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Kindling interest in the American short story
April 5, 2009 | 3:40 pm
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By Karen Holt
Could the Kindle and similar e-readers revive interest in the American short story? That’s the question raised in a New York Times item, by A.O. Scott.
"The new, post-print literary media are certainly amenable to brevity, a genuine advantage for reading off a screen," Scott writes. "The blog post and the tweet may be ephemeral rather than lapidary, but the culture in which they thrive is fed by a craving for more narrative and a demand for pith. And just as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention? Why wouldn’t you collect dozens, or hundreds, into a personal anthology, a playlist of humor, pathos, mystery and surprise?"
Personally, I doubt that Americans are on the verge of falling in love with the short story. But it’s encouraging to see someone with the stature of A.O. Scott speculating that e-books could actually spur interest in a great literary form, instead of destroying it.
Already, in fact, Amazon has a Shorts program, started partly with short stories in mind. Fictionwise also offers a short story market. I hope that other publishers and stores will think in similar terms if they have not. Meanwhile you can even read short stories for free via sites such as Feedbooks, Manybooks.net and Classic Short Stories. So maybe imagining a playlist filled with Carver, Munro and Cheever isn’t such a stretch after all.
Related: Karen’s audio interview with Frank Daniels III of Ingram. By the way, that’s Karen, not A.O. Scott, in the photo accompanying the present item. Maybe someday Live Writer will do captions with less fuss! – D.R.
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Comments:
I agree that the Kindle may spark an interest in shorts, but wish there was a better way to sort through them. We recently published “The Box” by Teresa Peters to explore the possibilities of short stories for the Kindle. It’s available here: http://www.tinyurl.com/dyaydo
I think it’s certainly something that could happen.
I believe there is a very big opportunity for e-publishing short stories, if someone can just get a handle on marketing it. I have observed the amateur writing community (fanfiction) for several years now, and reader preference is definitely for short stories over huge novel-plus length epics, unless said epics are very, very good. The reason? Most online readers have busy lives and don’t have hours to sit down at the computer reading a novel that may turn out to be of dubious quality (or worse yet, unfinished)–but they want to read *something*, and a short story (“fic”) lets them get the satisfaction of an entire story in their short bit of leisure time, while minimizing the amount of leisure time/lifespan wasted if the story turns out to be of poor quality.
The same applies to original fiction: “Sredni Vashtar” is a much shorter read than “The Shining”. There is definitely a place for original short fiction in the hearts and minds of modern readers; it’s just a matter of getting it to them. These days, it seems like the only place to find short stories is in anthologies or subscription ‘zines. Anthologies cost just as much as a novel–and, like music albums, if you don’t like all the stories in the anthology, the stories/tracks you do like are terribly overpriced because you had to pay for all the stories/tracks you didn’t want, as well. Subscription-only ‘zines also are not cost-attractive unless you know up front that you are interested in everything they publish.
Bottom line: e-publish short stories, and promote them!
Another source for short stories: Consider a subscription to One Story (http://www.one-story.com/) for delivery of a single story every few weeks direct to your home. The format is simple and small enough to slip into a shoulder bag. It’s a wonderful concept. I’ve been subscribing for over a year, and the cost is less than most anthologies