Post #105142 by Satan's Sin on Fri, Jul 30, 2004 10:53 AM

Sigh ... I have some publishing experience. I even have an agent, but if I were to tell him about this he would laugh his you-know-what off. Here's why:

The market for short stories is extremely tiny. Magazines rarely publish short stories, and book publishers rarely publish short story collections. They're not unheard of, but it's not anything at all like it used to be (in 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s). Usually they're by authors who already have a track record with full-on, successful novels. And the magazines who still publish short stories haven't raised their prices in 30 years -- and the only reason an agent would submit a short story for these prices (agents in New York typically take 15%) would be purely as a favor to an author who is making them some real money elsewhere.

This project should be approached entirely for the love of writing the story and having fun. Publication would be like winning the lottery -- with about the same odds.

Of course, publication on the Internet is relatively easy. As some sort of adjunct to TC? With some properly-accredited pictures from Shag?

"Writing tips." There are some authors' groups who share their stories with each other and in a round-robin kind of way critique the stories. This would be easy to handle on the Intenet.

Maybe we should establish a new folder in -- Beyond Tiki, I guess? -- called "Tiki Writing Project" and we can update, cuss and discuss the project that way.

Then, just to drive a stake in the sand, let's say everybody's stories are "due" by Christmas. And the "boss" of this forum would be the forum itself.

Any takers?