With very few traditional paying markets left for short fiction, contests have become the bread and butter of beginning writers. A few magazines have even taken a hybrid approach. I recently received in the mail an advertisement for Narrative and was surprised to see that its editors charge a reading fee for each submission. In the past such behavior would certainly have been labeled a scam. Now it is not so clear. Narrative pays its authors, and each published piece becomes eligible for a $4000 annual prize. If we need any more evidence that short fiction, and perhaps fiction in general, is moving into poetry’s territory–being of interest to only a small group of readers, most of whom are also writers–then we do not have to look far to collect it.
Contests usually charge a fee for each story entered and use the funds thus raised to provide the prize to the winner and a well-known author as judge. Recent years have seen some of these judges deciding that no entry deserves the prize. Poets & Writers is running a poll on what should be done with the funds in this case.
I am reminded of a nature documentary I once saw that followed the lives of the animals trying to eke out an existence from a shrinking pool in the Kalahari. As the size of the pool shrinks, things become quite contentious.
