Are Short Stories Dead

Having a full time job and being someone who enjoys writing, I never find enough time in a day to properly sit down and write to a great extent, I always seem to wind up a story before I lose the flow. There is nothing worse than having a great idea and going on until you kill it because the enthusiasm has been lost, due to a bitty writing schedule.

Managing between three and ten thousand words to finalise a story is where I feel my limited time allows me to safely conclude a story without it turning into spaghetti. But how could I possibly make any kind of money out of that?

Magazine Submissions, the submission process is easy enough taking care to format the submission in the specific way they require, however some magazines want only unpublished works to be submitted, a fair enough comment, but their process takes months and in that time what do you do? Also does this make the story redundant after it has been published once.

Self-publishing, a great resource if you are blessed with the time to add, Self-Marketing and Promotions, finding markets, creating visuals, choosing the edition type for example kindle, eBook PDFs or iBooks etc.

On a blog, again self-promotion required and where does the financial incentive come from, small adverts like Google Adwords that give you a click through rate or a commission on the follow through sale. This only works in two ways, specifically selected advertising for the target audience and if the audience click the adverts.

But what about the physical story, three to ten thousand words in self-publish terms could be a few hours out of someone’s day or split across a couple of days, then it is gone. Will someone pay a small contribution for a short story when, for a small amount more you could get a Novel published by the big companies and written by fully fledged, time served authors?

But the short story will only work in any or all of the above if the target audience will read it. I did some of the above except I placed 5 short stories in kindle formatted collection. I did mention that I enjoy writing and as my twitter bio says, “I enjoy writing, doesn't mean I am any good at it.” I don’t classify myself as an author, I also would never suggest to anyone that I am into marketing or promotions. I probably couldn't even write the sales worthy, descriptive text on my own short collection. The sales of my 5 unUsual Short Stories are negligible. In reality, my commission doesn't buy me a pint of milk. Maybe it is early days, only time will tell me that. But what is a short story, we could look it up but you will find varying definitions of a short story, Wikipedia will tell you them all. But when you think about it, the bible is full of short stories, I am sure the Kings of old where told short stories by wandering minstrels. So from the beginning of time any tale that held the attention of an audience could be classified as a Short Story. In publishing terms the word count will determine the thresholds of flash fiction, short stories, novella and a novel.

Short stories in general are a great way to have short burst of excitement, adventure, romance and be able to carry on with a busy day. Even the big authors have written short stories, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, The Brothers Grimm and Homer have all written short stories. These are historical authors and have the names that we recognise, but even in this modern era the big authors are at it too. From the fifties to the modern day authors like Stephen King, Daphne Du Maurier, JD Sallinger and Roald Dahl are known for writing short stories.

Are short stories dead, the question to answer, my thoughts are no of course not they are the cornerstone of everyone’s imagination. You may think that you do not have enough of an imagination to tell a story, but if you can think you can tell a story. But can short stories be a marketable thing, that is a bigger question.

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