(How To) Publishing Short Stories

I have found myself in a quandary, and as always, who better to turn to that your good selves.

When I first bought my kindle, I expected to be downloading full books; novels, to read. While I found this to be the case, I also notice that there are a lot of short stories being developed, and uploaded onto site for free or in some cases $0.99. I am talking about stories as low as 7,000 words.

This stuck me as odd, it is clearly a by-product of the Indie publishing revolution, because I cannot recall seeing bookshops carrying 7,000 word books (outside of the children’s fiction that is). What has me confused is where the point is behind it.

I have a host of short stories written, which I have roughly shaped into two anthologies. One is 70k and the other is 60k. Judging by the trend I have seen, I  could easily split this further into 4 anthologies, and then maybe only two or perhaps 1 print edition (ala Books of Blood by Clive Barker – collections I-III and IV-VI)

However, this just doesn’t sit all too comfortably with me. I guess the real confusion for me is if I am holding on to some semi-archaic view on publishing and short stories, or has the self publishing community taken a step too far with this tactic?

I can understand the idea behind giving away short stories, and wouldn’t charge more than 99 cents for mine anyway, but should I be thinking about breaking them down into 4 collections of, say, 30k words? Is that more suitable to the current e-reader market?

I really do not know which way I should turn, and so I am turning the floor over to you, my faithful readers…