While short stories can certainly be as long as 30,000 words, most short stories included these days in literary magazines tend to be 3,500 words. This allows magazines to include a lot of different short stories in their magazines.
Online short stories tend to be even shorter at 1,000 words since many people online have shorter attention spans with the amount of content available to them. The Internet has dramatically changed the way that modern readers approach fiction and prose, and the trend is that shorter short stories are more readily published than longer ones.
Who publishes short stories?
The best place to publish short stories is in a literary magazine – whether online or in print. These magazines tend to publish both traditional and cutting-edge short stories so it’s more likely your short story will be published.
Unfortunately, most writers want to self-publish their own collection of short stories and these are generally not well-accepted by the public. Readers prefer to read short stories either in online forums or in literary magazines.
