I’ve always loved single author short story collection, but I realize I’m in a minority — the sort of people who devour forewords, afterwords, and author’s notes, always hunt for biographical notes in books and magazines, and read non-fiction books about their favorite authors. Knowing that short story collections of any kind, both multi-author anthologies and single-author collections, don’t sell very well in comparison to novels and, having written and published some shorts with the ambition to keep doing more of the same, I’ve often wondered just how the single-author collection fits in with the modern genre fiction writer’s career path.
Over at The Fix prolific short fictioneer James Van Pelt sheds some light on the questions that many writers have about collecting their fiction in his ‘The Day Job’ column on Publishing a Short Story Collection. Van Pelt addresses the following concerns of burgeoning writers:
- When should a writer do a collection? Do they have to be at “critical mass” or have won an award?
- Small press or major press?
- How well do short story collections do?
- Do you need an agent?
- How do you choose the stories and how much input does the writer have?
If these are things you’ve thought about (I have), Van Pelt lays it all out nicely in his article. Small Press is certainly the arena for collections from writers who have yet to achieve significant book sales to tempt a major publisher, but Van Pelt also addresses self-publishing in his article. He closes with a list of some recommended science fiction and fantasy short story collections.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi, Bill. I’m glad you found the article, and thanks for the shout out on it.
Thanks for the article Bill! This is something I’ve thought of too, and often come across people telling me you need to be selling bestsellers in order to do collections. Though, I did buy an excellent collection by an Australian writer called Nam Le, whom I’d never heard of.
I’ve never heard of him (him?) either, Benjamin. And I know what you mean about the ‘cart before the horse’ reasoning of what sorts of sales you’d have to have before you could sell a collection.
And thanks for stopping by, Jim! I’ve enjoyed all your articles over at The Fix, and for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to point in their direction on my blog until now.