Don't know what you've got til it's gone
Every now and then someone will say, "The short fiction market is thriving!" and I scratch my head. Here's a partial list of markets I've been published in during the last 5 years -
Fictitious Force - now closed
Talebones - now closed except as an annual anthology
Lone Star Stores - now closed
Best New Romantic Fantasy anthologies - long closed
Electric Velocipede - closed to submissions
Space and Time - closed to submissions
The Town Drunk - closed to submissions
Realms of Fantasy - closed to submissions
Fantasy - closed to submissions until Sept
Chizine - closed to submissions until Sept
and there are markets that I've never been in that are also closed/on hiatus: Apex, Polyphony, the big fat Best of Fantasy and Horror, etc.
For short fiction genre writers, this is all bad news.
There are still markets out there, of course; big ones like Strange Horizons, Asimov's, Analog and F & SF (been in two of those; working now on a story whose first stop will be Analog); smaller but good ones like Ideomancer, Abyss and Apex, Interzone, etc; baby ones that pay a dollar, no money, "exposure;" and non-genre magazines that take genre upon occasion.
Still, bad news all around.
(Updated: Notice I did not say any variation of "short fiction is ded! ded! ded!" I noted that there are a lot of markets closed to writers right now. Markets closed to writers = bad thing for writers.)
Been up since 4:30 a.m. thanks to the senile cat; going back to bed now!
Fictitious Force - now closed
Talebones - now closed except as an annual anthology
Lone Star Stores - now closed
Best New Romantic Fantasy anthologies - long closed
Electric Velocipede - closed to submissions
Space and Time - closed to submissions
The Town Drunk - closed to submissions
Realms of Fantasy - closed to submissions
Fantasy - closed to submissions until Sept
Chizine - closed to submissions until Sept
and there are markets that I've never been in that are also closed/on hiatus: Apex, Polyphony, the big fat Best of Fantasy and Horror, etc.
For short fiction genre writers, this is all bad news.
There are still markets out there, of course; big ones like Strange Horizons, Asimov's, Analog and F & SF (been in two of those; working now on a story whose first stop will be Analog); smaller but good ones like Ideomancer, Abyss and Apex, Interzone, etc; baby ones that pay a dollar, no money, "exposure;" and non-genre magazines that take genre upon occasion.
Still, bad news all around.
(Updated: Notice I did not say any variation of "short fiction is ded! ded! ded!" I noted that there are a lot of markets closed to writers right now. Markets closed to writers = bad thing for writers.)
Been up since 4:30 a.m. thanks to the senile cat; going back to bed now!