Faith In Publishing

I probably don’t need to tell you about the dismal state of publishing these days, so I won’t.  What I do want to tell you about is where I see hope.  Mainly that is the in electronic publishing.  First, let me tell you about what brings this up.

I recently submitted a couple of pieces of flash fiction to a new publication called Flash Scribe.  Although they do not offer vast sums of money as I would prefer, I really like flash (my favorite piece that I have written is Bob: Employee of the Future) as a format and figured, ‘what the heck?’  So a couple of days go by.  Then I get an e-mail saying that they couldn’t open one of the files that I sent them.  Two things.  One is that it only took them two days to reply.  I realize that flash is, by definition, very short, but they still have to be on the ball to have that sort of response time.  The second is that they did not automatically reject it, which would have most certainly been much easier.

This is the sort of behavior that I simply would not expect from traditional media.  Why?  Because they are traditional, and therefore, by definition, established.  To them, innovation is not an opportunity, but a threat.  It is innovation that will save the industry, but for innovation to occur, people must take risks (especially on unknown writers like myself :).  In short, I want to say that innovation is a necessary condition for hope, as it is rarely the past that saves the present from the future (quite the opposite, but that is a different debate).  In addition, I want to wish the best of luck to the various people and groups that are making a go of doing things differently.

Disclaimer – I have yet to get word on my submissions, and I am not writing this as an attempt to flatter my way into anyone’s good graces, I just thought it needed to be said.