Most Wednesday evenings, after the Flatmancrooked staff has grown weary of discussing budgets and arguing over copy on the latest press release, we usually abandon the office in favor of the back patio of the Old Tavern. Over drinks of varying potency (depending on who’s ordering (the bartender plays favorites)), conversation will, for example, start with mixed martial arts, move to rock climbing, to soccer, to the Red Sox, to Penelope Cruz, to the possibility of getting some food. Try as we may to avoid talking shop outside the shop, though, conversation inevitably arrives at the brilliant ideas our peers have had that we wish we had first, immediately followed by what we can do to top them.

Granted, our admiration is equal to if not greater than our envy; thus, I present the following- some of the greatest contributions to the impending short story renaissance:

1) If you happen to be among the tiny handful of people that isn’t friends with Todd Zuniga on Facebook and have otherwise managed to avoid the massive amount of press Opium Magazine has received recently—if you haven’t heard about the cover for Opium 8, in other words—it features a nine word story that will reveal itself at the rate of one word every century when exposed to sunlight. Yeah. Crazy.

Of course, whether any of the copies will actually survive a thousand years is sort of irrelevant. Paper isn’t terribly durable. The idea, though, is brilliant on several levels. Most immediately, the very novelty of this “infinity” issue has garnered press and sales far surpassing previous issues of Opium. This, in turn, leads to the actual stories and content within the issue being exposed to a much wider audience that would not have otherwise purchased an issue of Opium, as admirable a publication as it is. And lastly, the idea that people are, in theory, going to pass the book on for generations means that the authors and contributors in the issue will continue to be read. In theory. Whether that holds true or not matters less than the fact that the uniqueness of Opium 8 has re-energized the short story. All sorts of people, such as tech-geeks, Russians, and the Swiss, are really excited about it, and the issue has bridged a divide between the relatively small number of people who support literary magazines and (to some degree) the rest of the world.

2) Speaking of fancy covers, all the while every small press is stewing in their envy over McSweeney’s design, One Story, a paper-and-staple single-story publication that has, by literary journal standards, been hugely successful, is proof that it’s possible to sell something on literary merit alone. From their website:

“One Story is a non-profit literary magazine that features one great short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks. Our mission is to save the short story by publishing in a friendly format that allows readers to experience each story as a stand-alone work of art and a simple form of entertainment. One Story is designed to fit into your purse or pocket, and into your life…We believe that short stories are best read alone. They should not be sandwiched in between a review and an exposé on liposuction, or placed after another work of fiction that is so sad or funny or long that the reader is worn out by the time they turn to it. The experience of reading a story by itself is usually found only in MFA programs or writing workshops. This is a shame. Besides, there is always time to read one story.”

Since its inception in 2002, One Story has built up a subscribership of over 5,000 and has an impressive record of consistently appearing in Best American, Best American Non-Required, and winning O. Henry’s and Pushcarts. A subscription costs $21 and gets you eighteen stories, which works out to approximately $1.16 per story. The design is nothing to get excited about, but that’s the point—One Story places so much focus on the actual story that is being published that it has quickly become one of the most sought-after placements amongst short story authors. Earlier in this series, I asserted that our collectively shrinking attention span ought to contribute to the growth of short story popularity; One Story is a brilliant example of how there is in fact a demand for a good, portable, single-dose of literature, and they provide it quite simply.

3) If you and I happened to have had a conversation during the last year , chances are I’ve tried to insert a plug for Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts Podcast somewhere between “Hi” and “nice to see you.” The program began twenty years ago as a live reading of short stories by established actors at Symphony Space in New York. Since, it has since gone on “tour”—they were at The Getty and in San Francisco in May, amongst other locations—and been turned into a podcast. This is remarkable for two reasons: A) It’s an actor reading, meaning the piece is performed, rather than simply read, and B) it’s a hands-free activity, meaning you can do various other things whilst listening. Now, you may insist that nothing replaces the experience of actually holding a book in your hands (and I would certainly agree), but hearing Alec Baldwin read Steven Millhauser’s “The Dome,” or Steven Colbert read T.C. Boyle’s “The Lie” is utterly entertaining. Though it seems difficult to imagine improving a story like Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.,” Stockard Channing does it, and John Lithgow, whether or not you thought he was awful on 3^rd Rock From The Sun, will make you laugh in his reading of “Taste” by Roald Dahl.

Call me a sentimental optimist, but I’m a happier person because this podcast exists. That these actors participate—that they read and reread in order to prepare for the reading, and clearly love the stories themselves—is significant. What might be viewed as an inaccessible story printed on the pages of Harper’s is transformed into something that is pure entertainment. It’s why I make it a point, and perhaps obnoxiously so, to tell everybody I can about it-especially my non-literary friends. Sure, all the writers I know listen to the New Yorker fiction podcast, and we all giggle when we hear Deb Triesman call Tobais Wolff “Toby,” but the Selected Shorts Podcast approaches that level of being simultaneously high-brow and absolutely accessible.

We’re just bursting with admiration for these things, if it’s not clear, and they serve as reminders that there’s much to be excited about. If I ever feel myself lapsing into moments of panic about the future of publishing, I will, for instance, walk to the mailbox while listening to Alec Baldwin read a series of baseball haikus, to see if my new issue of One Story has arrived. Perhaps I will make myself a sandwich and try to stumble through the laudatory article on Opium 8 in Le Monde. What’s clear is that there’s a good deal of talent out there, and there are people coming up with brilliant ideas to expose those talents. For instance, as you might have read in Andrew Dugas’ article on self-publishing last week, Flatmancrooked is ecstatic to be a part of Shya Scanlon’s Forecast 42 Project. Shya (who’s also a contributor to the Opium 8 issue, coincidentally) is publishing all 42 chapters of his novel on the websites of 42 different lit journals and blogs, creating a narrative path from site to site. It has the potential to expand each site’s network exponentially, and exposes those readers to publications they might not have heard of otherwise, all the while promoting a free novel, and a good one at that. Serialization is an old idea, and self-publishing is a new one; Forecast 42 is taking those ideas and possibly creating a revolution.

As for us, know that we’ve got some great things planned, and I want to tell you all about them, but I can’t, because you, or Penguin, or Random House, will steal them. We are paranoid; the ideas are that good. There will be bikes involved, and dirt, though not dirt bikes. Dirty drawings and drinks and chain-letters. Most of all, good fiction. Attention spans may be shrinking, but the desire for good stories persists; if the future of publishing depends on adjusting the methods of getting those stories out there—whether it’s the technology of Opium, the minimalism of One Story, or the multi-media of Selected Shorts—innovation leads to further innovation. We’re so excited.

By Deena Drewis