No, it's not, and you damn well know this. Any mag that can boast a STEPHEN KING story is dead certain to sell more copies, will boast it in big letters on the cover, and that colors judgment at every level. That doesn't mean they'll accept any damn thing, but King himself has said he could sell his grocery lists, and I don't think he's lying. He just has the integrity and ability to produce better things than his grocery list.
Not to mention that anything showing up from STEPHEN KING plops on top of the submission pile for instant attention.
If all stories were considered equally on the merit of the manuscript alone, magazines would adopt "blind" submission policies where the author's name is redacted, the way some high-level contests do. Can you name even one magazine that does this?
caw
Sorry, you're dead wrong. You need to talk to more real editors. Forget what King says and learn what the editors he submits to say. King still gets rejections, and I know an editor who rejected one of his stories just a few months ago.
I may be wrong, but I seem to remember Gilhoughly saying he rejected a king story.
King may say he could sell a grocery list, but he's never done so, has he? Of course, with his talent, he might be able to write a grocery list so interesting and entertaining that it would sell, but if so, it would be because it's good, not because it came from King.
Here's the problem with your line of thinking. If Stephen King were the only great writer in the world then, yes, any magazine out there would take his writing, no matter what.
But he isn't. There are hundreds of huge names in the short story field, all of them dripping with talent. But magazines have room for only a tiny, tiny few of these names. And not one editor out there goes through the list and says, "Well, King's name is a little bigger than Bradbury"s name, so King gets the sale."
Now, not so many years ago, Bradbury was the biggest name in fiction. Bigger than anyone by a wide margin. This remained so for thirty years. Yet during that same thirty years, when he had the biggest name out there, he received more than 1,500 rejections. If the biggest name out there really increased sale to any appreciable degree, then why did editors say no to him more than 1,500 times?
Instead of simply grasping at myths, you can actually look up sales numbers for yourself, or ask editors. There is almost never a huge spike when a name like King is on the cover. Doubly so when King's name appears of fifty-eleven magazines yearly. If his name helped all that much, these magazines would all be in the black, but they aren't. Even with King's name, and two or three other huge names on the cover each month, the magazines are still losing money.
Now, about blind readings. I actually could name a fair number of small magazines that do blind readings, but no real commercial magazines, but it has nothing to do with the reasons you seem to believe. They don't do it because blind readings have been tried numerous times over the years, and the conclusion has always been that are truly stupid when you're on a tight schedule because
You Get The Same Results, Except It Takes Ten Times As Long To Weed Out The Same Bad Writers, and Find Stories By The Same Great Writers.
King does not sell because of his name. He has the name he does because of the quality of his writing. This is why magazines want him, and why they want the other big names. The editors know they write great stories, and readers buy the magazines because they know these writers write wonderful stories. But when one of them sends in a story that isn't wonderful, editors reject them, just like any other writer.
Gardner Dozois wrote on the Asimov forum about rejecting four of the biggest names out there all on the same day. He read their stories, they weren't as good as what other writers submitted that month, so he rejected them. He wouldn't have done this if such names made a real difference in sales.
Gordon Van Gelder, editor as F&SF, did buy a story form King, but said he noticed no real jump in sales numbers at all when the story was published.
What editors do differently when reading a King story and a story by a new writer has to do with expectation, not standards. I expect a story by King to be great, and I'm rarely disappointed, so of course his story goes to the top of the read pile.
I expect a story by a new writer to be lousy, and it almost always is, so of course it gets handed off to an assistant, or placed on the bottom of the TBR stack.
But if it's any good, if it's as good or better than whatever else comes in that month, I'll buy it. If it's better than the King story, and I have room for only one of them, the new writer gets the nod, and King gets rejected.
Trouble is, stories from new writers are almost never better than the worst story King submits. Even stories by most of the other selling writers out there are almost never better than the worst story King, or the other big name writers, submit.
It just isn't about different standards, it's about talent level and skill. Big names become big names, and sell what they write, be it novels or short stories, because their talent level is far above most other writers, and their skill level has been developed to the point where they make full use of their talent.
King may thing he could sell a grocery list, but as far as I can tell, I've read every short story he's sold, and not one of them resembles a grocery list. The worst of them are all far above what most writers will ever do, and the best of them will last until long after King is dead and gone.
Last point. If what you say were true, no magazine of any size would ever buy a story from a new writer. Why would they? There's never, ever a month when a magazine of any size doesn't receive far more stories from big name writers than they have room to publish.
A LOT of big name writers, hundreds, write and submit short stories. Every magazine out there receives these stories monthly. So if names actually matter all that much, these would be the only writers who ever sold to magazines. You have five slot to fill this month? Well, you have a hundred and fifty name writers to choose from, so why even read stories sent in by new writers? Obviously, the editor wouldn't read them, unless he thought one might be good enough to beat out all those big names.
And it happens often. New writers routinely make it into the best magazines, and they do this by beating out a big name. Beating out a big name is, in fact, the only way to sell a story to most magazines.
You couldn't do this if different standards applied, or if name meant as much as you think.
) is keep writing more short stories. Build on the success, get more pieces out there. Now you have a publication and a good relationship with one potential publisher you may find it easier to get publications 2 and 3 and up to infinity. Don't worry too much about the rights for the existing story until that issue comes up, just get more out there and get your name known.
