I have no witty title for this question about a short story

The writers' centre in my city last year shortlisted and highly commended a short story I submitted. Delighted, I sent it to a magazine hoping for publication.

They sent back a polite rejection explaining why they didn't want it. I was flattered they sent back such a lengthy rejection, but, still, I wasn't so happy at the time.

Now, the writers' centre has emailed asking for permission to print the story in their monthly publication that is in essence a newsletter.

Should I do it? Would this even be considered a publishing credit? Would it make it impossible to sell the story anywhere else?

I take rejection hard and wasn't really rushing to try to place the story elsewhere anyway. Should I take this for the compliment it is and just say yes, or should I try harder to place it somewhere potentially more prominent?

If this is the only short story you're ever going to write, then by all means hold out for placement in the publication you're dreaming of. If not, let them publish it - yes, it's a writing credit, and it's also a good experience to have. And it will only make the story impossible to publish elsewhere if you give them exclusive world rights - which you wouldn't do.

But I have to break it to you: short stories don't have that many publication outlets, and they have not many more readers. (I'm talking about the 'vanilla' world here - what I say doesn't apply to SF/fantasy/romance.) Short stories are, in business terms, a means to an end. They give you writing practice, they may get you some attention, perhaps a little bit of money. But they shouldn't be your sole focus, unless you want to spend your life being disappointed that book publishers tend to not be interested in them any more (with some exceptions, like Scribe and Black Inc). So see this as a chance to have an experience and get yourself out there, and kvetch about it no more.

Foreign etiquette

I've discovered that once I've had a story published in an Australian magazine I can try to sell it to overseas publishers. I know I need to specify what rights I'm selling (eg. First British serial rights), but is it necessary to mention it has been published here in Australia?

First you need to check which rights you've sold in Australia - if you gave them world rights, then you have nothing to sell. I'm presuming you've done that, so if you're submitting overseas you should mention that it's been published in Australia, because it's a good thing - someone else thought the story worthy of publication. But, given that we're a former colony partly populated by former Britons - a fact they conveniently forget, damn overlords, just because the aforementioned former Britons were criminals - don't expect anyone in the UK to actually care. I could spend two hours ranting about British publishers and their cavalier behaviour in respect of Australian rights, but I'm already en couleur and I should really calm down before trying to eat my lunch.

Who needs short stories?

My question is about 'writing experience' and how that helps you in the game of getting published.

I understand that for an unknown writer to be picked up by a publisher their work would have to be brilliant, or they would just have to send their manuscript to the right place at the right time (i.e. they're lucky). But there are thousands of submissions each year that are just 'very good' which means, although they may be publishing worthy, they may not necessarily be picked up. Some suggestions to help writers in the 'very good' range are to get short stories or articles published, win writing competitions etc.

My passion is in writing novels where I have the time and word count to develop a character and present their journey to my heart's content. I struggle to write a good short story and I don't believe this is where my talent lies. However, I would be more than happy to pursue this if it does indeed help in the long run. Therefore my question is this: in your opinion, are agents or publishers really likely to give an unknown writer more of a chance if their query letter shows they have published some short stories or won one of the many random competitions?

In short: no. At least, I don't discount writers if they haven't had short stories published or had short stories win competitions. Short stories can be a very good discipline if they appeal to you - the same way that writing poetry can be a very good discipline for writing novels if poetry is your thang - but I'm struggling to think of the last writer I took on who had written any short stories at all ... Word search ... Search fail.

If novels are what you love writing, then stick to what you love. You may never get published - statistically, most novelists won't - but I can guarantee this: you will never ever get published if you don't love the form you're writing in. If you start writing short stories because you think they'll be helpful and your heart's not really in it, it will show in your writing. If you write a screenplay because you think it'd be cool but the screenplay form is something you really struggle with, it will show in your writing.

So stick to the novels. Maybe enter them in some comps; maybe apply for the odd development program or mentorship. That stuff does look good in your bio simply because it shows that you enjoy the writing process. And don't forget to have fun.

The short and short of it

I teach writing and I have a student who is in a South-east Asian jail for life. He writes short stories and they are the most beautifully written, thought-provoking stories. He has given me permission to try to get them published. I’d really like to help him, to give him something to live for. Do you know if any publishers in Aus would be interested in something like that? I couldn’t help thinking that if some of the Bali Nine contributed to an anthology it would be more marketable and an important thing for young people to read. I must stress I’m personally not interested in making money out of this, but I feel these are important voice to be heard.

Here's the bad news: short story collections are the orphan children of Australian publishing. They have a couple of foster parents (Scribe and the University of Western Australia Press) and 'Aunties' (the Girls' Night In collections) but have largely been abandoned by the tribe. It's hard to know why - short stories are great for bus trips and the like. Many great writers of recent times cut their teeth on short stories; I fell in love with Truman Capote's writing through his short stories, which I discovered in the local library while I was researching a school essay on Plato and Son of Plato. And I just completely digressed ...

If you're looking for an Australian publisher, try submitting to one of the two I mentioned. Americans love short stories more than we do, though, so if you're serious about getting this collection published, try submitting the stories to American agents.

Here's the other news: Australians may want to read about the Bali Nine but I suspect they wouldn't want to read anything written by them. Schapelle Corby was the only Kerobokan prisoner whose own story was going to sell books, and it did, but she also had a co-writer. Schapelle was also famous enough for her publisher not to have to worry about the fact that she couldn't do publicity for the book, which is a concern with your student. This will sound quite cold and businesslike, but publishing is a business.

If what you really, really want is to get these stories out into the world - if money is irrelevant - then set up a website to publish the stories and then look into ways of getting publicity for them, starting with telling your other students.

How publishers can tie authors up in knots

Is it reasonable for an anthology to expect first publication rights when a) 'all rights remain with the author' is specified in the submission guidelines and b) they are not paying you anything? It seems from what I read that first publication rights are something you specifically sell in a contract. A short story of mine was recently withdrawn from an anthology at the last minute because it appeared in another publication (I wasn't aware of the latter until after I okayed the former). Neither of these publications asked me to sign anything. I understand the courtesy, but isn't the onus on the publisher to specify what 'previously unpublished' means?

It does sound as if you've ended up in a tangle entirely not of your own making. (And for clarity let's call the first publisher you mention - the one who ended up saying no - Publisher A, and the other is Publisher B.) It's hard to know exactly what to say without knowing the specifics of each publication, but it does seem a bit draconian of Publisher A to withdraw your story. The idea of 'first publication' rights would be for the first publisher, whoever that is, to have the commercial advantage - but unless your story's presence in Publisher B's anthology was going to mean that no one would buy Publisher A's anthology, there was no commercial reason to pull your story. Especially when, as you point out, they're not paying you and you haven't assigned any rights in a contract. And I'm presuming Publisher A didn't say 'you cannot submit your story to anyone else while you wait for our decision'. So they're being churlish. And there's not much you can do about it.

Should anyone bother with short stories?

I love to write but find most of my ideas are better suited to short stories rather than full-length novels. Is there a market for short stories? Would publishers be interested in a collection of short stories?

Short story collections just do not work well in this country and I’m not sure why – they’re perfectly suited to train journeys and the before-going-to-sleep time. They seem to work better in the US and, to a lesser extent, UK.

Some publishers do take a chance though – Scribe and the University of Western Ausralia Press, for example, and the University of Queensland Press probably wouldn’t run screaming either. And literary magazines such as Wet Ink and Etchings will publish short stories. There's also the odd aberration, such as the Girls' Night In collections, which I'd like to take as evidence that people read short story collections - but perhaps only for a cause.

Generally, though, writing only short stories will pretty much ensure that you will never have publication at a large house – and that’s presuming that that’s something you want, of course. Just because you’re not published by Random House doesn’t mean you’re not a good and valid writer! It does mean, though, that you'll have to work hard submitting your stories to literary magazines (or publishing online) and hoping that they'll be noticed enough for you to contribute to the odd anthology. You may also find that, having cut your teeth on short stories, you naturally move to longer forms. Many great novelists (Truman Capote, Samuel Beckett, amongst others) practised their craft on short stories, and continued to write them after their novels started to be published.