The Importance of Themes in Short Stories

There are two things that seems to me to bring additional readers. One is if you get into a year's best anthology or a theme anthology and then obviously that brings a bunch of, but I'm thinking of again where Oaken Hearts together. Once you get on a bunch of ballots, a lot of people are going to look up that story who wouldn't have seen it in the first place. A story which remains online for years builds up an audience over time with award nominations,. The more things I promised to write and read the worst my backlog gets so I've sort of stopped saying yes to very many of those at all.