ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses recent findings on and statistics relating to the British literary marketplace in order to situate short story collections meaningfully within the literary marketplace of the twenty-first century. The fact that some Booker Prize winners and other bestselling authors also write and publish short fiction is sometimes misconstrued as a sign that the short story is experiencing a resurgence. In a world where publishing is huge business, readers should be made aware of the financially struggling elephant in the room: publishers need to change their attitudes to authors and to recognise that the writer of the book is at the heart of book production. According to Alexander Linklater, publishers view short stories "as culturally redundant and economically unviable". If mainstream publishers try to avoid short story collections and indie publishers renowned for their involvement in short story publishing are non-profit or discontinued, that says a lot about the profitability of short story cycles/collections.
