Each year Tom Dooley, the editor of Eclectica Magazine, analyzes trends in the list of Million Writers Award notable stories. According to his analysis, there are 158 stories on the 2011 notable list, a drop from last year's 191. In addition, exactly 100 different online publications landed stories on the list.
Last year Tom pointed out that it appeared genre magazines – meaning everything from science fiction to fantasy, horror, crime, and romance – were dominating the Million Writers Award. This year this genre "dominance" continues. While self-identifying genre magazines now make up only 21% of the magazines on the NWA notable list, down from 25% in 2010, among the magazines with the most stories on the list the percent of genre stories increased to 51%.
This doesn't mean genre stories make up half the stories on the notable list – I think the number is closer to a third. But among the elite online publications with the most stories on the list, genre magazines appear to be the 800 pound gorillas in the virtual room.
Why are there so many genre magazines and stories on the Million Writers notable list? As I mentioned last year, I believe this results from genre writers and readers accepting online magazines as a legitimate place for both publishing and reading short fiction, which results in a large number of professional online genre magazines. But I'd love to hear what other people think about this.
Pasted below is Tom's analysis. And as always, a big thanks to Tom for crunching these numbers.
| 2010 Notable Stories Analysis | ||
| This year | Last Year | |
| Total number of Notable Stories | 158 | 191 |
| Number of different publications w/ Notable Stories | 100 | 108 |
| Percent of publications self-identifying as "Genre" | 21% | 25% |
| Percent of stories from the top 10 publications belonging to self-identified "Genre" sites * | 51% | 48% |
| * Percent increases to 65% this year if two puplications tied for first, Blackbird and Words without Borders, are removed | ||
| Authors this year with more than one notable story | ||
| Name | This year | Last Year |
| Desmond Warzel | 2 | 1 |
| Matthew Dexter | 2 | 1 |
| Michael Loughrey | 2 | 1 |
| Rachel Ephraim | 2 | 0 |
| Rachel Swirsky | 2 | 1 |
| Roxane Gay | 2 | 6 |
| Sandra McDonald | 2 | 0 |
| Yoon Ha Lee | 2 | 1 |
| This year's top Notable Stories publications | ||
| Publication | Place | Number |
| Blackbird | 1st (tied) | 6 |
| Words without Borders | 6 | |
| Clarkesworld Magazine | 3rd (tied) | 4 |
| Daily Science Fiction | 4 | |
| Lightspeed Magazine | 4 | |
| Strange Horizons | 4 | |
| Chiaroscuro (ChiZine) | 7th (tied) | 3 |
| Eclectica Magazine | 3 | |
| Fantasy Magazine | 3 | |
| Jersey Devil Press | 3 | |
| storySouth | 3 | |
| The Barcelona Review | 3 | |
| The Collagist | 3 | |
| Thuglit | 3 | |
| Tor.com | 3 | |
| Top Notable Stories publications, last two years | ||
| Publication | Place | Number |
| Blackbird | 1st (tied) | 10 |
| Fantasy Magazine | 10 | |
| Clarkesword Magazine | 3rd (tied) | 9 |
| Strange Horizons | 9 | |
| Thuglit | 5th (tied) | 7 |
| Subterranean | 7 | |
| Words Without Borders | 7th (tied) | 6 |
| Eclectica Magazine | 6 | |
| Beneath Ceaseless Skies | 6 | |
| Kill Author | 6 | |
| Collagist | 11th (tied) | 5 |
| Tor.com | 5 | |
| Apex Magazine | 5 | |
| Storyglossia | 5 | |
| Daily Science Fiction | 4 | |
| Lightspeed Magazine | 4 | |
| Barcelona Review | 4 | |
| storySouth | 4 | |
| Cerise Press | 4 | |
| Cha: An Asian Literary Journal | 4 | |
| Flurb | 4 | |
| Identity Theory | 4 | |
| PANK | 4 | |
| Summerset Review | 4 | |
| Knee-Jerk Magazine | 4 | |
| Prick of the Spindle | 4 | |
| Toasted Cheese | 4 | |
| Word Riot | 4 | |
| Top Notable Stories publications, all time (last eight years) | ||
| Publication | Place | Number |
| Eclectica Magazine | 1st | 41 |
| Strange Horizons | 2nd (tied) | 31 |
| Pindeldyboz | 31 | |
| Narrative Magazine | 4th | 26 |
| Blackbird | 5th | 25 |
| Word Riot | 6th | 23 |
| Agni | 7th | 22 |
| Clarkesword Magazine | 8th (tied) | 21 |
| Storyglossia | 21 | |
| Fantasy Magazine | 10th (tied) | 18 |
| failbetter | 18 | |
| Identity Theory | 12th (tied) | 15 |
| King's English | 15 | |
| Mississippi Review (New) | 15 | |
| Thuglit | 15th (tied) | 14 |
| Subterranean | 14 | |
| Barcelona Review | 17th (tied) | 13 |
| Summerset Review | 13 | |
| ChiZine | 13 | |
| Orson Scott Card's IMS | 13 | |
| Fiction Warehouse | 13 |
| Percent of stories from the top 10 publications belonging to self-identified "Genre" sites * |
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. The reason a few genre magazines do so well among the MWA Notables is that there is a strong consensus which genre publications are the most important--the ones that pay professional or near-professional rates. All other publications are sniffily dismissed as "fanzines", and top genre writers, interested above all in money, steer their stories away from them.
The literary mainstream is too populous and diverse for this sort of unanimity, and less preoccupied with economic rewards. While *The New Yorker* and two or three other magazines may still be priority choices for writers who publish stories in print, the online scene is totally balkanized. No stigma attaches to a mainstream writer who writes for the sake of art alone; many of them are subsidized by literary day jobs such as teaching and editing. Anyone can afford to set up an ezine that pays its contributors little or nothing, and so there are literally thousands of mainstream ezines now, many of them catering to a particular region, interest, ethnicity or sexual orientation. The best mainstream stories are therefore spread rather thinly, and don't expect this to change anytime soon.
Posted by: Robert Laughlin | May 11, 2011 at 12:15 PM
The question of the total number of Notable stories that are genre or literary is merely a question of procedural bias or bias in the judging. That is not a criticism, it is inevitable that some awards will lean towards genre stories and others towards literary stories. Bias is inevitable and even welcome. The Wigleaf top 50 list contains basically no genre magazine stories, the Million Writers Award, run by a sci-fi author, has a larger number of genre stories. I wouldn't read much into either there.
As for why the genre stories get lumped into a handful of magazines while the literary stories are spread across a wide range of magazines, everything Robert says is correct. This doesn't point towards literary writers being afraid of the internet, it only points towards a wider number of respected literary magazines existing. You see the same dynamic in print magazines. Genre magazines have only a few major markets---what Robert says about the genre mindset giving high priority to publicans that pay well makes sense to me---while there are a much wider number of respected literary magazines. Someone who publishes in the New Yorker, for example, will feel no shame in also publishing in McSweeney's, A Public Space, Black Clock or several dozen other journals.
Posted by: Some Guy | May 12, 2011 at 09:28 PM
I believe the pendulum might be swinging away from literary fiction for awhile. And I also believe that when judging hundreds of stories, plot-driven genre fiction would distinquish itself from an overload of introspective literary malaise. Of course these same claims were made almost a decade ago:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/aug/05/features.review1
Posted by: I Know Some Guy | May 14, 2011 at 09:38 PM
That article (and your comments) are mostly nonsense as "literary fiction" is a board category and does not, by any means, exclude plot-heavy work, non-real work, magic, or anything else. If anything, "literary fiction" is not being overtaken by genre fiction, but literary fiction is expanding INTO genre fiction's territory. Thus the rise of writers like Michael Chabon, Lethem, and many others who enjoy the perks of both worlds.
Posted by: Some Guy | May 17, 2011 at 10:43 PM
So true about your comment on literary fiction expanding into genre fiction's territory. I've written before about this. See http://www.monstersandcritics.com/books/features/article_1386271.php for more.
As for procedural bias or bias in the judging, I disagree with that. I do not select the notable stories--a group of preliminary judges do. Each year I try to balance these judges across all the literary genres, figuring that judges with a background in genre fiction will select genre fiction, judges with a background in literary fiction will pick literary fiction, and so on. But despite this, each year most judges pick the stories they like without regard to genre convention. Many of this year's "literary" notable stories were picked by judges with a background in genre fiction while some of the literary judges loved genre fiction the most.
Posted by: Jason Sanford | May 18, 2011 at 07:44 AM
I think the preponderance of genre stories in the MWA notables can be specifically narrowed to the fantasy and sci fi genres, with the reason being that readers of these genres are, on average, individuals who have been early and steadfast embracers of the Internet. When the Internet first came into being in the early 90s, the great majority of sites offering reading material were those in these specific genres. Though over time, online literary material has grown in volume and popularity, it does not nearly rival the supply or demand of these other genres in the Internet medium.
Posted by: Joseph Levens | May 18, 2011 at 11:02 PM