Publishing Short Stories by Raima Larter
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My new short story collection![/caption]
I recently published my first collection of short stories, "The Gate of Heaven and Other Story Worlds." Some of these stories had previously been published in literary journals, anthologies or even as electronic singles. Publishers are really not interested in short story collections from new authors, so I used Amazon's CreateSpace service to produce my own paperback book. I'm very happy with the result (it felt great to hold this book in my hand when it arrived last week!) and can highly recommend this route to authors who have a lot of stories that they want to get out to readers.
Ray Bradbury, who died this summer, was truly the master of short form fiction. I have followed his advice to young writers and focused most of my writing energies on short stories. I have begun to write novels in the last few years but am trying to keep in mind that a novel is still a story. What I'm finding is that it's easy to get lost in the hundreds of pages of your manuscript and lose sight of the basic story, so as I've begun to write books, I come back again and again to what I've learned from writing the short story.
Most fiction writers begin by writing short stories. There are exceptions, I suppose, although the writers I know who jump directly to writing novels often have trouble with story line and plot arc. It is a lot more difficult to keep track of the story line in a book-length story than a short one and I personally think it makes more sense to learn the elements of story telling through ten-page pieces first before tackling an entire book-length work.
So, if you are like me and have written a lot of short stories, what do you do with them? While literary magazines and journals are still around, fewer and fewer of them are publishing, and even less people are reading them. Online publications do exist, of course, but these are largely devoted to flash fiction or what I would call very short stories, in the 1000-2000 word range.
If you write flash fiction, you can publish them here! Every Friday at #amwriting is devoted to flash fiction. For longer stories, I recommend looking at Cliff Garstang's blog. He publishes and maintains a listing of print and electronic literary journals, ranked by the number of Pushcart Prize winners they've published. It's an excellent resource if you want to go this route.
There are also lots of contests, usually with fairly low reading fees. Maybe it shouldn't have to be said, but some of these contests do not necessarily result in publication--so read the rules carefully before submitting if you're trying to use contests to find an outlet for your work.
The response time for both literary journals and contests can be 2-6 months or more, so if you are more eager to get your work out, self-publishing is a much faster way. It is available to anyone who wants to put in the time and effort to learn how to do it and is actually not all that difficult if you have modestly good computer skills. Most services, such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service or Barnes and Noble's PubIt portal for the Nook, allow uploading of Word files in .doc format, so all you really need to pay attention to is formatting. Again, reading the instructions carefully can save you a lot of time!
I have used both of these services to self-publish electronic versions of individual short stories and once the story is written, edited and proof-read, it never takes more than an hour or two to electronically publish the result. The time-consuming step is, as always, the writing and editing. I wrote a blog post last year about my experiences with electronic publishing, and that post has a few more details about how to do it, but there are also user forums and FAQs for each service that are very helpful.
Even though I love my iPad and Kindle app and am a big proponent of electronic publishing, there is no substitute for the experience of holding a "real book" in your hand that you wrote yourself. The process for producing a print book is a little more involved than for producing an e-book, but it is just as easy. Templates are provided for everything: the interior, the front cover and the back cover. It is possible to hire out the editing, layout and cover-design steps, so if you are unsure of doing these steps yourself or don't have the time, help is available for a fee of about $150-$300.
It is so easy to self-publish that a lot of poor work is appearing--this can mean work that is rough and needs revision and rethinking, but it can also mean work full of typographical errors, grammatical mistakes and other problems that an editor would quickly catch. Authors hurt only themselves and their own reputation by putting out work that isn't ready, so my advice is to use the self-publishing route only if you are certain your work is as good as it can be. I highly recommend a critique group or even professional editing. It is very hard to see your own mistakes--trust me.
However, if you think your short story is done, you like what you've written and are proud of it, self-publishing is an excellent way to get your work to readers. If you have a bunch of stories, consider publishing a collection. It is fun and the feeling of holding a completed book in your hand, one with Your Name on the cover, cannot be beat.
My new short story collection![/caption]I recently published my first collection of short stories, "The Gate of Heaven and Other Story Worlds." Some of these stories had previously been published in literary journals, anthologies or even as electronic singles. Publishers are really not interested in short story collections from new authors, so I used Amazon's CreateSpace service to produce my own paperback book. I'm very happy with the result (it felt great to hold this book in my hand when it arrived last week!) and can highly recommend this route to authors who have a lot of stories that they want to get out to readers.
Ray Bradbury, who died this summer, was truly the master of short form fiction. I have followed his advice to young writers and focused most of my writing energies on short stories. I have begun to write novels in the last few years but am trying to keep in mind that a novel is still a story. What I'm finding is that it's easy to get lost in the hundreds of pages of your manuscript and lose sight of the basic story, so as I've begun to write books, I come back again and again to what I've learned from writing the short story.
Most fiction writers begin by writing short stories. There are exceptions, I suppose, although the writers I know who jump directly to writing novels often have trouble with story line and plot arc. It is a lot more difficult to keep track of the story line in a book-length story than a short one and I personally think it makes more sense to learn the elements of story telling through ten-page pieces first before tackling an entire book-length work.
So, if you are like me and have written a lot of short stories, what do you do with them? While literary magazines and journals are still around, fewer and fewer of them are publishing, and even less people are reading them. Online publications do exist, of course, but these are largely devoted to flash fiction or what I would call very short stories, in the 1000-2000 word range.
If you write flash fiction, you can publish them here! Every Friday at #amwriting is devoted to flash fiction. For longer stories, I recommend looking at Cliff Garstang's blog. He publishes and maintains a listing of print and electronic literary journals, ranked by the number of Pushcart Prize winners they've published. It's an excellent resource if you want to go this route.
There are also lots of contests, usually with fairly low reading fees. Maybe it shouldn't have to be said, but some of these contests do not necessarily result in publication--so read the rules carefully before submitting if you're trying to use contests to find an outlet for your work.
The response time for both literary journals and contests can be 2-6 months or more, so if you are more eager to get your work out, self-publishing is a much faster way. It is available to anyone who wants to put in the time and effort to learn how to do it and is actually not all that difficult if you have modestly good computer skills. Most services, such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service or Barnes and Noble's PubIt portal for the Nook, allow uploading of Word files in .doc format, so all you really need to pay attention to is formatting. Again, reading the instructions carefully can save you a lot of time!
I have used both of these services to self-publish electronic versions of individual short stories and once the story is written, edited and proof-read, it never takes more than an hour or two to electronically publish the result. The time-consuming step is, as always, the writing and editing. I wrote a blog post last year about my experiences with electronic publishing, and that post has a few more details about how to do it, but there are also user forums and FAQs for each service that are very helpful.
Even though I love my iPad and Kindle app and am a big proponent of electronic publishing, there is no substitute for the experience of holding a "real book" in your hand that you wrote yourself. The process for producing a print book is a little more involved than for producing an e-book, but it is just as easy. Templates are provided for everything: the interior, the front cover and the back cover. It is possible to hire out the editing, layout and cover-design steps, so if you are unsure of doing these steps yourself or don't have the time, help is available for a fee of about $150-$300.
It is so easy to self-publish that a lot of poor work is appearing--this can mean work that is rough and needs revision and rethinking, but it can also mean work full of typographical errors, grammatical mistakes and other problems that an editor would quickly catch. Authors hurt only themselves and their own reputation by putting out work that isn't ready, so my advice is to use the self-publishing route only if you are certain your work is as good as it can be. I highly recommend a critique group or even professional editing. It is very hard to see your own mistakes--trust me.
However, if you think your short story is done, you like what you've written and are proud of it, self-publishing is an excellent way to get your work to readers. If you have a bunch of stories, consider publishing a collection. It is fun and the feeling of holding a completed book in your hand, one with Your Name on the cover, cannot be beat.
