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Comment by kevinmchugh | Hacker News Reader

Vonnegut I remember writing somewhere that radio and especially TV had killed the market for short stories in magazines, which were a great way for authors to get started.

Here's some other things he said on making a living as a writer: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/vonnegut-writing-i...

Note that he got paid $750 for his first short story in 1949! I don't know how many places are paying first time authors that much today, and then you remember to calculate inflation.

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In the US, for scifi, the SFWA requires a market to offer 8 cents a word or more, I believe, to be considered a "professional market" for the sake of counting towards membership criteria. That means most of the bigger scifi magazines are exactly at 8c (a very few above)

Very few genre magazines will accept more than 10k words. A handful will accept 20k-25k (Asimov's, Analog, Clarkesworld for example, last I checked). Many will prefer much shorter works.

And of course that is before taking into account the competition - the editor of a relatively minor scifi magazine mention on Twitter that their typical slush pile per issue was 1400-1500 stories.

I've submitted a couple of stories, but decided that effort vs. relatively low potential payoff was so low that since I wouldn't really be profitable when factoring in time spent anyway it was better to just put my stories on my website and pay to promote them to relevant twitter followers to pull in readers for my novel and increase my following at the same time.

The few short stories I've published so far has as a result reached a much wider audience than most of the main scifi magazines reach. E.g. even Analog was reportedly down to 27k readers by 2011.

But of course being able to afford to do that is a pretty privileged position to be in.

> the editor of a relatively minor scifi magazine mention on Twitter that their typical slush pile per issue was 1400-1500 stories.

That's surprising; I subscribed to Asimov's for about 6 months back in 2015 and based on what I was reading, I assumed they must be publishing everything that comes in the door.

I can imagine they get a lot of submissions that are just absolutely wrong for their editorial purpose. There's a lot of hobbyist authors online who would love to get paid, and I bet a lot of them are submitting their fanfiction (or narrowly reworked fanfiction) to a magazine with no interest in it.

Also probably many people probably submit the same pieces over and over.

Btw if you find an outlet that seems to have no standards but also pays, the right thing to do is to stop being a subscriber and start being an author.

That makes sense... I suppose if I was trying to pick a dozen stories out of 1500, I'd start by looking for people I've published before, and even if their current submission isn't very good it beats wading through the dross. After that it's probably a matter of rolling up your sleeves, throwing out everything that's obviously unhinged or unusable, and slogging through the rest.

I assume editors don't get paid nearly enough.

For sure. My guess is that the slush pile count is exclusively of unsolicited, unfamiliar authors. Someone they've published before probably skips the pile.

I think they might be publishing stuff their core audience really likes, btw. It's just that audience is probably a niche.

I think this is an ongoing challenge. You see it with comics as well, where Marvel and DC have gotten really good at knowing what sells to their niche audience. But their audience has been in lengthy decline, in part because they've focused on selling to their niche audience rather than figuring out how to broaden their base.

A lot of the worst writing will also often circulate to many places because nobody takes it off the market...

lol no, I wish. Good luck getting into any of the magazines mentioned in the grandparent post. The relative quality is debatable, but what you see is genuinely the best of thousands of submissions

750 dollars in 1949 is about $9,000 in 2021.

Vonnegut had to convince at least two gatekeepers: his own agent and the editor at Colliers.

I spent a large chunk of time a few years back looking into the questions OP is asking, and the ultimate truth I came to is this: whether you're self publishing or going the traditional route, you're going to need some established gatekeepers to support you if you're going to make it.

In 1949, those gatekeepers were traditional publishers. In 2021, we still have traditional publishers, but we also have content curation algorithms, social media influencers, podcast hosts, and platforms like Substack and Patreon. If you can get any of them to put resources into promoting you, you'll have a real opportunity of making it - that is, if what you're offering is any good.

If you can't or don't want to get the attention of those gatekeepers, it doesn't matter how good your content is, no one will ever find you.

Yep, in almost every industry it was always been 50% how good you are and 50% who you know. Over time, who you need to know to be successful has changed, and new artists need to adapt, as they always have. Getting an audience is easier than ever in history. That is amazing for hobbyists who just want some readers and recognition, and not great for those who want to earn a living while writing.

You can hustle up who you know. Late night talk shows are looking for anyone who is willing to be interviewed at 2am. And once in a while some big name will happen to have insomnia and notice you. However you have to do 2am shows with no idea if anyone will notice for a long time. While of course writing the next edition.

And, as in many other creative endeavors, all the hobbyists who just want some readers (or viewers or whatever) end up competing with people trying to put food on the table. Even if individually many do not have much of an effect, in the aggregate they do.

I assume even in radio and TV, not all segments are created equal. Maybe live, ad-libbed shows had a more detrimental effect, in the sense that at least scripted shows employ more writers?

Also, would it not make sense to look at writing even from a more indirect point? For example, millions of people enjoyed the creativity of the /Friends/ writers, without actually reading a single word. Should they be counted as successful as a book writer with millions of readers?

I saw Kurt Vonnegut speak in the 1990's and I remember his saying something along the lines of "I am one of the 100 people that are able to make a decent living writing fiction"

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