Do writers suck as readers? Prove me wrong.

The Polyphony anthology series, published by Wheatland Press, is asking for people to pre-order the seventh volume in their acclaimed cross-genre short fiction series. If they can land 225 pre-orders, then they'll bring out the new volume. If they don't, they'll refund the money and close the anthology series.

Even though Wheatland Press has been beating the drums about this since November, they have sold less than half the needed pre-orders to publish the anthology. And as Deborah Layne stated today, this is shocking because in "a typical submission period of 45 days we receive 650 submissions. During a last gasp desperation sales period of over three months, we received fewer than one fourth that many orders."

WTF? I mean, come on you author-type people. I have long heard that writers constantly submit to places they don't even bother to read, but this is ridiculous. If even a quarter of the authors who submitted to Polyphony pre-ordered a copy, they'd be set.

And don't give me that BS about writers shouldn't be the only ones to support a market. Of course not. But if writers don't read the markets they're writing for, why would you expect non-writers to bother? 

Even though I haven't submitted to Polyphony, I just pre-ordered a copy. Please do the same before this Friday on the Wheatland Press home page. Otherwise, don't whine when there's one less short story market looking to publish your precious little stories.

Comments

[Kaolin Fire (GUD Magazine)]

GUD gets around 900 submissions every 45 days. Getting around 200 orders every three months is about par, maybe a little above.

I think most short story writers prefer to read novels--or perhaps they're going to other awesome but free venues like Strange Horizons, Brain Harvest, Every Day Fiction, etc., for their fixes. Or largely sticking to the "major" sources while submitting "widely"?

It is sad.

Also sad: I subscribe to (and/or have bought singles of) more magazines than I manage to read. I've done that a lot more since starting a magazine than I did when I was "just" a writer.

[Lisa S.]

I'm not sure insulting writers is the way to help Polyphony drum up sales, and frankly I found the tone of your post offensive. I'm a short story writer and do my very best to try to read work from all the markets I submit my "precious little stories" to, but frankly I simply do not make enough money (either by writing or in my day job) to buy a copy of every magazine and anthology I submit to. Often, I rely on sample stories posted online or on my beloved local library or sharing with my fellow writers/readers.

Do I want Polyphony to remain around both as a market and as a wonderful book? Absolutely. Am I going to preorder? As a matter of fact, since I first saw the news (only about a week-a-half ago and not back in November, when apparently this campaign began) I have been trying to scrounge together a few extra bucks so that I can continue to pay my rent, car insurance, phone bill, cable bill, buy groceries AND preorder the book. (Sorry, not all of us have a disposable income.) That said, I am not going to be guilted or insulted into buying a book simply because I've submitted to a market.

[Jeff Crook]

Jason, I think what you once said about flash fiction is generally true about short fiction, too. Polyphony's predicament doesn't surprise me at all. I just don't know that many non-writers who read short fiction on a regular basis. I mostly read novels, too, though I will occassionally pick up an anthology - usually a Best Of, I do subscribe to a couple of magazines, and I visit several zines or a regular basis, though I don't, by any stretch, read every story they publish.

So what has happened to the short fiction market? This is a question you have asked before, I think. We look back to the "glory days", when a major magazine had tons of subscribers, and compare them to today when even the big ones are barely scraping by. Where did the market go? I don't buy that people aren't reading. They're reading, they're just reading different things. They aren't getting what they want out of short fiction, so why is that? They are more likely to get it from novels and non-fiction, biographies and histories.

I don't have the answer. If I did, I'd been remaking the publishing industry instead posting in comments.

[Rachel Swirsky]

Why exactly did Polyphony go through a submissions phase and contract with writers if they didn't have the financial backing to go through with it?

[Rachel Swirsky]

"GUD gets around 900 submissions every 45 days. Getting around 200 orders every three months is about par, maybe a little above."

OK, when writers are writing and sending out submissions, then they are in the business of being your suppliers.

If you want to sell them product, then you have to generate product they want to buy. They're not going to buy from you as a charity. So, for some reason, you are not generating a product that everyone who submits to you wants to buy. Maybe the product is too expensive. Maybe its fiction doesn't compete well with better-selling magazines. Maybe you don't advertise your product effectively. Maybe it's some other economic eddy. I don't know--but letting the be-all and end-all being how "sad" it is that your consumers won't do your job for you feels unproductive--and mildly insulting.

BTW, this is the same argument the lit folk use to explain why it's unnecessary for them to pay authors. http://bigother.com/2010/01/17/what-is-your-writing-worth/

[Jeff VanderMeer]

There's a difference between magazines and anthologies, and a difference between online mags and print anthos. Anthologies are doing less well than in the past, but still healthy most of the time. Online fiction is reinvigorating things a bit.

I'm torn on Polyphony. I know how difficult it is to do a general antho not to a theme and make it successful. It requires a great business plan and a great PR plan, in addition to the prerequisite of having great fiction. I think Polyphony is a vital part of the landscape that's only partially filled by the interstitial anthologies, but on the other hand I'm not convinced that it's been run as optimally as it could have been. The PR savvy is completely lacking. The anthos are often baggier than they should be.

So...are readers indifferent to something wonderful or is it also that the way that wonderful thing has been presented needs an overhaul? It's an interesting question. I support the series, but I can't blame readers, either. It's more complex than that.

Jeff

[Jason Sanford]

I don't think writers should support magazines or anthologies out of charity, and markets shouldn't expect authors to be the sum total of their support. Publications must broaden their reach beyond writers if they are to survive.

But when a well-known anthology has received 650 subs in 45 days, but not even a quarter of those writers can be bothered to pre-order the anthology, that is a problem. I mean, that is perfect evidence to me that most writers submit blind to markets without ever reading them.

And yes, the tone of my post is insulting. I understand that money is tight with people. The same with me. And as Jeff VanderMeer says, the issue is more complex than writers must buy this book. But that said, my tone was insulting because I find this subject insulting. If you want to be a writer, you must also be a reader. Does that mean you must buy and read everything? Hell no. But when we as a community can't even find a few hundred people to pre-order an acclaimed anthology series, then I wonder what we're doing here.

Perhaps it is as Jeff Crook mentioned, and the short fiction markets are simply dying/dead. If so, we bear part of the blame by not being readers as well as writers.

[Jeff Crook]

That's a good question, Rachel.

Going back to your post, Jason, you write "...if writers don't read the markets they're writing for, why would you expect non-writers to bother?"

That's also a good question. In fact, I think it's the most important question to be asked, but perhaps not in the manner you originally intended. I think you were addressing the writers, but the same question should be asked of the editors and publishers.

If the contents of the book or magazine fail to interest the writer enough to read it, why should the publisher expect non-writers to bother? Aspiring writers are your easiest market. If what you're publishing doesn't even interest them, it's time to take a look at your content and find out why no one is reading it.

Having read a few books and magazines in my day, I can say that there are many whose content I did not care to read. I didn't care for thier choice of stories, and so did not renew my subscription, or never subscribed at all. In fact, only last week I closed a Best Of anthology, in a genre I don't often read, without finishing it. The stories were well written, but they were poor examples of the genre. The commentors on amazon.com seemed to agree, though that is hardly a reliable measure - in this case I think they were correct. The stories were chosen for literary merit, not storytelling merit.

And having spent some time recently reading quite a number of pieces of short fiction, it seemed to me that this trend is universal across the genres, from fantasy to literary. Literary brilliance seems to take precedence over entertainment value. The well-turned phrase and the powerful sentence have replaced the rousing good tale in level of importance. I read probably a hundred stories that were delightfully written but too boring to finish.

That's not to say you can't have both literary brilliance and rousing good storytelling. I never failed to finish reading a Fritz Leiber story, for example. He wrote some of the most brilliant sentences that have ever been written, but he never forgot to blow you away with his stories.

So it's not all the fault of the writers. Certainly we should buy the product, but any market must have fresh sources of income to survive. Short fiction must draw new readers, especially non-writer readers, if the market is to survive. But it will be a hard slog, because the short fiction market has so cannibalized itself that I doubt many magazines would survive if not for the subscriptions of aspiring authors.

[Jeff VanderMeer]

You have a point, too, Jason. And I do think this antho series is important to the field. And it can be frustrating. Best American Fantasy is a good example. Here's a series that is unique among year's best series and it's been a long and excruciating and thankless process to establish it in any meaningful way. I don't blame readers, but I do wonder why readers sometimes say they want interesting new stuff but don't actually then buy it in any numbers--not necessarily talking about BAF but in general. I expressed the same thing on Jetse's blog about the work of writers like Nalo Hopkinson.

There are lots of possible reasons for everything, though. Forces beyond people's control. A timing issue in the release of a book. The failure to get visibility for a book or anthology. Fatigue on the part of the editor or publisher because of how difficult it can be to get a book into print in the first place. The way in which the blogosphere inflates popularity of some and downplays others, depending on elements that have nothing to do with quality or lack thereof. Hype is a killer, and personal charisma on the part of one writer may suck up all the oxygen in the air for another writer misfortunate enough to be launched into print at the same time.

Perfectly good books get the praise they deserve and other good books die lonely, pathetic deaths in the back alleys of hardly-traveled blogs. The universe doesn't really give a crap either way.

Jeff

[Kater Cheek]

This is a fascinating discussion. I'd like to agree with Jeff Crook that aspiring writers are the easiest market. Writers read. Writers know who you are. So why aren't they buying?

I submit frequently, and I admit, I often submit to places I don't read consistently. In fact, I'll admit I don't read any one publication consistently. I read disparately, and sporadically. I favor online zines, or books I can get from the library. Yes, I'm an unrepentant cheapskate. I'm also a voracious reader, so I have to be a cheapskate or I'd go broke.

When I do buy an issue, I'm likely to buy only one issue, or borrow an issue from a friend, because there are hundreds of publications out there and I can't afford a subscription to each and every one. I would like to, but I can't, and even if I could, I couldn't read them all.

But just because I'm a supplier doesn't mean I must also be a customer. If I were a goatherder who made a living selling artisan cheese to restaurants, would you assume that I ate at each of those restaurants once a month to support my markets? No, because one, goatherders are often poor, and two, there would probably be so many restaurants that I couldn't fit them all in, even if I had the money.

Publishing is a business. Publishers sell products. You can blame your suppliers for not being customers, but laying blame isn't as helpful as asking yourself "Who are my customers, how can I reach them, and how can I create more of them?" Being a skillful editor isn't enough. The best product in the world can flounder if it's not marketed and distributed well.

It would be great if you could just edit and not have to deal with that business stuff. It would be great if I could just write and not have to lick stamps and write cover letters. But we can't. I'm grateful for all the editors out there. They work hard and are underpaid and often under-appreciated. But, like me, editors aren't just artists, they have to be entrepreneurs as well.

[Jeff Crook]

Jeff V - I wonder if readers really do want interesting new stuff. As a writer, I do. But the pure readers I know, my wife being the most influential one in my life, don't really want interesting new stuff, they want the same thing they read earlier, retold in a slightly different yet comfortably familiar way.

She tells me all the time, if you want lots of people to read what you write, you have to write what they want to read. It's been a hard lesson and I'm still learning it.

[Jeff VanderMeer]

With all due respect, usually the best lesson is to write what's personal to you, and if it attracts people to read it, that's great. And if it doesn't...oh well. The world never needed another writer anyway. Otherwise, you eventually wind up in a world of hurt. Besides, many of the best writers stuck to their individual vision and readers eventually did come to them. jv

[Jeff Crook]

Jeff - I agree. The best thing is to find a balance, and that's not easy thing to do. Plus, you can't go around constantly chasing that brass ring, because you'll never catch it.

But the funny thing is, I have this agent who is very interested in one of my novels. I'm currently rewriting it from his detailed recommendations. Not to count my chickens before they hatch, but things look very promising. What I found most enlightening was that virtually everything he said was wrong with the novel, my wife had already told me was wrong with the novel. I didn't want to listen to her. She has excellent instincts, but they often go against what I want to write.

This goes back to the original post. The problem is the fate of Polyphony, not to mention all the other struggling magazines who are steadily bleeding readers. Perhaps the very attitude of "if it attracts that's great, if it doesn't, oh well" is the problem. Obviously, Polyphony isn't attracting readers. Should we (and they) say oh well, the world doesn't need another anthology anyway?

Perhaps this is why people read novels, but not short fiction. The novel publishers can't afford to only publish what interests them, not if they want to stay in business. They have to search for stories that interest them AND have commercial viability. The editors can't just publish what they want, they also have to push that book through marketing. If the salespeople don't think they can sell it, the book doesn't get published, no matter how wonderful it might be. As much as that situation sucks donkey, it might explain why people are still reading plenty of novels, but short fiction not so much, because for short fiction, there is no marketing hurdle.

Just thinking out loud here. I honestly don't know.

[SMD]

I already pre-ordered months ago.

And, without sinking myself into the long discussion here, I don't think, based on the attitudes presented here by some of you, that any of us in the SF/F community should be surprised that the short fiction market is not ideal and that even when it pays "pro," it pays like crap. Sounds to me that, on some level, we're getting what we deserve...

[Judith Tabron]

I think the answer is simple: not enough people want to buy it. The problem with that lies with the editors, not the readers. There are plenty of readers for speculative fiction out there, short form or long. There are few magazines or anthologies publishing what we want to read.

And insulting people into buying the book isn't attractive either. By which I mean "not much of a marketing plan". If the book is going to be GOOD, selling it as such shouldn't be so hard. Not that marketing a book in this day and age isn't tough. But a good selling campaign is probably worth more in revenue than insulting guilt. Like writing for anthologies, selling anthologies is work, and trying to short-circuit the necessary work - doesn't work.

[Arachne Jericho]

I pre-ordered a copy.

It's very odd, but I hadn't heard of Polyphony until now---well, perhaps mentioned, I think, in the introduction to a short story elsewhere.

It does feel like the marketing has been odd. For instance, I had to (a) know the existence of Polyphony and then (b) visit the site directly to find out that there are a lot of high-profile names in the anthologies. While I might be chided as being a terribly uninformed reader for not knowing both of these things ahead of time, and it is indeed an awful crime of ignorance, I wouldn't have minded seeing information about it on high-profile blogs or something before the situation reached dire straits. John Scalzi's Big Idea comes to mind.

I'm not known to be stingy when it comes to buying things or contributing to charitable causes, or even terribly selective about what I buy at times.

I just didn't know Polyphony existed.

[euphrosyne]

"[When] not even a quarter of those writers can be bothered to pre-order the anthology, that is a problem...If you want to be a writer, you must also be a reader. Does that mean you must buy and read everything? Hell no. But when we as a community can't even find a few hundred people to pre-order an acclaimed anthology series, then I wonder what we're doing here."

Am I the only one that wonders about the math of this claim? The extended implication is that writers, on average, should not just read but pay for more than 25% of the markets they submit to. How many markets does the average writer submit to? Purely practically, is there even time--much less money--to read a quarter of 'everything' in the field? And since 25% apparently isn't good enough, what's the ideal figure?

Yes, writers must read. But there's a logical chasm between that reality and the presumption that (your) suppliers must be (your) customers as well.

[Jason Sanford]

But the simple fact is writing isn't merely a supply and demand industry. It is also an art, and as artists we writers must be aware of the works other writers are creating. The "extended implication" isn't that writers must purchase every book and magazine out there. That's silly and no one is advocating that. But if writers aren't doing any reading at all in the markets they submit to--and the submission to pre-order numbers for Polyphony suggest this is the case here--then that is a major problem.

[Philrm]

As Arachne Jericho pointed out, a (large) part of the problem is that, outside of would-be contributors to the Polyphony series, very few potential readers seem to know of its existence. I have a vague recollection of having heard of it before, but I had no idea of the potential existence (or non-existence) of Polyphony 7 until I came across a mention on Nick Mamatas's blog a couple of weeks ago. I took one look at the author line-up and immediately pre-ordered a copy.

And Jeff(v), this is a problem that is sadly afflicting the BAF series as well. A couple of weeks ago, I was in Pasadena on business. The very well-stocked Borders there had a copy of BAF3, which I immediately snagged. This is the only copy of any of the BAF series that I have ever seen. In this case it isn't some general distribution problem for Underland Press; I've seen copies of "Finch" all over the place, in both Borders and B&N. (I can't remember, did the BAF publisher change with the most recent volume?) These days, of course, it is trivial to order a copy online, but you have to know about the book in the first place. If it weren't for your website, I wouldn't know this series even existed. And I'm an avid reader of short fiction, in magazines and anthologies.

I had a similar experience with the "Eclipse" series from Night Shade; I've purchased all three, but each time that was the only copy that I've seen in a bookstore (2 at B&N, the 3rd at the surprisingly excellent Compass Books at SF airport). Tachyon, on the other hand, seems to have excellent distribution (or at least a good arrangement with B&N); I'd be very surprised if I have any trouble finding a copy of Jeff V's "The Third Bear" collection when it comes out.

Clearly there are things that could/should be done differently; Golden Gryphon manages to have quite high visibility, even though they have, to the best of my knowledge, non-existent in-store distribution (I did pick up all 3 volumes of Jeff Ford's "Well-Built City" trilogy in my local [Boulder, CO] B&N, but that may be because they also stock his novels from Harper). Whether this is simply a result of the breadth of stuff they publish, I don't know, but I assume that their short-story collections (which, admittedly, are exclusively single-author collections) are profitable, as that's a very substantial fraction of what they publish.

[Adam Walker]

"If writers aren't doing any reading at all in the markets they submit to--and the submission to pre-order numbers for Polyphony suggest this is the case here--then that is a major problem."

Pray tell, that's stretching a wobbly conclusion way too far on too little data. What percentage of the number of writers would satisfy you? I really don't understand this statement, otherwise. We don't know how many authors actually bought copies. And, frankly, why in the hell would you count writers as your main consumer-base anyway? (Unless your WRITERS DIGEST). Come on, now. This is just silly, on the surface.

"I have fewer than 100 orders and I needed to get at least 225"

Let the market decide. If there's insufficient interest, for whatever reason (if it's lack of marketing, or distribution, or . . . we can go crazy with that), and there's not enough orders, then it dies. That's all she wrote. That's the nature of the market, the business. And Deb can't keep doing it for the love, not right now. The best thing might be to just let it go.

[Rachel Swirsky]

"But if writers aren't doing any reading at all in the markets they submit to--and the submission to pre-order numbers for Polyphony suggest this is the case here--then that is a major problem."

They could have read other anthologies in the series. They could read other things they submit to.

[Adam Walker]

I also find it amusing that some people are simply stating that short fiction doesn't sell, that the assumption is that there's no money in anything containing short stories . . . there are many more well-known anthologies selling a few thousand to tens-of-thousand copies in our field. (Let's not even get into mainstream anthologies here . . . ) (Professional) publishers generally don't do them for the love, they do 'em for the money :p

[Jeff Crook]

Of course, I've only ever pre-ordered two books in my entire life. It's just not something I do. 90% of the books I buy I have held in my hand before I buy them.

Depending on pre-orders doesn't seem a very smart business decision. I can't be the only person with these book-buying habits.

[Hilary Bloom]

I refuse to pre-order anything, if I can avoid it. Sorry, but when I place an order, I want the product to be available and know that it will be shipped in days, not weeks or months. If a magazine or anthology is depending on pre-orders before deciding whether or not they can afford to actually publish, maybe they should say so at the outset.