Category Archives: Writing Sales

Where are the audiences?

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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

200 Submissions Later

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Lessons from the Long Game of Getting Published

I’m approaching 200 submissions. It sounds like a lot, but I started in 2010, so that only averages to a little over 13 submissions per year.

Note that I am only counting acceptances where I got paid for my story and not places like CAB Theater that picked up one of my comedic pieces for free and performed it on stage.  I didn’t get to cash in on that one, but I did get to sit in the audience while the actors performed my words, soaking it in as they got the biggest laugh of the night out of one of my jokes. And, honestly, that was way better than getting paid.

My acceptance rate is about 5.8%. While that isn’t quite stellar, it does seem to be better than averages reported by the Submission Grinder for many of the markets I stalk.

This gives you a feel of how difficult it can be to land a piece. Just looking at the odds for every 100 stories you submit you can expect to land less than two. There are some markets, like Anotherealm, and BSF Horizons that have nice fat acceptance rates of 12.5% and 33.33% respectively. But these appear to be the exceptions to the rule.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Allegory, which has an acceptance rate of a little over 2% and UFO publishing (They are closed now, no acceptance rate is listed at the Grinder). I was a first reader for several years at both of those publications.

 I have also noticed a dip in acceptance over my last 50 submissions or so. If I calculate everything preceding those 50, I have a nearly 8% acceptance rate.  Either I am getting worse (entirely possible, if not likely) or the market for short fiction is getting tighter. For the benefit of my own morale, I am going to choose to believe it’s the latter.

So what can we do to hedge against the ever increasing odds?

We do the only thing that has ever worked: create more content and hone our skills along the way.

And continue to have a lot of patience.   

From the odds I can only expect to land fewer than 2% of the stories I submit, but improving the quality of my writing should give me an edge.

Or we can take the Han Solo approach — Never tell me the odds!

Comment below to let me know what your submission journey has been like.  I’d love to hear from other writers grinding it out.

-James

The Resignation

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Fine white powder

Ironsoap.com just published my flash piece titled   The resignation.

This story originated from a writing challenge a friend and I had. We used a writing prompt generator to come up with the story constraints.

You used to be able to check it out here:

http://ironsoap.com/2016/06/the-resignation/

  • James

The stickiness of cotton candy

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cotton candy

I landed a piece at Four Star Stories. You can check it out here.

VALIDATION!

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Validate

It has happened.

Here are excerpts from a recent series of exciting e-mails:

3/29/2014
“I’m writing to let you know that your story has made it past the initial reading by 3 randomly selected associate editors and is being advanced for further review to a full editorial board.”
4/10/2014

“Your story is one of the top contenders for inclusion into the book”

4/15/2014
“I’d like to officially accept your story for inclusion in UFO3!”

 

And just like that, Little green Fonzie, now called The right answer,  has been accepted for publication in an anthology of humorous science fiction.

Apparently the recipe for getting published is to try really hard for a while, then give up for four years, get married, have a baby, then try again. On the third submission, someone will buy your stuff.

Or it could be that I decided to contact an Editor and hire her to help me clean up my writing.

It may not be hard to guess, but UFO Publishing is one of my favorite online sites now.
-James