As has been reported in The Times April 5 and online at Maud Newton and elsewhere previously, The Atlantic Monthly is cutting fiction in regular issues in favor of a newsstand-only annual issue. Yes, we'll still get fiction from The Atlantic, but I'm sad anyway; I especially enjoy reading short fiction in magazines because someone has done my work for me—sifted through hundreds or maybe thousands of stories to select one that will enthrall me and perhaps introduce me to a new writer whose work I will now want to explore. It's a little gift each month, and I'll miss it.

The particulars of the short story's decline, at least in terms of its profile in commercial magazines, are well documented in a May 2004 article by Kelly Jane Torrence for Doublethink . The conventional wisdom is that magazines are bowing to the realities of necessary advertising revenues, which put pressure on sections that don't perform based on reader feedback. As a result, the inclusion of fiction in commercial magazines has become an exception to standard procedure. The number of available outlets for short fiction has been steadily shrinking, from The Saturday Evening Post to Redbook to Cosmopolitan, which still publishes excerpts occasionally, to Mademoiselle, which ceased publication in 2001. More recently, Seventeen dropped regular stories in 2003, and Jane discontinued fiction during its redesign in 2004, though both run an annual fiction contest.

But at least one high-profile commercial magazine, Glamour, has recently added fiction to its mix, though not in every issue. And The Atlantic is changing formats while The New Yorker claims no plans to change. Given that, I'm interested in how magazines are assessing the commercial value of fiction in terms of how, and how often to include it. Beyond my concern as an enthusiastic reader, I'm also a short story writer, and would like to publish in commercial outlets. And everyone I know professes to love short stories—both friends who go to book festivals and writing conferences and those who prefer going to the movies. But the love isn't being felt among book publishers, where great pains have been taken to call story collections anything but that—"novel in stories," or simply "fiction"—in an apparent attempt to seduce readers into buying them. Nor does it seem to be influencing very many decision-makers in magazine publishing.

So perhaps there's a disconnect between the publishing industry's position on short stories—that they don't sell—and what readers enjoy, and what they might buy if the shrinking market for commercial magazine fiction didn't deny readers that magic introduction, the chance to fall in love with short stories, and to seek out other works by those writers.

But back to The Atlantic Monthly and its move to cut fiction in regular issues in favor of an annual newsstand-only issue. A letter from the editors in the May issue explains the rationale.

Discontinuing fiction in regular issues doesn't appear to be financially motivated—ad revenue has increased 60% in the past three years. But recent surveys show that while a steady 25% of the audience always reads Atlantic fiction, a far larger audience exists for everything else in the magazine. "Numbers shouldn't dictate your plans, but they can be helpful when you're trying to make tough choices," says executive editor Cullen Murphy. "In this instance they suggest that if you wanted to identify one portion of our current contents that you might consider publishing in some innovative way, still under Atlantic auspices, fiction would be a good portion to think about."

Murphy also emphasized that the magazine's continued commitment to fiction. "It's not a perfect solution but it keeps us in the fiction game," he says. "We'll still publish as much fiction and spend as much on fiction as we always did, so it's not a business question; it's a question of real estate in the regular monthly issue."

Subscribers will be able to access the new fiction issue online, the first of which will be available in August. "We hope the annual fiction issue will have some merit of its own, and perhaps even strengthen our long-term attachment to the importance of including fiction in The Atlantic," says Curtis.

This still feels like a demotion to me. As a reader, I want great fiction to come to me issue by issue. The magazine's identity lives in what I find in its print pages and everything else is an extension—a "what we didn't have room for." But The Atlantic has published collections of its fiction selections before, presumably with some success, so I have no doubt that its annual newsstand issue will also do well.

If The New Yorker's two fiction issues per year are any indication, The Atlantic has made a wise business move. Fiction issues are usually top newsstand sellers for the magazine, and last year's Christmas Fiction Issue broke magazine records on the newsstand. Still, fiction editor Deborah Treisman says, "It's always a sad thing to see another magazine eliminate short stories." She thinks part of the problem is the publishing industry's insistence that writers produce novels, which it finds easier to market and sell. "When the potential magazine market for stories is reduced too, so is the writer's desire to write them," she says. "The more outlets there are for short stories, the more short stories get written." And while the proliferation of creative writing programs and literary magazines would suggest that in reality more short stories are being written, Treisman says, "The Atlantic may be struggling with the fact that fewer great short stories are being written now than a few decades ago."

But The New Yorker plans to continue its short fiction traditions. "I know, simply by word of mouth, that large numbers of people buy the magazine specifically for the short stories," she says. "I also know—through both positive and negative responses—how much readers have invested in the quality of the fiction we publish. So there are no plans here to cut or reduce our fiction output."

The management at Jane has experienced a decidedly different response to its short fiction, which it discontinued in regular issues after its redesign in September 2004. "Including fiction was a big deal to us, and Jane didn't budge on it," says executive editor Bill Van Parys, referring to Jane founder and editor-in-chief Jane Pratt. But when the magazine surveyed readers in preparation for its redesign, "We just weren't getting responses to stories," he says. "We were getting great, biting fiction, but it wasn't grabbing them." Parys also cited a squeeze on pages in favor of sections readers did favor, as well as aesthetic concerns in regard to including fiction. (Art directors often had to resort to illustration, which didn't fit with the magazine's desired look.) Jane still runs an annual fiction contest and this year's winning story will appear in the August issue. "I think it's smart what The Atlantic is doing," says Parys. "It's a generally sad state for fiction in magazines."

But at Glamour, where the audience of 12 million readers skews slightly older, editors decided in 2004 to add fiction to the mix again after a long hiatus. The last time fiction appeared in the magazine was in 1992.

"Though we don't expect fiction to help sell the magazine—we won't put it on the cover, for example—we do see commercial value in including because it adds to a well-rounded feel," says fiction and books editor Daryl Chen. "This is a magazine where you can look at pretty clothes, read reporting about women's health issues and occasionally enjoy great fiction. When a woman opens the magazine and sees this rich mix, she'll want to buy it again."

Chen says the editors are responding to anecdotal but strong evidence that fiction can do well in Glamour—the renaissance in young women's fiction, the fact that women are buying a lot of books, and the popularity of book clubs among Glamour readers. Two stories ran last year, and the magazine is planning for two or three this year, with a maximum of three or four stories per year. "We want it to be a treat, and having it monthly takes away from that surprise."

I'm happy to see that the trend for commercial short fiction isn't all toward killed pages. But for those of us who would like to publish in this market, the going is only getting tougher. Emily Russo, an agent handling short fiction for Sobel Weber says that criteria such as time, setting and point of view are becoming more important to magazines. For example, she explains, "Many of the rejection letters I receive from the glossies tell us it's difficult for them to publish anything 'historical in nature.'"

Chen agreed and said that Glamour was primarily looking for stories with female narrators whose situations reflect the concerns of readers. The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly are among the few who don't seem to have any criteria beyond looking for the strongest stories, and The New Yorker has published debut fiction issues to highlight new voices. But the competition is intense.

This increased emphasis on specific criteria tailored to readership combined with a tighter market might limit many great writers to literary magazines. And though many top literary magazines pay well and are an extremely desirable outlet for any serious writer, the work simply isn't going to get the exposure that The New Yorker or The Atlantic can offer.

Russo says—and I agree—that you can't blame the magazines for wanting to cater to their audiences. But the question remains (for me at least): In a culture where we work so much and have so little free time, why don't most readers seem to want the brief but intense escape that a short story delivers, no matter what its subject matter, as long as it's a great story? Do readers really want all news (or all how-to, or all "quiz yourself") all the time? If we can tell people how long their skirts should be, why can't we can't sell them on the short story?

One possible explanation is that short stories are a tough sell because they're short. Just as some writers make the mistake of thinking they're easier to write, perhaps some readers think they're not long enough to offer a return on what they demand: more concentration and less guaranteed payoff (such as the acquisition of new information) than nonfiction in all of its forms. Readers have to give themselves over to stories, if only for an hour or so at a time, in ways that I think even the deepest narrative reporting doesn't require. But writers have to look at what they're producing, too, and ask ourselves if we're really breaking new ground with stories that editors, and readers, will find be unable to ignore.

Quinn Dalton is the author of a novel, High Strung, and a collection of short stories, Bulletproof Girl, published this month by Washington Square Press. She remains hopeful that people still want to read stories.