Despite The Market Declining To Troubling Sales Levels, Amazing Stories Editor Shames Sci-Fi Readers Demanding They Pay More For Short Fiction

Steve Davidson, editor of Amazing Stories magazine, admits the short story market in science fiction is broken in an impassioned plea to try to raise rates for writers.

The short story market has been in trouble for some time. Circulation has been declining for years, and once Amazon removed the ability to subscribe to magazines like Asimov’s and Fantasy & Science Fiction on their website, much of the readership evaporated as the companies didn’t have their own mailing lists to find their readership.

Fantasy & Science Fiction was hit hard in this situation, as they had an outdated website that hadn’t been updated in ages, but the decline in short fiction has been a steep one ever since the early 1990s, in large part due to reader tastes and habits.

A few magazines have managed to survive in the current market, like Clarkesworld, based on Patreon subscriptions, but unlike the golden age of science fiction, authors are not getting famous based on their works and short fiction does not sell very well to current audiences, who prefer long-form serial novels with long series on Amazon as people like to get attached to certain characters and remain with them.

A lot of this change in habit came from Netflix “binge-watching” in culture, which translated to “binge-reading” series subsequently. That attachment can’t be made with a 3,000-word short story that ends just as you’re getting to know the character and concept.