: Re: How to sell novel excerpts as short stories Occasionally I've seen novel excerpts published in short story venues. They're usually sections of a recent or forthcoming novel that also hold together

@Eichhorn147

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Well, in the case of a short story that is expanded into a novel everything works pretty much the same as before. This is simply because you have written a self contained short story and would sell it as such.

As for an excerpt... well that depends on the editor and the magazine. I'm pretty sure you can't sell an excerpt with the promise that it will be a full novel soon or that it may come out someday. For an editor, publishing an excerpt with nothing attached to it really isn't a way to attract readers.

In this case I would say that you pretty much have to have the book sold before you can even think about getting at excerpt published in a magazine. In that case then this is probably something your publisher or agent would set up, the publisher might even have a deal with a magazine for this sort of thing.

That being said, if you want to see an excerpt in print you should check with your agent (if you have one) to see if it's okay, and make sure your contract allows for it as well. If you have an agent they might be able to do all the leg work to get it print without it getting lost in a slush pile.

Also, it's possible that running an excerpt might not count a sale, and you might not get much money from it as such. There might also be restrictions in your contract about how you can publish the excerpt. Back when I was an editor, if we had decided to publish an excerpt we would have made a different deal then for a normal story.

Note, this is mostly from my view of having both made a few sales and having been a publisher on a small magazine, so take it with a bit more salt then usual.

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