And Why That’s Good for the Reading Community

Pundits in the literary world have been bemoaning the decline of literary magazines for years. These complaints have only gotten louder since the pandemic, which has seen an even more visceral contraction of funding and infrastructure for these long-held vessels of literary import, especially in light of a world full of readers who are migrating toward digital formats.

Literary journals seem to be fragile entities these days, lacking in both financial support and staffing as educational budgets devoted to the arts dwindle. And their supposedly lower-brow cousins, popular genre fiction magazines like Asimov and The Dark, haven’t necessarily been faring much better, with many suffering lack of support, whether that means diminished advertising or subscription revenues. In either case, the magazine market for short fiction writers is dramatically shrinking.

Literary publications of decades and even centuries past were patronized by the general public as opposed to just academic or high-brow readerships, and were one of the few means of escapist entertainment in existence before the advent of radio, TV, and films. Stories by the likes of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy in fact started off as serialized stories in popular magazine formats, launching the cliffhanger trope in order to entice the reader into buying the next issue. But as literary and genre-based magazines continue to vanish into the digital abyss, another format has been rising to fill the void and provide homes for short-form, printed fiction: The themed anthology.

Anthologies seem to be making a comeback at small presses. Anthology submission “calls” spike in expectation of holidays like Halloween (horror and thriller-based tales) or Christmas (inspirational stories). I’ve seen sub-genres calling for everything from a revival of noir crime stories, like Devil’s Party Press’ Hard Boiled and Loaded with Sin, to stories based on song lyrics, to gory retellings starring public domain characters (The Horror Writers of America’s upcoming members-only Scaring & Daring middle-grade anthology). Certain independent presses are making anthologies a repeat venture, like 18thWall Productions or Smart Rhino Publications.

Anthologies seem to have a more viable business model than fiction-based magazines, since each can be done as a one-off project, as opposed to the continued overhead associated with a long-term magazine. Here are a few ways anthologies have advantages over the traditional magazine format:

They can be crowdfunded.

The trend toward financing entertainment projects like films has begun trickling down to more grounded projects like themed anthologies — which, although burdened with initial printing costs, still typically have far lower budgetary requirements than cinematic investments.

Platforms like Kickstarter and GoFundMe are being used more frequently to launch themed literary projects. Ventures funded by individual public donations are not reliant on public funding for their survival — so they don’t have to worry about their grants being cut.

They’re often spearheaded by established writers or organizations.

Although anthologies are cropping up as a mainstay for independent publishers, major publishing houseshave also backed anthology projects. Strategies for such projects include hiring a high-profilewriter in the genre in question as an editor, which not only lends cachet to the finished product but often makes it easier to recruit other high-caliber, name-brand authors to contribute to the piece.

Such projects typically also leave slots for up-and-coming storytellers, recruited through more broad submission calls, providing the opportunity for lesser-known authors to be associated with established professionals in their genre. For example, the relaunched Weird Tales magazine recently published the 100 Years of Weird anthology, featuring classic pieces previously featured in the magazine, from “the giants of speculative fiction” such as R. L. Stine, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, and Isaac Asimov, mixed with some more contemporaries in the genre.

They are edited by industry professionals as opposed to solely by students and university staff.

Although the prestige of appearing in a literary magazine like The Paris Review will hardly be replaced, reading for the pleasure and adventure of it all (as opposed to for more high-brow purposes) has its value. It’s also often more marketable — and at least somewhat more lucrative. Let’s face it — more people go out of their way to purchase and read genre fiction.

Anthologies tend to take a less academic and more entertaining, pop-culture approach to collections, drawing on a high-quality talent pool that reaches far beyond the finite world of literary fiction. A more mainstream approach to literature also tends to promote a broader range of thought, as opposed to the similitude that tends to pervade many academic environments of late.

Academia also leans toward avoiding a host of topics that this echelon has deemed triggering, which veers toward the suppression of concepts that still need to be discussed and aired within our society. Or at least, within the safe outlet of our entertainment.

They can be one-and-done or develop into a self-sustaining entity for independent publishers.

Depending on the business model, anthologies can be self-sustaining projects. These projects often require submission fees from authors in order to cover basic costs for professional cover designs and basic printing fees.

Yet as platforms like Amazon and IngramSpark evolve, the world of print-on-demand book production has shifted the upfront costs away from independent publishers and authors. Posting a book for sale on either of those platforms is free for independent authors, and author costs for print copies are minimal.

Anthologies fill the void.

So, although the slow deterioration of literary and fiction-bearing publications is a sad state of affairs, it’s true that nature abhors a vacuum — and market voids tend to be filled one way or the other. The emergence of cleverly themed anthologies could be the saving grace of the short-form fiction world, whether they appear as recurring offerings from a roster of specialty publishers, or as a one-off labor of love from an individual editor, providing near-endless reading experiences for story lovers of all genres.