The Literary Writer

Hardly a day passes without word of another success story of a self-published author making terrific money on book sales. Even established writers with major publishers are beginning to self-publish. This is what a publishing revolution looks like. Here success is easily measured in book sales and royalties.

But what about literary books with limited audiences? Has the revolution touched them?

When I began writing short stories, my goal was to get published in lit mags read by the editors of Best American Short Stories, this list in the back of each edition. Some mags were beyond reach for a beginner: The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic, Paris Review. Better to focus where I had a shot. So I made a list. High on it were two lit mags with international audiences: Prism International and The Literary Review. Five years later I had placed three stories in each, great success by my own standars. I also was publishing widely elsewhere. Three stories were cited by the anthology, one of the 100 best stories in the land that year. More success. But little money. Money was never part of the goal. Literary writers taught or did journalism for money. I mostly did the latter.

What are literary writers doing today? My students seem to have goals to make money in pop genres. Even MFA candidates are writing zombie novels. I see this as very strange and a little depressing. What is happening to American literature?