The State of F/SF Short Fiction

[Scott H. Andrews]

A neat blog post by Andy Spackman about the general current state of fantasy short fiction markets (http://andyspackman.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/rip-rof-whither-the-short-story/). He notes the death of Realms and the shrinking of F&SF from monthly to bimonthly, and also the expansion of IGMS from quarterly to monthly.

I agree with him that the future of F/SF short fiction is electronic. For now that's mostly online, but I think e-reader hardware and formats may be the next big thing, whenever the hardware gets ubiquitous enough.

[Saladin]

To me it's less a question of hardware ubiquity than it is of the optical discrepancy between paper and a screen. I agree that the future of short fiction seems to be electronic/web-based, and think that's great. But my aging eyes prefer to read from paper, so I hope that the future of of short fiction publishing also includes super-easy ways to print stories as well.

Eventually, maybe paper-imitating tech will do all its proponents claim it does. The Kindle ain't there yet, though, and it's the most paper-like thing out there. Though I have to admit, I used to complain this way about video projection in movie theaters. Now, once in a while, those evil buggers fool me.

[AndySpackman]

As a librarian I've tried to keep tabs on what's going on with e-readers. I still think the tipping point is a good ways off. Cost, as I've argued before (http://andyspackman.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/amazon-kindle-and-the-difference-between-jeff-bezos-and-johannes-gutenberg/), is one reason. Another is the lack of a shared and sharable standard, a la mp3 for music. With a standard in place and lower costs, I see e-readers becoming ubiquitous. I know that I for one, though I might still prefer to read novels on paper, would find it much preferable to read Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the other online mags using an e-reader rather than the internet.

Scott, have you looked into making your content available for e-readers, or in .mobi formats, etc.? Does anyone know if any of the other online mags have?

[Scott H. Andrews]

With a standard in place and lower costs, I see e-readers becoming ubiquitous.
These are definitely vital concerns. I'm a musician, so I followed the whole evolution of mp3s and iPods closely. I also remember how muddled things were before the mid-cost hardware came onto the scene as the final piece of the puzzle. Hopefully for printed matter it won't take as long.

One interesting overlap of the existing audio framework and short fiction is audio fiction podcasts. Their length is ideally suited to short fiction, so I am curious to see how they develop as a format.

Scott, have you looked into making your content available for e-readers, or in .mobi formats, etc.? Does anyone know if any of the other online mags have?
I have--it's planned for this spring. :D

F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, and Interzone are all available through Fictionwise.com (http://www.fictionwise.com/), an ebook publisher and online distributor. They do a great job at offering lots of formats and making the whole purchasing side of things as easy as possible.

But like music mp3s, getting the content online is the easy part--getting the hardware into peoples' hands is the big challenge.