Is The Western Genre Really Gone For Good?

[Alien Enigma]

It's getting harder and harder to find presses who accept western material. I searched and searched for a western magazine that publishes short stories and it's nearly impossible! The Western market is a hard racket, but they're so fun to write.


I have noticed places want to publish SciFi/Westerns or Horror/Westerns. I'm not into that. I'm a fan of the old shoot'em ups.


Jeff

[Cav Guy]

We had a poll about this earlier. IMO, the short story market has been dead for years. Sad but true. I don't know that the book market is gone for good. Stalled might be a better term.

[veinglory]

The western shelves at my local borders are still taking up more space than the gay and lesbian fiction shelves.

...something I noticed when wondering where my gay western story would get shelved ;)

p.s. it's 5 for the price of 4 for westerns at Borders right now.

[Rolling Thunder]

Jeff, I found 15 possible Western markets on Duotrope, plus 168 markets open to all/most genres. Use the link below and select the criteria as desired to search for possible places to submit. Watch for 'closed markets' though (click the box to hide closed markets as provided) so you get a good list back on where you can send work to.

Good luck!

http://www.duotrope.com/index.aspx

[MMcC]

I predict it will make a comeback when somebody revives it by reinventing it. Let's be honest-- so much of what was getting published was CRAP it can't be a surprise.

Larry McMurtry (sp?) kept it alive for a long while, but so much of it was racist, sexist, and gratuitously vengeful... I know I refuse to even pick up a Western novel after so many experiences of absolute disgust.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

Westerns went through a period where they were basically being pushed to become "The Punisher on horseback," as a friend put it. When the market for beyond-Rambo action/adventure declined, that beached the Western as well.

Then there was the whole interest in "historical America" & the Lonesome Dove phenomenon demonstrating that (like country music) the market for good examples is plentiful & appreciative.

...but, when Western got hot again, all the sloppy hacks & quick-buck artists crawled from under their rocks. Every category of fiction's gone through the same thing, sometimes often. And, in the long run, Sturgeon's Law applies.

A good short story set in the Old West is as likely to find a market as is anything else.

[Festus]

Agreed!

[Bmwhtly]

I have noticed places want to publish SciFi/Westerns or Horror/Westerns. I'm not into that. I'm a fan of the old shoot'em ups.There is also the so-called "Urban Western".
As I see it, this is set in Modern Times but with a western theme running through it. A good film and a fair example of this is Four Brothers.
Doing it like this allows writists to sell a western but not alienate folks by having it on horseback.

Just thought I'd mention it, see if it tickles anyone's fancy.

[Vanatru]

Good call Bmwhtly. Four Brothers is a step up from Lone Wolf McCade or Walker, Texas Ranger.

Pickups and ATVs have replaced horses. Automatics have replaced six shooters. The open range is now the open road. :)

[Bmwhtly]

Good call Bmwhtly. Four Brothers is a step up from Lone Wolf McCade or Walker, Texas Ranger.A BIG step from Chuck Norris.

Pickups and ATVs have replaced horses.Quite right. The car chase in the blizzard in Brothers did remind me of the horse-back ride through the sand-storm in... ummm... whichever western that was in.
The open range is now the open road.Delightful turn of phrase. That's a really good way of putting it.

[dub]

Good call Bmwhtly. Four Brothers is a step up from Lone Wolf McCade or Walker, Texas Ranger.

Pickups and ATVs have replaced horses. Automatics have replaced six shooters. The open range is now the open road. :)

Cowboy hats are often replaced by ball caps :rant:

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

Even the "open road" gets less open every tick. I think people who want to capture the Old West ought to go & drive from, say, Wichita to Taos, preferably in one straight charge. Wonder about trying to get a horse across some of those rivers, much less an entire herd. It's still possible to trace much of the Santa Fe Trail, including the bypass to the east around the worst of the mountains.

I drove from Minneapolis to Santa Fe (one direction or the other) no less than twenty times post-1999. Each time, Wichita felt a little further westward, & the oases were slightly larger & more frequent.

It's not enough for a tale to be set in the West, or to have horses, or livestock, or rustlers, or gunfire. If it's set in a city, where the veneer of Civilisation has grown thick & leathery, it's Henry James, not Max Brand.

Is it dead? No, but the audience has wandered away for a moment. The action/adventure genres aren't mainstream, & their popularity has waned.

While I'm thinking of it, folks might enjoy reading Richard Brautigan, The Hawkline Monster: a Gothic Western. It's wonderful strange, & somehow manages to capture the feels of Western, Gothic, horror, & (yes) Henry James.

[dub]

Hmmm, will see if my local BooksaMillion has it in stock. We live in the country, so most of my books I order on line - because of the dearth of Western reading material in the nearby village, this indeed, may be a mail order candidate.

[JeanneTGC]

There are still markets for anything if you write it well, make it interesting, and add something that either hasn't been done before or hasn't been done in this way or just hasn't been done enough.

[MaryMumsy]

I just got back from the grocery (not WallyWorld). On a whim I decided to check out the paperback rack. There were 31 westerns (I counted). I admit about 10 were 'classics', Max Brand, Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey; but the rest were current (within the last decade). The only other genre that was bigger was Romance (what a surprise). It could be unusual to have this many. Being in Arizona might influence the selection. But some one is obviously publishing these, and the store wouldn't take up the shelf space if the books didn't sell.

MM

[MrWrite]

In the past my local Barnes and Noble has only had two shelves devoted to Westerns, stacked with the usual suspects ie Louis L'Amour and William Johnstone with the occasional latest Longarm novel thrown in for good measure. All of which I have a stack of in my collection. Besides one or two Zane Grey book there was precious little other Western works.
Last time I went suddenly there were at least 4 or 5 shelves and besides the usual suspects there seems to be more work from different authors. I hope this is a growing trend. I've enjoyed reading Westerns for years and have a ton of books from the authors I've mentioned above. In fact I'm going there tonight and am going to try to buy a few from some authors I haven't read. Maybe the Western genre is waking up again?

[JeanneTGC]

I think it is. On the way out here (Arizona) for a conference this June, my agent sold two 2-book deals for 4 Westerns...and she was on the road, literally, talking to publishers at rest stops. And one of those 2-book deals was for a first-time author.

So, yeah, the publishers are still buying.

[ajkjd01]

I just heard at an RWA conference in April that they would be interested in Western Romances.

[Unique]

I just heard at an RWA conference in April that they would be interested in Western Romances.

Hmmm.... Now that has possibilities. heh.

I don't think Westerns are dead per se but when you think about it - you're dealing with a brief period of history that is fairly well known, at least lightly, by many people. Especially in the US.

I've been running across quite a few lately written from the other perspective. I'll let you figure out what 'other' means.

One I'm reading now is in the literary genre of all things! But it's set in the Montana/Wyoming area so what else could it be? It's a very different story than one that would be set in Greenwich, Conneticut or even Tampa, Florida.

It's definitely character driven but the people are the way they are at least partly because of where they are. YMMV

[dpaterso]

Big difference between Western movies and Western fiction. A big-name actor gets interested and attaches himself, the film has a chance of getting made.

The Pitt movie (as you know) was based on Ron Hansen's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Hansen_(novelist)) 1983 novel (http://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Jesse-James-Coward-Robert/dp/0061120197/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234170776&sr=1-6). 25 years later, how does the fiction market feel about Westerns?

-Derek

[Puma]

Thought: In this current economic "crisis" period, some good escapist books might do very well. I can see this as a period where a decent good guy conquers evil western or a comedy type western might have a chance. And since there's a heavy portion of the reading population in the over 50 group, a tie back to the comforts of the golden days of TV westerns could be somewhat soothing. Something to think about - my opinion. Puma