have to cast around for a long time before I come up with something... maybe Austerlitz by Sebald.

It will be great if the aural tradition reasserts itself. There's nothing like a live audience response to fire up a writer to go away and do more.

Radio is another medium in which shorter pieces work well.

But the thing that find inexplicable is the seeming dichotomy between the public call for fast,instant experience today, across so many things. TV, film, you name it... and the call for long novels and not shorter works.

I reviewed Peter James's then latest novel, a couople of years ago. I could see a 'natural' ending, some three quarters of the way through.... but it picked up and off it went again.

meeting him later, I asked him about that. 'the publisher wanted another xxx pages' he said.


vanessa

I certainly got the impression from the book fest that the short story is taken very seriously. Nessie - have you heard of this: "Notes From a Turkish Whorehouse" by Philip OCeallaigh. A collection of short stories just won the Glen Dimplex Award and shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award and getting a lot of attention and reviews.

Just strikes me that it is interesting that the short story people say there is less interest in the form, but seems to me that the short story still gets the reviews and accolades and prestige, in contrast to the other discussion about women writers where women's fiction isn't even reviewed (although has a market.)But the public doesn't buy them, that's the problem. It's all just DIFFICULT!

THere seem to be more open competitions and awards for short stories than for novels though. Perhaps because it is more managable to have them read.

I prefer my radio fiction to be a short story rather than a serial or even a meaty one-off drama, which backs up what you say, Emma. But although I have several collections on my shelves, not many of them are finished (even the ones I've enjoyed) because I find other things get between me and the reading. There's a momentum to a novel which pulls me back to it, but not so with a completed short. I'm just not suited to the stop-start nature of an anthology, and that's not to diss the form, merely an observation, and possibly an explanation as to why collections don't sell as well. It's not an economic decision for me to buy a fat novel over a slim anthology, but it is one based on an understanding of my reading habits.

My publisher, Picador, is very much behind the short story as a form.

http://www.panmacmillan.com/search/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Query%20Results

Sorry cross-posted with you there.

your insight into how you have veiwed the short story is really mindblowing for this writer.

I am quite willing to hold up my hands and say I was wrong. It could even be as simple as being introduced to particular short stories at school and being put off. I certainly found the ones at Edinburgh very intense, as I said.

But I still think there is something different - even though the reading experience is intense, you are not necessarily invited to relate to the characters in the same way. And don't get me wrong, this is a strength too but maybe a different experience from what readers look for in a novel. However, I believe the whole audience were powerfully affected by those readings adn there seemed something right about that as an experience to me. Ugh. I'm sounding terrible pretenscious now so I'll shut up.

ys... you are right. (And apologies for my typing on the previous post)

As evidenced at the Small Wonder Festival, the form is admired, and revered, but on almost academic level.

For pieces to hit the shelves,the writer seems to have had to have a novel or two out first. To have a 'name'.

I dont blame the publishers.. after all they have shareholders, and are not in the business to be charitable.

And competitons, yes, sure. I've just finished reading for one. Im glad it wasnt a competitoon for novels, or I'd still be reading in 2008.

Vanessa

Hi Lammi

yes, the Picador guy spoke at Charleston. Most, if not all of that little series, though, are stories by established writers. (I think... happy to be corrected)

The question on everyone's lips was... 'so its the name thats selling those books, isnt it? and maybe, now, you only make a name via novels.'

Vanessa

And yet my co-tutor on the Arvon course I taught in October was Jeremy Sheldon, a writer whose very first foray into print was a collection of short stories ('The Comfort Zone'. So while I'm not saying it's a piece of cake to break in this way, it obviously can be done.

<Added>

Oops, rogue smiley again.

Random House was his publisher.

All the people I mentioned above have had collections published as short story writers. I think a couple might have written/be writing novels but all, I believe, had the short stories published first.

This one may also be of interest:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1578680,00.html

But the thing that find inexplicable is the seeming dichotomy between the public call for fast,instant experience today, across so many things. TV, film, you name it... and the call for long novels and not shorter works.

I think when we want fast instant experience, we want it from being able to read a long book faster, not a shorter book. Don't tell short-film makers their work's easier to sell than long-ones, unless you've got a flak-jacket on!

We may not have much time, but we still want (want even more?) to be immersed in something, and rightly or wrongly, a novel promises that in a way that a short-story collection doesn't look as if it will. At least with a poetry collection you can read two poems in the shop and decide if you want to buy it. A short story collection - unless it's a themed anthology - is hard to check out properly in a bookshop - even one story is too long. It's just like a mixed box of chocolates: will there be too many marzipans? What if one of them is so hard you break a tooth...

Radio is a fantastic outlet, bless them. Maybe we're used to things in small bites on radio, or maybe - yes - the aural thing means we can sink into the story more. But they're short shorts - I think 2,000 words is 13 minutes, or so. And yes, you can start with a short story collection, but it's incredibly rare, and I don't suppose the advance on offer would get agents racing to sign you up. You thought the bar for getting a novel published was set too high...

Emma