Everyone Is Publishing Fiction Now

Famous legend Nikki Finke has launched her site Hollywood Dementia, publishing fiction about evil producers, agents, publicists and hungry screenwriters. (Okay sometimes not evil!)

Vice’s Motherboard publishes speculative fiction at Terraform; they started late last year.

Pando is publishing a “future-fiction horror story” by Dave Holmes.

Verge just started Verge Fiction, one fiction story every two weeks.

Medium’s Matter, which started life as a science publication, just published a whole passel of climate change speculative fiction. (Disclosure, they gave me money.)

Around here we’ve dabbled with fiction and will dabble again.

For some places, this is like when publications have decided they are reaching all the English-reading people they can get and they are like “and now, Huffington Post Mumbai” or “BuzzFeed Poland”! Veering out of the news lane to develop fiction products is smart in the same way. For other places, this is a more earnest interest. It’s intriguing, and I like it! Traditionally, fiction is not a place that makes publications a lot of money! And Medium’s writer’s agreement is not at all exploitative — it merely asks for 90 days of exclusive rights, and then frees the writer up after that. What does it all mean? TIME WILL TELL.