I guess the word 'Rising' has to mean something new in the hyperdigital age. Growth of a certain kind as an industry is just a sign of normal functioning as your product/organization reaches a larger audience in total numbers. Basically, while the percentage of the population that pays for your product/service/widget in relation to the population that have known about it stays the same. 'Rising' then as a more meaningful term should mean a larger viewer/user/reader-ship as a percentage of the population that has seen/knows about your work. Am I making sense?
Kind of. But short fiction isn't "rising" by any metric you can come up with. There isn't more of it, what's available isn't better, and authors aren't making more money for it. I say this as someone who writes short fiction, reads short fiction, and has attempted to earn money with short fiction. The market is smaller than it was, the audience less dedicated and the sources for remuneration ever scarcer. Yeah, there's a million people on /r/nosleep but apparently this chowderhead didn't know that nosleep was an offshoot from 4chan was an offshoot from newsgroups was an offshoot from the pulp traders of old. I'll take a 'zine over markup any day, but I can't anymore.
I think that's a matter of both opinion and culling. Completely true. Supply far exceeds demand. So you would consider nosleep and similar venues the spiritual descendant of those pulp traders?what's available isn't better,
and authors aren't making more money for it
nosleep was an offshoot from 4chan was an offshoot from newsgroups was an offshoot from the pulp traders of old.