Short fiction has never been a lucrative business. The 'slick' magazines that paid top-dollar for fiction were able to do so because people bought the magazines for the other content. The 'pulp' magazines typically paid very low rates for fiction.
It's depressing because short fiction has the ability to evoke strong emotions in such few words. I remember finding Flowers for Algernon much more impactful as a short story, than I did as a novel. Perhaps it was because I read the short story first.
I'm reading _Divine Invasions: A Life Of Philip K. Dick_ and just got to the point where he sold his first short story. He was paid $75 for it, at a time when the mortgage on his (old, small, but still) two-story Berkeley house was $27.50. This was 1950.
For a time, you could make a living writing short stories for genre rags. A matter of a few decades, but still. Without needing to be a household name, even.
They're still the only places that pay non-famous and non-trendy people any money for short fiction. Most literary fiction publications below the tippy-top don't pay a dime, and lit-fic fosters a culture of accepting that state of things, even shaming people for asking about pay. Can't make a living in genre short fiction and the odd hastily-written pulp novel anymore—hasn't been enough demand for decades—but getting a check feels good, at least, even if it's two figures, and you won't get that in lit-fic.
This model is coming back in a few small ways. Established writers I like Brandon Sanderson have shown that you can crowdsource funding for full length novels. They're also a large number of less established authors that produce chapters and are funded by patreons are equivalent as they go, similar to the magazine model.
Lasting probably at least there is a cool ecosystem of essentially book club podcasts. Some of the more successful have patreons of Their Own and kick back a percentage of donations to the original authors.
I think it's very cool to see some more diversity in literature funding models
True—it usually wasn't an amazing living. But it was a not-totally-implausible direction to go, if perhaps not the best move. Isn't even that, now.
IDK what the equivalent poorly-paid-but-is-a-career-in-fiction-writing move is now. Probably video game writing, though you won't be getting to come up with your own stories at the bottom rungs.
> Short fiction has never been a lucrative business.
A perfect example being Edgar Allan Poe. One of the greatest writers in history could barely support himself and his wife with his short stories and poems. Tragic.
