General - Entertainment

The last five years has seen an explosion in the number of literary journals on the Internet, and a corresponding explosion in the number of writers they cater for. And therein lies the problem. The journals, even those that go on to become established, have a hard job finding readers that are pure readers. The stories and poems they publish are read mostly by other writers.

This has several implications for the writers market. The main effect is that the market for short stories has become polarized. At one end of the spectrum there are a mulititude of online literary journals which publish stories by writers who, for the most part, are of an intermediate level. At the other end of the spectrum lie the literary establishment’s print journals, which are subsidized and often affiliated with an American university.

The literary ezines have to publish authors who are still cutting their teeth as this is demographic that makes up the large part of their readership. It’s a purely commercial consideration. It means that the stories they publish tend to be safe and non-challenging. Once writers have begun to get stories into ezines on a regular basis, they tend to dig deeper and stretch themselves. In short, they get better. Suddenly, they find their best work is getting rejected - it no longer fits into the ezine’s agenda. And the MTA-literary establishment’s print journals are a closed shop unless you are well-connected, or have made a quantum leap in the style and nature of your writing.

Fortunately, there is a new trend that seems to drawing the two poles together, creating a strong middle ground and raising the standard of fiction writing across the board. To find out what it is, view the latest article on writing tips and advice at Scribble Resource, and feel free to leave a comment.