# e-publishing short stories?



## CraniumInsanium (Aug 24, 2013)

Does anybody have experience e-publishing short stories? I'm just wondering if only novels sell online (kindle, amazon etc). It looks like several online sites accept anything around the 12k word mark. 

I suppose I'm kind of answering my own question since "sites" seem to accept submissions and my thought process wasn't sure if most authors compose short story collections (think Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Steven King or something similar) before putting the short stories out for publishing. Most short stories I read are about 40 pages or less, so my inexperience causes me to wonder if people would actually pay .99cents or the going rate for so short a book. Heck, I don't even know what the going rate is for a novel. 

I'm absolutely clueless about everything except the fact that I can publish my work on a website, through an e-reader, or by a paper book publisher. I've heard other people mention publishing their own books on their own, don't know if its the same thing. 

Thanks for any input, or re-direction to the proper thread if this has already been posted.


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## movieman (Aug 24, 2013)

They sell, just not that well in most cases. If you think a magazine or anthology might buy it, try that first because you'll probably make more at $0.05 a word than you will in a year on an e-book retail site.

I have stories from about 3500 to 12000 words priced $0.99 to $2.99, and the one that sells the best is 4,000 words at $1.99.


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## CraniumInsanium (Aug 24, 2013)

hhmm...I don't know what genre you write but do you find one specific genre sells better than the others short story wise? I'd think Fantasy/Sci-fi, since its Conanesqe in the short story episode setting.


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## movieman (Aug 24, 2013)

If you want to sell a lot, write erotica or romance. Mine are SF, which does OK, but doesn't sell to the same level as those.

I think the most copies I've sold of one story in one month was about twenty of that $1.99 SF short around Christmas. I'm tempted to raise the price to $2.99, since that would pay about 3x as much per copy on Amazon.


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## enchantedsecret24 (Aug 24, 2013)

Movieman, are you using kindle publishing then I'm guessing? I'm trying to figure out how to publish my short stories through kindle also, so I'm just curious.

Cranium...look up www.anytime-shorts.com that is only ONE of the people you can e-publish through. I received a whole $20.00 for my short story of 4,500 words The Kiss of a Siren. I feel sad about it though, so make sure if you publish to anyone you feel okay about the amount you receive before you do it, or else publish through kdp or something so you can just see what happens on your own. I feel robbed of my short story, and although I love that I finally did publish something, I wish I could do more with it now and I cant. I have an idea for a 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th story to go with this, and can't do anything about it now! 

All I'm saying is make sure you are careful when you do it, but there are tons of places out there who publish short stories.


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## movieman (Aug 24, 2013)

enchantedsecret24 said:


> Movieman, are you using kindle publishing then I'm guessing?



Yeah, and Smashwords for the other sites like Kobo, B&N, Apple, etc. You can go direct to most of those if you live in America, but not in Canada.


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## enchantedsecret24 (Aug 24, 2013)

movieman said:


> Yeah, and Smashwords for the other sites like Kobo, B&N, Apple, etc. You can go direct to most of those if you live in America, but not in Canada.



Awesome, thank you!


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## Terry D (Aug 24, 2013)

Here's a link to Kindle's service specializing in shorts. It's called Kindle Singles.


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## CraniumInsanium (Aug 24, 2013)

-enchantedsecret24 - hey I saw your thread on the same topic, but I didn't want to hijack it with my questions lol. What's the deal with anytime shorts? I glanced at their site last night and the mention of launching till april/march of 2014 kind of confused me. I guess only writers "know" about the site since we're there lol. Are they acutally doing any publishing yet?

-movieman - I'm also into sci-fi, and fantasy primarily, but have started doing horror/thriller a bit too. Whats the deal with kindle vs smashwords? or deciding who to go with? from smashwords website, it looks like they have a large distribution network, so I'd be tempted to go with publishing a finished novel say on kindle, then hopping over to smashwords, just to get the most exposure. unless whenever you publish through one they own it for a year rights, and cant publish anywhere else. 

research is really tough for me because I only have internet sporadically at a friends, familymember or a wifi spot. finding free time to spend hours figuring out what's what is time consuming lol.

terry-d - do you have any experience with kindle shorts? just glanced at it, and it looks as though your work has to be published already to be "nominated". I guess maybe kindle shorts is a non-specific categorical area to showcase your work?


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## CraniumInsanium (Aug 24, 2013)

just found this link. looks pretty helpful

How to Publish an E-Book: Resources for Authors | Jane Friedman


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## movieman (Aug 25, 2013)

CraniumInsanium said:


> Whats the deal with kindle vs smashwords?



Amazon KDP is a retailer, Smashwords is a distributor who distribute books to multiple retailers; there are other sites that do the same. It just saves you having to upload to every other retailer, but they take about a 10% cut for doing that for you.

 The only time you can't do that is when you sign up for an exclusivity agreement with one retailer, like KDP Select at Amazon.


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## CraniumInsanium (Aug 25, 2013)

[h=1]So according to this, can I still go through smashbooks and kdp? or does kdp require the exclusivity agreement, or is that optional?

10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to Any E-Publishing Service | Jane Friedman

9. Where is your e-book distributed?[/h] If you’re using Amazon Kindle Direct, or Barnes & Noble PubIt!,  the answer is pretty simple: Your e-book is distributed only through  those specific retailers. When you use a multiple-channel e-book  distribution service (such as Smashwords or BookBaby), then the mix of  retailers they reach will vary. At minimum, you want to reach Kindle  & Nook, since they currently make up about 85% of all e-book sales.
*One common strategy among authors is to use Amazon Kindle Direct  combined with Smashwords (which distributes to all major e-book  retailers except Kindle). You can probably reach 95%+ of your market with that approach, if not 100%.*


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## ppsage (Aug 25, 2013)

This comes to 4k US$ per year for 36 stories. Been following for a long time and it took a while to build up though. I think that's about $0.11 per word.


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## enchantedsecret24 (Aug 25, 2013)

They pay per word and they are doing some publishing now. The site isn't going to be completely ready until December/January she told me a few days ago. You can look for her on facebook if you have one. Just look up anytime shorts on facebook...you can submit to her there and you will get paid pretty fast. I would do it differently if I could though, I wish I had my story back. I feel like I could have done so much more with it and now I can't...all for $20! I mean I'm happy, but I'm sad too so just make sure you're ready to let it go for such a cheap price if you want to be published on any websites.


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## J Anfinson (Aug 25, 2013)

I used to publish shorts with Smashwords, though I can't tell you how well they sell. Mine were always free. I can tell you that 2K word shorts are downloaded far more than longer works. Most of mine were downloaded through BN and Sony, and a couple actually got awesome reviews. I pulled everything not long after joining WF because after comparing my stories to some of the veteran people's on here, I realized that I didn't know half as much as I thought I did and even my best could use a lot of reworking.

But anyway, people like free, and I've often thought that maybe if you set your shorts to free then it might help sell your novel(s).


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## dale (Aug 25, 2013)

Terry D said:


> Here's a link to Kindle's service specializing in shorts. It's called Kindle Singles.



it says they want all to be over 5000 words. i wonder if they'd accept a 2 story deal as a "single", as both my unpublished shorts
are in the 2500 range?


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## dale (Aug 25, 2013)

enchantedsecret24 said:


> Movieman, are you using kindle publishing then I'm guessing? I'm trying to figure out how to publish my short stories through kindle also, so I'm just curious.
> 
> Cranium...look up www.anytime-shorts.com that is only ONE of the people you can e-publish through. I received a whole $20.00 for my short story of 4,500 words The Kiss of a Siren. I feel sad about it though, so make sure if you publish to anyone you feel okay about the amount you receive before you do it, or else publish through kdp or something so you can just see what happens on your own. I feel robbed of my short story, and although I love that I finally did publish something, I wish I could do more with it now and I cant. I have an idea for a 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th story to go with this, and can't do anything about it now!
> 
> All I'm saying is make sure you are careful when you do it, but there are tons of places out there who publish short stories.


why did you only receive $20 when they say they pay a penny a word? was it different then?


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## enchantedsecret24 (Aug 25, 2013)

I don't know really, I work on elance.com as a freelance writer. She didn't expect my story to be so long, and that's just the price we agreed on when I sent her my proposal. Just a few minutes ago she sent me a request to write another story for her, so we'll see what price she offers this time. My stories are always exactly 4,500 words, because that's her minimum, and I have a HARD time keeping it under that. Last time I had to take out 5,000 words just to turn it in, and that really sucked. 

For 4,500 words though, I should get paid $45.00 this time. She just said that for a first time writer she does less because she wants to see how you do, and if your story sells on her site or not. Then each time after, the price goes up. She offers bonuses also if your story does good, so that's a plus. But hey, I wasn't selling my writing at all before this, probably wouldn't have even tried. So I'm not really complaining now that she contacted me to write another story! I'm pretty excited, I hope she continues to hire me.


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