The Best of Every Day Fiction Two

My copy of this anthology of stories from EDF’s second year of operation dropped through my letter box the other day, and what a fine, professionally-produced piece of work it is. I’ve got two stories in there: my modern-day fable “Mirror, Mirror” and my Schroedinger’s cat story “Opening the Box”. I could list some of the other authors in there that I admire, but that would – frankly – take quite a long time. I am dead chuffed to be in the same table of contents as them.

The introductory pieces by the editors are also well worth a read – particularly the one by Jordan Lapp on finding a business model for fiction on the web. Here’s a slightly scary quote:

It seems that, excluding patronage, no one has yet found a profitable business model for short fiction on the web.

And that comes from an editor at the most-read flash fiction magazine on the web. Interestingly, though, he does say that one of their goals for 2010 is to raise their pay rates to semi-pro level instead of token, by the expedient of running a paid-for competition. Good luck to him there, although to be honest I’m personally not that concerned about pay rates at EDF (but don’t tell him I said so). The fact that EDF is such a well-read magazine makes it a terrific – and fairly competitive – place to get published in if you want to raise your profile a bit. Every time I’ve got a piece there, the hit count for this place goes up quite significantly, and for me that’s what I’m after right now. The big question, of course, is how to turn that exposure into £££.