Wednesday, January 2, 2013

2012 Market Review

It's been a good year market wise for short story writers.  There's been an explosion of ebook publishers who are looking for anthology shorts, novelettes, and novellas.  The new e-publishing has also helped create a new platform for online zines, allowing them to sell Kindle copies to help pay expenses and writers.  Along with that, there's the Kickstarter site that's helped launched more than one new zine and allowed the publishers to pay professional rates to their authors.

While there were more new sci-fi and fantasy markets, the mystery/crime markets weren't far behind.  The big surprise was finding quite a few new ones that paid, not big time professional rates, but at least enough to acknowledge the writer's efforts.

And now the year end roundup.

RIP:
The Back Alley
SnipLits
Bust Down the Doors and Eat all the Chickens
Dirty Noir
Withersin
Pine Tree Mysteries
Nefarious Muse
Brain Harvest
10Flash
Jake's Monthly
The Novella Project
Thieves Jargon closed but reopened on a new site as Nickel Steak
And on the iffy list is Comets and Criminals

On the up side it was with great joy that we saw ThugLit reopen as a Kindle zine.  And Out of the Gutter reopened as an online zine publishing both flash fiction and longer short stories and putting out issue #8.
New zines that opened:

The Big Click
Blood and Tacos
ActionHorror
Gore Stories
Nightmare Magazine
Crime City Central (podcast)
Grim Corps
Sanitarium
Inner Sins
Fireside
Misfit Inc
LampLight
Slit Your Wrists
White Cat Publications opened up six new zines with two especially aimed at crime fiction:
Night Fall and Dark Intent

Announced but not published yet are:
Plan B (March start up)
The Case Files
Malfeasance Occasional from Criminal Element got nailed by Hurricane Sandy so their start up was delayed.
The Big Adios (Western - February start up)
And on the iffy list is Fires on the Plains

One of the most exciting new developments is the number of ebook novella markets that have opened up by some of the established presses:
Cemetery Dance
Comet Press
Pro Se Press
and Pulp Line from Anachron Press

You'll find links to most all of these markets over there on the right.  Pencils ready?  Get writing and submitting.


No comments: