Two years ago, my friend wrote a beautiful collection of short stories. She got them to a well-known lit agent who told her that there was no way any traditional NY publisher would touch a collection of short stories from a first-time author and advised her to re-work them into a novel. Now, with her novel almost finished, comes this article in the New York Times:
Good Fit for Today’s Little Screens: Short Stories
With Kindle Singles and the success of George Saunders, short is suddenly the new black.
Also, don’t discount the psychological boost you can get from ‘publishing’ anything, even a digital-only short story on Amazon. Getting your piece formatted and uploaded should be pretty quick and easy – of course, promoting and marketing it so anyone sees it won’t be quick or easy, it will be an endless grueling slog, but don’t let that stop you.
GREG MILLER - Author & Writing Coach 
Or not. See the rebuttal article in Salon: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/sorry_the_short_story_boom_is_bogus/
As an analogy, the 19th C. novelist & companion of the composer Frederic Chopin; George Sand (her nom de plume) once remarked: “A short mazurka by Chopin is worth more than the big Operas of Meyerbeer (at the time a successful composer of Operas in 19 C. Paris) I think she also added… “bombastic” in her critique! Fred Holtz
(I forgot to add a fact of little importance. Meyerbeer’s Operas are all but forgotten today. His only claim to fame is that he was slightly influential to Wagner.)