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Topic : Re: Do people read short stories? I enjoy writing as a 'side' interest and I have written 10 short stories (which are approximately 1,750 words each). I am publishing them as standalone ebooks (or - selfpublishingguru.com

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OK, I don't have any specific numbers, so it's going to be more of a subjective answer, I apologize.

Firstly, when self-publishing, you have to keep in mind that you are your own marketer. You sell your own books. Sure, they sell through Amazon, or Smashwords, or Barnes and Nobles, or whichever you choose, but you have to make them sell. I saw people building "platforms" through blogs, facebook, tweeter and other social networking tools before they even put a book on the market, so that when it comes out, the potential readership is already eagerly waiting to read it. If you just put your story among million of others and then sit and wait for people to stumble onto it, odds are you're not going to sell much. A good story has to swim through a pile of garbage to get to the top (yes, when you let people freely submit what ever they want without any quality control a large number of it will be garbage). Separating crap from the good stuff is done through "word-of-mouth" - reviews, recommendations, off-site reviews (book-reviewing sites like BookReporter or BookPage), and it takes a lot of work to get your story reviewed (book-reviewing sites usually don't come to you, you come to them - you need to ask them to do a review, usually in exchange for a free copy).

It's a lot of hard work. Maybe too much for ten short stories, but why not write fifty? Or more? Ten or twenty decent novels could make the same amount of money as a single best-seller - people have tested and confirmed that. The trick in earning money from self publishing is in quantity. Ten low-priced items sell more than one pricey item. So don't waste your time contemplating whether it would sell. Write a ton of short stories, then make them sell. A good place to get some good general info and advice on self-publishing is Joe Konrath's A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, but there are also plenty of other blogs out there on the same subject.

After a bit of Googling, I ran into "Kindle Singles". Basically, they're something like "staff picks" on Android Market, they're works typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words that have been reviewed by the editors, so they're guaranteed to have a higher quality than an average self-pub piece. It gives a reader assurance that he's not buying random crap. Also, they're marketed by Amazon, which means less marketing work for you. Amazon has released the sales figures for Singles, and they look pretty good, take a look at Amazon Has Sold Over Two Million Kindle Singles or How Much Do Kindle Singles Authors Make?. Looking at these numbers, I have to say, yes, there is a market for short stories. If you can make yours 5000+ words long, and if they're of good enough quality, trying to get them into "Kindle Singles" category might be worth-while. You can have a look at the Submission Policy.


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