Short Story Misfortune

In The Millions, Paul Vidich wrote an article about the declining popularity of short stories in the publishing world. Because the world now offers so many other things to do like watch television or get real time information through the internet, people no longer subscribe to magazines and the short stories that are published in weekly magazines or in sections of newspapers are becoming the thing of the past. Thus, the prudent reason to not publish short story collections:

"Publishing executives today don’t expect collections to sell (because they haven’t in the past), so they aren’t marketed, and this cycle of low expectations and insufficient care creates a self-fulfilling outcome: collections don’t sell."


That is, unless the stories are written by someone who already has a well established writing career or popularity that would guarantee that his collection would sell. I am a bit disheartened to hear this plight of short stories, because I am afraid that it would give even less chance for new aspiring writers to get their works published. Writing a novel is both mentally and physically straining, and a difficult task to even the most experienced writers. I am convinced that writing shorter works might be a good stepping stone for aspiring writers to launch themselves into the writing career, or shall I say, get their feet wet. But, if rejection from the publishers is all they get for their first volume of short stories, simply because, regardless of the writing skill or content, the format of the book is a collection of short stories, then what kind of message are these writers getting? Some might not even attempt to write longer works, because they think that if they failed at short stories, what chance do they have with novels?


Short stories do have different form of narrative from novels, so maybe, you might be horrible at writing short stories but be the next Dostoevsky. (Or, you could be like Chekhov and refuse to write novels, because you are definitely the short story guy). But, it's scary to see that the world is restricting itself to certain length and form of literary works. Short stories, novels, plays, and poetry all offer something unique in their own form, and the extinction of one is like the extinction of a language. Just imagine that we all spoke the same language. How boring would such world be?