AI helped me to confirm something I have long suspected: The audience for short story fiction is smaller than other markets. (And, yes, whether you can believe AI is certainly always in question).

When I asked it what markets and media have the most appetite for fiction it came up with this chart below (note that I also found it interesting how it put in “Money” and “Fame potential” as metrics along side “audience size”):

While I am not sure if this is exactly correct (graphic novels & webtoons ranked way higher than I would have thought), it does confirm my suspicions that people are watching a lot more than reading. The one exception being novels still ranking really high.

This doesn’t mean there is no market for the written word, just that it will be an uphill battle if your goal is to get your short story published in a written format.

Since I am interested in storytelling in general I am working on converting my fiction story Thin Red Lines to a short You Tube video. And, yeah, in order to do that in the most efficient and cost effective way, I am going to use AI.

Before you start searching for your pitchforks, know that I draw the line at AI editing or creating any of the story I have written – the words will still be mine – I am having it do the video and audio. And, sure, maybe this is me justifying it to myself.

I am going to include this disclaimer at the beginning of the video:

You should also know that I am not after a quicky, wham-bam AI slop production. Like many of us, this story is my offspring, one of my literary children, so I want the final product to represent the tale I envision.

I can tell you, after a few days of working with Chat GPT for images, Google Flow for visuals and Eleven labs for audio, getting AI to provide anything close to what I envision is proving an exercise in frustration.

I often liken using AI iteratively like this as the same as working with a petulant child – sometimes they do exactly what you want and other times they stubbornly refuse to do what you are after no matter how much you try to persuade, explain, and re-frame.

Let me know if you have ever tried creating AI videos for your stories – or if you ever would?

-James