Bring Back Women's Magazine Fiction!

Posted by Claire Cowling Oct 2, 2008

Each time I go into my local newsagent's, or I read one of the writing magazines I subscribe to, I seem to discover the sad news that the demise of the short story in women's magazines is still going on. My latest disappointment was when I realised that a magazine I was busily writing for had cut its word count for short stories by a few hundred words. This in turn made me feel like I was writing flash fiction, instead of the rounded, wonderful (honest!) piece of work it orginally had been.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing at all against flash fiction, aside from the fact that I am apalling at writing it! What I do find irritating is that I speak to many women in the course of my everyday existence and those who buy women's magazines all say that they enjoy the fiction - some saying that they have actually changed their regular magazine to one which only or virtually only includes fiction, in order to get something which they termed as worth reading. Yet the magazines in general do not all seem to have grasped this.

Instead, there are ample women's mags out there which focus on nothing but the tawdry lives of supposed celebrities, fashion and make-up and leave nothing for the reader to get their teeth into and allow them a degree of escapism, albeit for only five minutes or so while drinking a cup of coffee. I, however, do applaud the ones who stick to their guns and refuse to lose their fiction content, even if they have to change the style of fiction accepted whenever the magazine undergoes a facelift.

Books are a massive seller worldwide, with romance being the biggest selling genre. Surley, then, there has to be room for even just a page of Coffee Break Fiction, centred around relationships, if that is the kind of fiction the readers want. Surely it is better to give the consumer something extra rather than lose them to a competitor? And, believe me, short story writers would really appreciate it, too!

What do you think? I would be interested to hear your thoughts, whichever side of the argument, or the publishing fence, you sit on.