Shred of Evidence

Those of you who write mystery and crime stories may have noticed changes to Shred’s guidelines. Hopefully the nuts and bolts are pretty self-explanatory, but I’d like to take this opportunity to sketch out the thinking behind the changes.

I consider original short stories to be the meat of the site. That’s what the webzine published for the first three years of its existence, and I’m proud of each issue. By publishing a story every other week, over the course of the year Shred will release about the same number of stories as on the quarterly schedule. But two weeks is a long gap, so I would like to run something during those off weeks.

Reprints are an obvious choice. While I like the cachet of being the first one to publish stories, the most enjoyable part of being an editor is publishing good stories (even if somebody else got there first). If you have a story that has appeared in print but not on the web, I’m interested. For maximum punch and/or variety I’m most interested in stories that a) appeared in high profile markets or b) appeared in off-beat or foreign markets or c) won awards or d) have been out of print for a long time—but none of these factors is as important as how much I enjoy the story.

When writing Shred’s new guidelines, I found myself facing something of a conundrum regarding very short fiction. On the one hand, if the webzine only publishes one story every other week, I want it to be more substantial than a couple hundred words. On the other hand, I’ve read some killer flash stories. There are a lot of markets for flash fiction. Especially right now, when it seems like every other week somebody starts up a new site. And frankly, when it comes to flash fiction I think it’s probably better to have a webzine that runs a lot of flash stories rather than one that only publishes them occasionally. But I’m leaving the door open for publishing some number of flash stories, even if Shred doesn’t specialize in them.

Serials and frequently updated websites go together like chocolate and peanut butter. From the perspective of editor, it can’t hurt to run a story across multiple issues, hooking readers in from the beginning and drawing them back to the site. From the perspective of an author…I am quite aware that Shred’s payments can accurately be described as “token.” The longer the story, the more “token” begins to look like “insulting.” But it can also be tough to place stories of a certain length, and some authors may consider the exposure of sufficient value to offset the low payment.

If you’re scratching your head because your current WIP just ballooned into a 35,000 word novella that refuses to be padded to marketable novel length, shoot me an e-mail. If you have an oddball cross-genre piece that isn’t a good fit for other publishers, shoot me an e-mail. If you have a novel you don’t plan to send off to agents or publishing houses, but still want to see the light of day, shoot me an e-mail. If you’ve been thinking about reprinting a novel that came out of a small publishing house and won the adoration of tens of fans, shoot me an e-mail.

If you want to get exposure for a novel in the hopes that somebody at St. Martin’s will give you a call after reading it online, please don’t shoot me an e-mail. We’ll both be much happier.