The future of short fiction publishing: Pay per Story?

[Talia]

Intriguing io9 article about being able to download/pay for individual short stories for devices like electronic readers or the iPad:

http://io9.com/5518334/the-future-of-short-fiction-publishing-pay-per-story

Anyway I just thought it was VERY interesting and worth passing along to anyone who hadn't seen it on io9 or on John Scalzi's blog.

My own first thoughts are that it sounds reasonable enough.. like buying songs off ITunes. But it makes me wonder what impact this could have on other markets for short fiction.. such as the Escape Artists 'casts.

Thoughts?

[tinroof]

I really doubt it would have much of an impact on other media. One of the big draws of things like fiction podcasts and magazines and collections and whatnot is that they introduce you to new stories you wouldn't have picked up otherwise. I don't think anything's likely to make that less attractive to readers.

I personally get frustrated sometimes when an author only has a story in some difficult-to-track-down back issue of a magazine, so I think it's a good idea, overall.

[Heradel]

It's possible. I saw that Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things collection had been broken up into a bunch of $0.99 parts on the iPad store (though, oddly, there's no way to tell which short story is which without grabbing the sample). Quickly looking around I don't see anything else that does it, but there's not a good way to search by price on the iPad and I can't find a way to get into the iBooks store by iTunes. Which is also odd. (Yes, I got one. Employer mixed up which state income taxes I was paying, withheld at wrong rate, luckily in my favour. Also birthday.)

I'd venture that there would still be a need for editing and stamping approval. Quick excerpts of short stories don't work that well, and though $0.99 is a low barrier to entry I'm not sure I'd trust The Internet's ratings of a story, especially as there's likely to just be some huge mass of them out there and it'll take forever for a story to pick up enough ratings for the rank to achieve some measure of utility.

[Swamp]

I agree.  I think editing is the key benefit of a magazine/webzine type market place.  I mean there is nothing stopping my from self-publishing every story I write today through Fictionwise or Kindle or wherever, and trying to sell my stories in an open market place.  Why don't I do that?  Who's going to know who I am?  And where is the motivation to improve.  I may get some followers who like my stuff and I will think I'm aces, but I won't be improving.

Magazines are a gathering place for stories that people come to consume.  Editors sift through piles of submissions and put out what they think is the best.  Then, as editors/magazines gets known for quality material, people come to them for content, so the author needs to improve thier skills in crafting a tale to that quality.  I don't think you can ultimately get away from the dynamic of people in general wanting others to do the sifting.