Forum / A Dull Article about Short Story Sales

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    Ann Bogle
    Feb 16, 08:48am

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/books/a-good-fit-for-small-screens-short-stories-are-selling.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130216&_r=0

    Sales-worthy, part-time short storyists (besides Hemingway, et al.) mentioned in this article include Saunders, Lipsyte, Englander (translator of Etgar Keret), and Diaz.

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    Marcus Speh
    Feb 17, 12:08pm

    Yes, this is an exceedingly dull and unnecessary article. I suppose "thank you for sharing" may sound sarcastic but it's not meant that way: after all, I am often go into bookstores only to emerge with a my gloomy view of contemporary writing cemented, perhaps feeling somewhat gratified by the knowledge that it can't be that hard to transcend the baby barrier erected by professional writers, at least until I'm home again and realize that the only wall worth breaking through is the wall built by my own personal standards, which are partly the result of decades of being suckled at the breast of great literature. But I do digress. I suppose, moronic sentences like

    “People say people don’t want to read short fiction, but this seems to be working out really well.”

    'really' bring out the worst in me and spur me to express myself properly, adequately and appropriately. The article does remind me of the discussion I had with my agent a few months ago: she confirmed that established authors can and should publish short stories but also that any mainstream publisher (in the German-speaking world or elsewhere) would be reluctant to take on such a product by an author who was not established yet. I had questioned the truth of this statement pointing out some of what this article says (and also the recent trend where writers brand linked short stories as 'novels'), but my agent was quite sure, and being successful, she does now her numbers. So let's try this again:

    "Publishers say people don't want to read short fiction but writers of short fiction wish it wasn't so because it seems to be working out really well for some who are either dead or famous already."

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