Why Publishers Don’t Want Story Collections

[Walter Cummins]

The short answer, of course, is that they don’t sell nearly as well as novels. But the core question is why they don’t sell. Let me suggest two possible reasons—story worlds and story characters.

A reader has to adapt to the distinct world of every new individual story, even in a collection by the same author. Let me use a travel analogy. You arrive in a city for the first time ever, and it probably takes a few days to first your way around—the shops, the restaurants, the metro stations and bus stops, the route back to your hotel. You may even have to pull out a street map or ask for directions a few times. Eventually, you know your way around and feel confident that you won’t get lost. But then you move on to the next city on your route and have to go through the same process of orientation.

The same with people. You’re invited to a party with a group you’ve never known and have to associate names and faces, who is connected to whom and how, along with the nuances of their personalities. After a while, some of those one time strangers become close friends, people you know intimately. But then another party and a whole new group to get to know.

It’s that way with short stories. Who are these people? What is the place they inhabit? What’s the issue that confronts them? Finally, you get what’s going on and feel comfortable that world. When reading a story collection you have to go through that adjustment again and again.

When reading a novel, you’re usually at home after a chapter or two, and even if introduced to new people or places along the way, they fit into a familiar reality, expanding what you already know and possibly enriching it. It’s similar to a new house being built or a new family moving into a neighborhood you know well. They integrate into the existing scene. Each new story, instead, means the upheaval of a relocation.

In short, it’s much more comfortable to read a, say, three-hundred-page novel than a three-hundred page story collection. The novelist presents questions and uncertainties that make the reader eager to learn what’s going to happen next to people you already know or think you know. The answer could come as a surprise, but that’s satisfying, like a new insight to the neighbor next door. A good novel offers the pleasure of spending hours living in and learning about a fictional world with characters you’re eager to know more fully.

A story reader seeks the satisfaction of a fulfilled happening that can be experienced in, say, a half hour. The impact may linger in recollection for quite a while, but it’s not an ongoing relationship like involvement in a novel.  Readers who buy books are more willing to pay for involvement.