King's 2001 Comments on Markets

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R-E-Y

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Mar 2, 2020
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In the introduction to Everything’s Eventual, King wrote the short story genre was on the precipice of “extinction’s pit,” as of 2001, the time of writing. He remarked that as long ago as the late 60s the markets were drying up, and in the years since, he had seen them “continue to shrink,” while remaining thankful for the “little magazines, where young writers can still publish their stories for contributor’s copies.” But, he noted, “God won’t have to spend His whole day—or even His coffee break—blessing those people. [ . . .] Their number is small, and every year there are one or two fewer.”

My impression is God has stopped blessing the markets that King praised in 2001—stopped definitely now in the 19 years since King wrote those words—as I cannot think of a single market that offers an opening to non-famous writers, but also with some kind of community reach, notoriety, quality-control and most notably a physical, hard-copy presence. What publication venues that do exist exist as polar opposites: on the one hand, websites that are obscure and virtually unknown outside of their own web domains and which lead to no tangible place and fail to offer even a tangible “contributor” copy—and on the other, “prestige” publications (national glossy magazines and “literary” journals), which tout how select they are and which were never very amenable to King’s style of work to begin with. To look where King published his stories for The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, you’ll see exclusively prestige venues—New Yorker, Atlantic, Tin House—which attempt to be literary and publish very few (if any) other works similar to King’s. (I have read two issues of Tin House, and I thought the stories were invariably awful, and King, in Different Seasons, commented that the New Yorker never much cared for his stuff.)

Periodicals that do still manage to print good stories, and which do have a reach, and which can be found in a newsstand— AHMM, Asimov's Science Fiction, Playboy—can be counted on one hand and generally ill-suited to new writers.

My question to fellow readers: Is my assessment about the absence of markets correct (as King puts it: “What’s lost has a way of staying lost”)? Or is there some vibrant alternative—analogous to the Weird Tales, Stories, Amazing Stories, Black Cat of yore—in existence, but unknown to me? Can anyone surmise as to what King would say himself?

Thanks!
rey
 

mal

content
Jun 23, 2007
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Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
That's a tough one to answer. All I can say is that, in the past, there were a lot fewer writers/artists. Now, with todays technology, anyone can write, produce, publish, and distribute anything to the world. Talent gets lost in the tremendous amount of content, which is hidden in a million different places. Even original screenplays suffer, as most are using old comic books as their source. That's quite a broad stroke I just wrote but I think it has some truth to it.
 

R-E-Y

Member
Mar 2, 2020
5
21
43
That's a tough one to answer. All I can say is that, in the past, there were a lot fewer writers/artists. Now, with todays technology, anyone can write, produce, publish, and distribute anything to the world. Talent gets lost in the tremendous amount of content, which is hidden in a million different places. Even original screenplays suffer, as most are using old comic books as their source. That's quite a broad stroke I just wrote but I think it has some truth to it.
I think that is an excellent answer, truthfully. Even though it is a broad stroke, the difference between the nature of short story publication in '68 (when King was actively seeking to place his stories) and the nature of publication in 2020 is so vast that only a broad stroke could begin to cover it. (Let alone the difference between when Lovecraft was publishing in Weird Tales and now!) Thanks for that thoughtful answer! It has given me food for thought. (I hadn't much considered how screenplays have fared.)
 

Drawn to Ka-tet

Well-Known Member
Mar 15, 2007
2,409
465
New Hampshire
I follow many Indie authors on Twitter and they all struggle with getting published and getting recognition. The levels of talent blow my mind. Some are so talented but they struggle because they write within a little known genre- like Oscar Hokeah. (Kiowa/Cherokee writer of literary fiction. A regionalist Native American writer of literary fiction, interested in capturing.. ) His writing is profound and has wrenched at my heart. I found him by accident and fell hard for his short stories sold as ebooks on kindle.
There are so many others, but I don't want to bore you.
Electronic publishing is the only game for Independent authors. The paperback and the hardcover are expensive and not available unless the writer is discovered and promoted by one of the big publication houses. Magazines are not as popular to the consumer as they were 20 -30 years ago. That's my opinion.
I can't imagine what our Uncle Steve would say.
 

R-E-Y

Member
Mar 2, 2020
5
21
43
I follow many Indie authors on Twitter and they all struggle with getting published and getting recognition. The levels of talent blow my mind. Some are so talented but they struggle because they write within a little known genre- like Oscar Hokeah. (Kiowa/Cherokee writer of literary fiction. A regionalist Native American writer of literary fiction, interested in capturing.. ) His writing is profound and has wrenched at my heart. I found him by accident and fell hard for his short stories sold as ebooks on kindle.
There are so many others, but I don't want to bore you.
Electronic publishing is the only game for Independent authors. The paperback and the hardcover are expensive and not available unless the writer is discovered and promoted by one of the big publication houses. Magazines are not as popular to the consumer as they were 20 -30 years ago. That's my opinion.
I can't imagine what our Uncle Steve would say.
Thank you for your thoughtful answer! I think that part of the challenge is finding new, good writing--as mal wrote above--is that it is so defuse across so much media that it's sometimes hard to locate. But when I see recommendations, I always try to follow them up. Thanks for the recommendation of Oscar Hokeah; I will definitely search for his work.