‘Guitar Bands Are On The Way Out’ British Agents And Short Story Collections

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#Authorday, agents, Are You Sitting Comfortably?, Cloud Atlas, cookbooks, crime, Elizabeth Strout, George Saunders, Gone Girl, Granta, Jennifer Egan, Liar's League, Neil Gaiman, Peters Fraser & Dunlop, publishers, Rattle Tales, Raymond Carver, short stories, short story collections, Small WOnder, spoken word, The BBC National Short Story Award, The Beatles, The Bridport Prize, The Manchester Fiction Prize, The Word Factory

On Friday, checking in with Twitter, I came across #Authorday, which invited tweeters to ask agents from Peters Fraser & Dunlop questions about their work. I am presently sending out a themed collection of short stories so I thought I’d ask the obvious.

#Authorday how come agents hate short story collections when the best do actually sell better than bad genre?

The answer?

Because finding a publisher to buy them is like putting a magnet to a haystack for that elusive needle.

I replied that as it was once again the year of the short story it should be getting easier for agents to get publishers interested and asked if it wasn’t a matter of pre-conception all round? Another short story writer commented that he too was disappointed by the lack of mainstream push for the genre. Neither of us got any further response.

This makes me so mad. What is it with British agents and publishers? They seem to be the only ones who hate short stories. It is not the case in the US or India. I have been writing them for a decade now. My ‘novel’ was actually a series of inter-linked short stories,  people other than my family bought it and read it (not many granted, but I didn’t even know some of them). In all that time I have only spoken to one person about books who told me they didn’t like short stories. I have co-directed a short story night (Rattle Tales) for the last five years. We have produced 12 shows and most of them were completely sold out, sometimes we had to turn people away at the door. How can this be the case if people don’t like short stories? There are hundreds of organisations putting on similar events up and down the country; Liar’s League, The Word Factory, Are You Sitting Comfortably? to name but a few, plus countless festivals with short fiction strands. There is even a whole festival dedicated to the genre, Small Wonder, at Charleston farmhouse no less, always packed out even though it is in the wilds. How do they continue to run if no-one buys any tickets? How come lit mags like Granta survive if no-one buys short stories? Type the words short fiction journals into Google and look at the huge list that comes up! Are they all running on air and goodwill?

How come The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Spectator and many other non-literary titles commission short stories? If no-body likes them, why would they bother? Why is there a BBC Short Story Prize (aired on Radio Four),  a Costa one, a Sunday Times one, the Bridport? How can The Manchester Fiction Prize offer thousands in prize-money if no-one is interested in anything other than crime and ghost-written celebrity cookbooks?

If no-body likes short stories how come Jennifer Egan and Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer with them? Those two books were not novels in the traditional sense, they were short story collections disguised to suit the pre-conceptions of agents and publishers. If no-one buys them why were collections by George Saunders and Neil Gaiman number one on the New York Times Bestsellers list? Remember Cloud Atlas? Booker nominated, glossy Hollywood movie, Richard & Judy Book of the year. It’s a collection of short stories! Or ‘six nested stories’ if you want to quote the publisher blurb.

Without short stories, there would be no Hemmingway, Chekov, Fitzgerald, Steven King, Laurie Moore, William Trevor, no Flannery O’Conor, no Raymond Carver. Thank god for indie publishers. However, the indies are overrun with submissions (strange that, as no-one is interested in short fiction) many close their windows after just a few weeks, some are only accepting recommendations from authors on their lists and agents. Back to agents. Remember the story about Decca telling The Beatles that they wouldn’t be signing them because ‘guitar bands are on the way out’? Remind you of something?

How many short story collections did you buy in the last year? they ask smugly. About fifteen actually. I know I’m not average in this but I know I’m not the only one. It’s a nonsense question anyway, did Malcolm Gladwell’s agent say how many books of essays on society and genius did you buy last year?

Brighton Waterstones has a stand dedicated to short fiction publications (established by short story writer Sara Crowley when she worked there). The shelves on it are not always full, sometimes there are spaces where books have been bought! They stocked the Rattle Tales Anthology this year and do you know what? They sold some!

Crime and cook books done well are wonderful but no-body needs another version of Gone Girl because it’s easy to sell. Shake it up a bit, dust off the guitars, you might be surprised.

Field of Dreams – Setting Up A Short Story Competition

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Bath Short Story Prize, Bethan Roberts, Brighton, competitions, Laura H. Lockington, Radio Reverb, Rattle Tales, short stories, spoken word, storytelling, The Bridport Prize, The Brighton Fringe, The Brighton Prize, The Bristol Prize, Threshold's Short Story Forum

If you have visited this blog before you will know that I am one of the founders of the spoken word group Rattle Tales. We are a group of writers who met on the MA at Sussex University and, when we left, continued to meet to workshop our writing. After a while, we decided to set up a regular literature night to showcase our own stories and give emerging authors the chance to read their work to an audience. Our nights have proved extremely popular. We ask the audience to get involved by discussing the stories they have just heard with the author.

The core Rattle Tales members are all practising authors. Just like you, we enter writing contests and send our work to journals and spoken word events. We like to read our writing aloud. Since we put on our first show we’ve run over ten events (including one at Green Man, one at Small Wonder, one in France and several at Brighton Fringe) and published two anthologies. The stories published are the ones read at our nights and for many authors it is the first time their work has been published.  We are a true co-operative; the eleven Rattle Tales members have equal say in everything. We share the work, we argue over the decisions and any modest profit we make goes straight back into venue and publishing costs. Many of our readers go on to success in competitions, or have their work published in journals or performed on the radio. Reading your writing aloud to an appreciative audience instils a confidence in you that you don’t get from having it appear in print. I speak from experience here; the first public outing for my writing was in print but nothing compares to taking a deep breath and reading your work to an audience who listen to your words, applaud and even congratulate you in person afterwards. It makes you feel invincible.  It makes you want to approach agents and editors and shout ‘publish me!’ from the rooftops. Rattle Tales wants to give every writer the chance to feel this way.

At one of our meetings we discussed the possibility of setting up a short story prize. We were surprised that there wasn’t a regular prize in Brighton, there are prizes in so many other cities and Brighton is stuffed full of writers. We were also aware that there isn’t a prize which is tailored to the spoken word. Rattle Tales stories have to work being read aloud to an audience and we wanted to celebrate this particular under-appreciated writing skill.

When we booked the theatre for our first spoken word event there was a feeling that it didn’t matter if no one turned up because between us it was only the cost of a good night out. It was a similar feeling with The Brighton Prize. But on a much bigger scale. We all sat down together and discussed how much we could afford to stump up for the prize-money if only a couple of people entered. We agreed to keep the entry cost down, both to ensure more entries and to make the prize more accessible. Between us we set the prize fund at £500, the maximum we could afford with only a few submissions.

We are lucky, there are a lot of us and we have people with different skills. Between us we can cover the writing of the contracts, the marketing, the admin, the website, the posters, editing, spreadsheets the list is endless. It takes up a lot of time but we all felt it was something we should do, something that you writers out there would want us to do.

We decided that the optimum time for the prize-giving would be at our sell-out Brighton Fringe show. This show is a real event with a great atmosphere and reading at it is a fantastic experience for any writer. Aiming for May though did mean we were a bit rushed, with a short 2 month submission period.

We needed judges and we were unbelievably lucky because the first local authors we asked said yes straight away. Bethan Roberts (author of Brighton City Reads book My Policeman and the upcoming, Mother Island) and Laura H. Lockington (author of The Cornish Affair, Stargazy Pie and literary journalist) were on board and suddenly we had a real competition.

The Brighton Prize has been a learning curve, we bit our nails waiting for the first entries to come in, we tweeted and posted, sent out newsletters and contacted the press, begged listings in writing magazines and airtime on local radio. And just like the baseball fans in the movie Field of Dreams the entries began to come in, a trickle at first, then a torrent and by midnight on the last day we had enough entry fees to cover the cost of the prize fund, our Fringe show and an anthology. That’s it though, we’re not going to get rich, and we’re not in it for the money. Your entry fee goes into giving more writers the opportunity to perform at and be published by Rattle Tales.

Right now we are reading like crazy to make the deadlines set for the long-list and the short-list and then to narrow those down to the ten stories we’ll send to Laura and Bethan. So far we have been struck by the quality and originality of the stories submitted. It’s going to be very hard to choose which ones make it through.

We have also struck by the generosity of the other short story competitions out there, particularly the B’s, Bath, Bristol and Bridport. We are the new kid on the block but everyone has been generous in their retweets and encouragement. The people who run these competitions really care about writers and it shows.

Thanks also to Threshold’s Short Story Forum, The Brighton Fringe and Radio Reverb but most of all thanks to anyone who entered our little competition. Good luck!

For more information about the Brighton Prize and Rattle Tales click here.