The Difficult Future of the Short Story

As the magazine industry is pummeled by layoffs, the short story has become an early casualty in this economic disaster for print publications.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was David Daley, the editor and founder of the short story website, Five Chapters. Daley explained how he built his website from scratch in 2006, serializing a short story every week in five easy-reading pieces–his site now earns thousands of page views a week. In addition, Daley gave a candid look at how online literary journals have affected the short story market.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “I’m not paying these writers anything, and we all know what’s happened to the short story as a form in magazines. There used to be the Atlantic had one every week, but now they only do it once a year. There used to be more fiction in GQ and Esquire. Now all of those places don’t run fiction. All the places where authors might have gotten a few dollars a word for their stories have gone away. They are left with things like Five Chapters–which, in a way, is good for me–but I’m not always sure it’s good for the overall reading culture.”

Editor’s note: Esquire still maintains a fiction page here.

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