Are short stories profitable?

A tough thought experiment

Let’s play a game.

Consider Bob. Bob is a good writer. So good, in fact, that every story he writes would be published by a literary magazine.

Now, Bob also wants to maximize his income, so he targets a prestigious magazine: Clarkesworld, that currently pays 12 cents a word and accepts submissions between 2k and 22k words.

Let’s assume (optimistically) that Bob can write, revision, get feedback and edit a 12k short story in two weeks. Clarkesworld’s submission queue is quite fast:

Pulled from the Submission Grinder

But this is Bob, and Bob’s stories are good! Let’s assume around ten days for the story to go through all levels of Clarkesworld’s reading process. On the eleventh day, Bob receives an acceptance:

12k words x 12 cents per word = a prospect of 1440 dollars.

Not bad at all, Bob. It’s day 25 and Bob decides to take a short break in the following five days. After that, rinse and repeat.

Except that… wait, according to Forbes, the average rent in the US is $1,372. Assuming Bob isn’t living in Hawaii, he got just enough money to pay rent. However Bob just might have other expenses. Think of habits like needing to eat, pay for internet, bills, coffee, spouses, the occasional vanity Starbucks visit.

We need to tighten the process. Bob starts injecting purple prose and padding into his stories, reaching 18k. Still, Bob is able to reliably push out amazing fiction and the Clarkesworld staff, aware of this, reliably buys it.

We shorten the whole process to 10 days writing, 5 days in the reviewing queue, maybe adding an extra padding of five days to actually receive the money.

18k words x 12 cents per word = 2160 dollars.

And just in 15 days! Now Bob can eat, and dedicate the rest of the month to ace some writing contests and hit some other high-paying markets.

Except that… wait.

Pulled from the Submission Grinder.

According to the Submission Grinder only 1,81% of submissions are accepted on Clarkesworld. This is not worrying - Bob is an ace of his craft - but those acceptances come in after an average 44 days. Even if we take an optimistic lower end (25 days), this breaks Bob’s submission schedule - 10 days to write, and 25 to get paid.

‘The only way to solve it is to work on multiple stories,’ Bob says. Another venue like the Dreadlands pays 10 cents a word up to 5000 words, with an higher acceptance rate and a faster average response time:

Pulled from the Submission Grinder.

Since Bob is amazing, he can turn out a 5k short in 5 days, adding a 500$ dollar payout.

To recap:

• 1-5 each month: writing for the Dreadlands.

• 5-15 each month: writing for Clarkesworld.

• 27th each month: receive 500$ from the Dreadlands.

• 15th each month: receive 2160$ from Clarkesworld.

Rinse… rinse and…

We hit a problem. Most people ain’t Bob - meaning that they cannot hope to get 100% acceptance rate. And you probably noticed that I’ve been quite optimistic all around, choosing the best estimate whenever it was possible.

If Bob only gets accepted half of the time (a still incredibly good 50% rate) he needs to start submitting to multiple venues (which most venues ask not to do) and spend more of his time shifting through emails. And of course, all of this scenario was calibrated on Clarkesworld’s “cream of the crop” rates.

At 8 cents a word, Bob’s long 18k story is worth 1.440$, at 1 cent, it is barely worth 180$.

If Bob cannot make it, how could you?

Sure, there are other reasons to submit to litmags, aside from cold hard cash:

• Finding an audience¹

• Bragging rights

• Reputation & networking

We’ll examine those another day - but I have a strong inkling that only the latter really matters. Getting published on a high-paying magazine, while far from being a guarantee of success, puts you within reach of publishers, agents, editors, and other such VIPs. Basically, it’s a business card.

Maybe the lesson here is that assigning (random) economic value to art was always a broken game. The market for short stories is particularly susceptible. Don’t get me wrong - I firmly believe authors should be compensated for their work². But it’s better to have reasonable expectations before going on a submission spree.

Most writers I know (and I count myself in) did partake in challenges like “collecting 100 rejections”. I’m starting to believe it’s not even worth the hassle.

Again, if not even the highest paying markets can give a significant contribution to your expenses, is it worth to keep engaging in this system?

Was this remotely useful? Then

1. Do people even read litmags? This is kind of a controversial point. I’ll leave here some discussions on the topic. [substack] [reddit] [reddit]

2. For the love of all that is good, don’t submit your work to free venues that will slap their name on your story and publish it on barely readable HTML.