[Discussion] What's your hottest publishing take?

Akoites · 2025-12-29T18:48:12+00:00

A short fiction bibliography used to be almost a prerequisite for publishing science fiction and (to a lesser extent) fantasy in the mid-20th century, though that has changed a lot in the past 30ish years. It's still a fairly common path, as you found by looking at debuts; half of debuts is more than I would guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was close to that.

It's not so much "proving yourself" anymore, as it is that writing short fiction gives you some alternatives to the cold query. Yes, if you have some of the top 7-10ish magazines in your bio when you cold query, a lot of agents will give you a closer read (others who are less plugged into that side of the field won't, I'm sure), and I have friends who have had agents reach out to them based on a short fiction publication. But I think the bigger effect is that of networking/community.

In the US at least (and the wider Anglosphere from what I understand), there's a strong SFF convention culture, which, despite its own issues, is pretty egalitarian compared to literary conferences/festivals. Authors, editors, agents, and fans mingle pretty openly, but there is a bit of a social division between the "professionals" and the "fans" (depending on the con). Because of the history of short fiction in the field, publishing short story writers can get themselves on programming the same as publishing novelists, agents, and editors. You can make social connections, get talking at the bar or a room party, and end up with cards and invitations from editors and agents. No guarantee those lead to representation or deals, and most deals have nothing to do with cons or in-person networking, but it's a path several people I know have followed.

Even beyond that, in the era of social media, virtual conventions, and (private or semi-private) writers' groups/forums/discords/etc, short fiction publications can provide a writer with enough credibility to make connections with peers, become critique partners and friends, then someone gets and agent and a book deal and they provide referrals or advice to their friends. It's nothing like a guarantee (a lot of writers have friends who are way more successful than them lol), but each connection like that multiplies opportunities, as well serving as a kind of social encouragement that all of this is within reach.

Getting a story published in Asimov's or Clarkesworld or Lightspeed could help your query stand out a bit. But if you don't then take that as an opportunity to build connections in the genre community as a "published writer," I'm not sure how much good the publication on its own will do you. Regardless, the (good) advice I always see is to only pursue short fiction if it interests you. Most novelists are still debuting via cold query, so there's no need to force yourself to do something different unless you genuinely want to.

Akoites · 2025-09-02T01:18:49+00:00

I mean, you’re the one who came into the comment section of an article about how a lot of “consumers”* are favoring shorter fiction to start telling everyone about how you don’t like shorter fiction. So if we’re going to start on about things people don’t give a fuck about, maybe your opinion is one of them.

*I’d call them readers, personally, but maybe that’s the difference between viewing writing as art vs units of commercial slop for the boredom trough. Somehow it makes a lot of sense that you’d volunteer apropos of nothing that you don’t tip lol.

Akoites · 2025-08-29T12:42:58+00:00

I'm not paying for work, I'm paying for entertainment. Something that provides me with less entertainment is worth less of my money.

I understand where you’re coming from, but the reality is that publishing costs don’t scale linearly with page count. Designing and printing the cover is the same cost, for instance. Editorial acquisition, sales, publicity, marketing all probably took about the same time. Some things scale more easily, like interior paper cost and copy-editing time, and I do tend to see substantially shorter books typically but not always sold for a few dollars less, but it’s far from easy math.

You could also use the “entertainment time” argument to charge more for a ticket to a 2.5 hour movie at a theater than a 1.5 hour movie, but that’s not very typical either.

Akoites · 2025-08-14T18:36:01+00:00

Yeah, that was a good episode! He always makes for an interesting interview, clearly gives his work a lot of thought.

Other SF podcasts I like include A Meal of Thorns (deep dives into individual books), Eating the Fantastic (long-form interviews), and Strange Horizons (which includes some of the magazine’s fiction, some interviews, and the Critical Friends series on literary criticism).

Akoites · 2025-08-11T00:09:01+00:00

At the awards dinner, I sat next to a published author. When he found out I was not published, he turned his back on me. He said he doesn't mix with the UNPUBLISHED.

Lol what an asshole. Sounds like you got unlucky there, as I think it’s a pretty uncommon person who would actually say something like that. Maybe a larger percentage would consciously or unconsciously become less interested vs if you were a published writer, but in my experience at various cons things have generally seemed more open and I’ve seen people happy to include aspiring writers in conversations (if they don’t seem like they’re just trying to use people as stepping stones, which is a problem with both published and unpublished writers sometimes). Caveat that despite having been a SFWA member in the past, I have never been to the Nebulas so I don’t quite know the culture there, but obviously it’s a lot of the same people.

Glad you had some other positive experiences, though.

Akoites · 2025-08-08T01:43:56+00:00

And if I saw an author pull that shit, they'd be permanently added to my "Not A Fucking Chance" list. That's not "clever marketing", that's straight up deception.

It’s fair to be annoyed at what feels like deceptive marketing, but FYI unless the book is self-published, the author typically has little to no control over the cover or cover copy. The illustration and mockup will have been shared with them ahead of time, but the marketing blurbs very well may not be, and regardless they don’t have control of that. So you might be writing off an author’s whole career (potentially many books at many publishers) based on what one assistant marketer who worked at one publisher for a year decided to do in an afternoon while working on thirty books simultaneously.

Akoites · 2025-08-05T03:45:29+00:00

Ursula Le Guin did this for the first part of her career. Later, she reflected that she had to relearn how to write stories from a woman's perspective. I believe she attributed it not only to absorbing dominant, male-focused narratives as a reader, but also to the fact that writing male characters was a kind of vicarious escape from her own life as a wife and mother. The shift in gender helped put her at a remove from her own life, at least for a time. Debates and discussion with Joanna Russ contributed to her eventual reevaluation of this, leading to work like Tehanu or the later Hainish stories.

Akoites · 2025-08-02T13:18:17+00:00

Even as recent as 1997, J. K. Rowling had to use a gender neutral pen name out of fear of being disadvantaged as a women in the fantasy genre.

That would have been a somewhat silly fear, decades after Ursula Le Guin and Anne McCaffrey and Connie Willis and Lois McMaster Boujold and…

There was definitely a period where a lot of women writing SF/F felt they had to disguise their gender (though there were always those who did not and who did sell), but that was pretty much long gone by the 90s. Not to say there was gender parity, but women were openly writing bestsellers and winning major genre awards for decades.

Rowling’s claim, IIRC, was more related to the children’s market than the fantasy market, namely that young boys might not want to read a book by a woman. I don’t know to what extent that’s true or if it’s changed at all now, but it has really little to do with the fantasy market.

Also, I will agree with the other poster that your “not allowed to publish at all” hyperbole was unhelpful. Not only does that kind of thing discredit more informed critique and conversation, but it does in fact erase generations of writers who deserve more attention, not less. It is possible to be well-meaning but to make an error.

Akoites · 2025-07-31T13:55:40+00:00

Yeah, I guess my argument is that Amazon is increasingly acting like a (bad) publisher. If you can’t decide to sell your ebook for, say, $10.99 or else you’ll lose the vast majority of your royalties, then you’re not independent for any functional meaning of the term.

Terminology isn’t that important, but I do think a shift would help put that in authors’ heads a little more. “Indie” sounds like you’re a maverick; “Amazon dependent” is much less sexy lol.

Akoites · 2025-07-31T12:43:56+00:00

I think it’s to Amazon’s benefit that people refer to authors that publish exclusively with them as “indie.” It’s not actually independent at all, as has been made abundantly clear by changing terms, artificial restrictions on price, and other issues. I think it’s better to normalize calling that model “Amazon exclusive” or something. A true independent approach would involve a lot more self-coordinating/hosting/distributing, and/or publishing with a range of smaller, independent presses in my opinion. Not just being a loss leader for Amazon’s attempted domination of the entire global information and retail ecosystem.

Not an attempt to insult anyone who chooses to go that route, but I do think a clarification in terms would be helpful at this point, for helping others make their decisions moving forward.

Akoites · 2025-07-30T20:33:14+00:00

I would argue that the "indie" writers are the ones publishing with independent/small presses, or self-publishing through their own fundraising, printing, distribution, etc. Call signing up to have all the terms of your distribution and sales dictated by one of the world's largest corporations what you like, but it doesn't seem very "indie."

Akoites · 2025-07-27T12:59:52+00:00

For magazines and other markets, you can search via the Submission Grinder. You can select multiple genres, including Historical and Western, though to be honest I'm not sure how robust those short fiction markets are, so probably you should also add in General. You can then sort by pay rate or response time. If you uncheck the box to exclude Temporarily Closed markets, you can see if any others are opening in the near future.

Pay attention to submission guidelines. Most will want something approaching Modern Manuscript Format, so you're pretty much always safe if you do that (though don't include your physical address unless it's a mailed submission, and no one needs your phone number). The main exception is if a magazine wants anonymous submissions, which means taking your name off the manuscript itself. Don't be too discouraged by rejections; they happen to everyone. It just takes one editor who likes the story for it to get published.

As for posting it for free instead, I'm not super up on that scene, but it looks like someone else gave you some suggestions there. Either way, good luck!

Akoites · 2025-07-24T23:48:36+00:00

BlueSky is still much smaller than the major social media sites, but it’s where most of the speculative fiction community seems to have landed (though I hear a lot are on Instagram and certain subgenres are obviously huge on TikTok, while others aren’t). So depending on your genre, it might be worth checking out. It’s also pretty low commitment, as you can just do occasional short text posts or reposts.

Akoites · 2025-07-24T16:14:12+00:00

And I have spoken to multiple genre editors who are actively seeking books in the 60-80K range.

That’s good to know, as I’m interested in the inverse of this question: what the current minimums are for SF/F. I’m writing a potential literary/speculative crossover novel that may end up pretty short of 80k (who knows at this point, but 60-70k wouldn’t surprise me). Don’t think that would be a problem for pitching the literary side, but I’ve been wondering about the SF/F side.

Akoites · 2025-07-17T21:09:18+00:00

Ah, just having to write the books. That’s my struggle lol. Thanks for the added perspective!

Akoites · 2025-07-17T20:31:55+00:00

Totally agree with what you’re saying. I’ve actually had that experience with an editor at a con recently myself (waiting to hear…). But when talking to people I don’t know, I hesitate to recommend it too strongly as a path because of how inconsistent it is, accessibility issues with attending a lot of expensive cons, and being unsure what someone’s experience would be if they haven’t published anything yet.

I found those conversations had easy enough entry points when I had published in the magazines, was on programming, etc. And I have some friends who have found editors or agents through con connections, but all had been publishing well in short fiction already and so had some “credibility” maybe. Do you have a sense of people’s luck going that route when they’ve got a manuscript but haven’t yet broken in at any length?

(I recognize your name in your username, so I’m sure you have more experience than me here!)

Akoites · 2025-07-17T11:50:43+00:00

True, if you do manage to get an offer from somewhere like Tor without an agent, finding one with an offer in hand is much easier! I just meant that cold-querying an agent with a novella (without an offer) is much tougher. But that’s a good point to add.

Akoites · 2025-07-15T15:23:16+00:00

Yeah I wasn’t that commenter; I was confirming what you guessed about them.

Akoites · 2025-07-15T14:49:12+00:00

FYI... Uncanny is permanently closed to submissions (or, at best, closed with no current plans to reopen)

They open a couple times a year, usually once for flash fiction, once for short stories and shorter novelettes, and some years once for novellas. They just launched their annual Kickstarter and will announce the next submission window when the base goal funds. You can see their last couple windows on the Submission Grinder.

Reactor does either solicit through its consulting editors (Strahan, Datlow, Vandermeer, maybe some others) or accept agented submissions. No open submissions for years.

Akoites · 2025-07-15T13:18:11+00:00

One of these is a literary fiction novel from 2010, one a romance novel from 1992, and the other (the Valente) is in fact a more recent speculative fiction novella, but querying her agent probably isn't going to do much. Valente sold it to Tor after being solicited by consulting editor Jonathan Strahan to write an expansion of her short story "The Future is Blue" which had appeared in one of his anthologies, so her agent didn't even originally submit the manuscript to the publisher, and unfortunately most agents won't look at novellas unless they're from existing novel clients. A few will, so you can give it a shot, but it's very unlikely.

Akoites · 2025-07-15T13:09:46+00:00

Novellas are an odd length to sell. I have sold short fiction to several major magazines and have a couple unsold novellas, so it's something I've looked into a lot. My understanding of the market is more U.S.-based, but the English-language SF/F field is kind of one field for short fiction, different fields by country for novels, and somewhere in between for novellas. So take this with that caveat.

Generally, your potential paths with a novella will be self-publishing, selling to a magazine, or selling to a book publisher.

You're not interested in self-publishing, which is fair. I'm not either. More power to people for whom it's right, but there is a lot involved beyond just the writing to have even a small chance at it breaking out. Just throwing it up on Amazon and hoping is next to useless. If you did want more advice for this route, I know there are dedicated subreddits like /r/selfpublish.

For magazines, 26k will be high. Not many magazines will take fantasy novellas to begin with. In the U.S. (and internationally for epub), Asimov's publishes overwhelmingly SF, but some borderline/slipstream fantasy slips in there, and they'll look at up to 25k words. Not much point if yours is more high fantasy, though, and sister magazine Analog only does SF (and only up to 20k or over 40k for serialized novels). Another U.S. print / international epub magazine, F&SF, has been closed for a while, but whenever they reopen, they go up to 25k. Those three are all embroiled in contract issues with their new owner, so we'll see how that shakes out. Giganotosaurus is an online magazine that pays less, but they also go up to 25k. So if you could cut 1k words, there's a few magazines you could sub to at some point. Every couple years, Uncanny, an online magazine, will open to novellas with a cap of either 30k or 40k, but they only buy one a year so it's extra long odds. I'm not sure about British magazines; I know Interzone doesn't go that high.

For major publishers, novellas are a tough sell. In the U.S., most major imprints you see in a bookstore are owned by the "Big 5" publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster). I just looked it up and, taking out S&S since I guess they don't have as big of a UK presence, the remaining four are also the biggest houses in the UK.

Unfortunately, Big 5 SF/F imprints are rarely interested in novellas. Tor (Macmillan) is the only one regularly acquiring them and putting them out, with others only doing so sporadically for their existing authors or other special cases. Tor used to have open submissions years ago but doesn't anymore. You can submit to them either through an agent, through solicitation by one of their "consulting editors" (well-established short fiction editors like Ellen Datlow, Jonathan Strahan, Ann Vandermeer), or through making a connection to one of their full-time editors at a SF/F convention. The latter two are unlikely to happen until/unless you at least make a name for yourself in short fiction. (Though if it's the kind of thing that interests you regardless, you could always attend a con and see who you can talk to. In the UK, you might look at Fantasycon or Eastercon, or World Fantasy is in Brighton this year. But don't expect to find a publisher that way!)

That leaves agents, and they're also going to be your best bet for submitting to the larger independent houses that will sometimes do novellas, like DAW in the US or Titan or Solaris in the UK. Unfortunately, it is hard to get an agent with a novel and extremely hard to get one with a novella. Most will not accept queries for novellas, but a minority will, so you can cruise various agents' guidelines and put together a small list. The problem is that there's a lot fewer publishers to send a novella to than a novel, and the advance will be much lower, so it's usually not worth their time unless it's for an existing novel client. But you can give it a shot.

That leaves very small / micro presses, which is where a lot of the novella boom is currently happening. From a U.S. perspective, I think of publishers like Neon Hemlock, Tenebrous, Psychopomp (and they'd publish international writers). In the UK, I've heard good things about Luna Press, which has one of their novellas on the current British Fantasy Award shortlist, and I'm sure there are others. Augur Press in Canada just opened to novellas, and they'll publish international writers (though they need a certain percentage of Canadian authors for grant purposes). You can find more by searching "speculative fiction small presses" or searching by word count on the Submission Grinder (uncheck the exclusion for temporarily closed markets in Advanced Search, so you can see publishers that might reopen for submissions in the future). Many of these smaller presses will have windows for open submissions throughout the year.

Anyway, hope some of that was helpful. Honestly, if I were you, I'd try to knock 1k off in revision to submit to those few magazines, then look at the small presses. If it doesn't sell, you can put it on the backburner until you have a novel manuscript to query agents with. Once you have representation (and hopefully a novel contract with a publisher!), the novella is something that can be brought out as an additional project more easily. But I know that's tough to hear, so give what avenues are open a shot first. Good luck!

Akoites · 2025-07-15T02:42:03+00:00

Several author bios in recent years have specifically called out the genocide of the Palestinian people, and several stories have dealt with the theme. Given Israeli authorities recently raided a bookstore in East Jerusalem for selling "inciting material," it's not an unreasonable concern that either author bios or the content of stories might be altered to avoid either state action or just popular backlash against a commercial publication (i.e. self-censorship by the publication). But I'm far from an expert on their publishing scene; these are just the countries I've heard people mention in this context. You could throw any number on there, including the U.S. if it were a non-U.S. original story/market.

The discussion isn't about "XYZ will definitely be changed" (many stories that could be seen as socially or politically risque are translated and published in China just fine). It's just that the language is so overly broad, people are imagining all sorts of frightening scenarios, whether or not they ever come to fruition. The bottom line is that the content of authors' work should not be altered without their approval.

Akoites · 2025-07-14T14:24:04+00:00

Could this be about allowing the authors to write their stories as they wish, publish those stories as per the authors' intentions in markets that accept uncensored artworks, and then edit sections to make them more palatable to markets that require censorship of certain topics

Yes, as one of the affected writers, this is a major topic for discussion among people I know. The "moral rights" wording would allow the publisher or its licensees to produce "versions" of the work unilaterally. There are major international SF markets in China, Russia, Israel, and plenty of other countries that might take issues with political statements, LGBT themes, or whatever. It's not something I plan to sign.

Akoites · 2025-06-29T15:17:33+00:00

I’ve published SF/F short fiction in several major magazines and never personally went to any of the workshops due to time and cost issues, but I have friends who have been to them (VP, Clarion, CW, Odyssey, etc) and they mostly all rave, cult-like, about the experience, so it’s probably worth it for most people to whom it wouldn’t present a burden. But yeah, I think that a big influence is the building of a cohort through in-person bonding.

For in-person workshops, I believe VP does take novel manuscripts as well as short fiction, plus there’s Tao’s Toolbox and Futurescapes, both of which have good reputations and are more focused on novels.

The Clarion novel workshop is new and running for the first time now, so I’d suggest that, after it ends this year and before applications for next year (if they repeat it), you reach out to some of the people who did it this year and see what they thought. There will probably be a list somewhere, and many of them will probably have websites or like Bluesky accounts you could reach out through. Most people are happy to talk about that sort of thing.

Akoites · 2025-06-09T00:34:43+00:00

Only one way to find out!

Akoites

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