Short Fiction Salvation

Here’s an excellent idea from the most excellent Nancy Fulda. To recap: how cool would it be if you could assemble the short fiction you wanted to read in book form, pay for it, and have it printed-on-demand for your reading pleasure. How could would that be? Very cool indeed.

Now, naturally it sort of shortcuts the whole magazine/anthology thing, and would probably focus directly on the authors, but for all that I’m thinking there’s a sort of a new market niche for folks who want to be their own anthologist, or be one for others. As Nancy says, it would make a great way to pass on recommendations, and tailor gifts to the individual reader. In other words: a print mix-tape.

The potential problems are legion, of course, and those afraid of electronic distribution of any kind, even if it winds up in a book, won’t really be comfortable with this kind of thing. An alternate question would be how you find stories to populate your personal anthologies with in the first place, which sort of brings me back to the concern I keep trying to raise: no one recommends short fiction. If nothing else, a POD service such as that would have to be combined with some kind of recommendation community, or partnering with on-line magazines and other fiction sources.

Cool idea, though.