Why You Should Publish a Short Story In-Between Novels
The winning cover on FB
I was in a quandary. Book #1 in my fantasy series came out last year. Book #2 came out earlier this month and I’m deep in the edits for an adult thriller that I’m hopefully going to launch in January or February. But what do I do in the meantime?Besides social media and promoting the heck out of the books, I was advised to publish a short story to Amazon. The results would do many things. It would boost the amount of titles I have on Amazon and boost my search statistics. In addition, I could use the short stories to promote the other books by including excerpts and links in the back of the file.
I hadn’t thought of that idea and jumped at the chance to try it out. I had a YA science fiction tale, THE SUN AND THE STAR, that had been published in an anthology that is now out of print and rights had been returned to me. So, that book had already been professionally edited. I simply updated the dates and changed some character names.Then I was going to pay for a professional cover, but I decided to try my hand at making one myself on Amazon’s Cover Creator. I made two and then appealed to Facebook by doing a poll, asking my followers which one they liked better. (thus increasing my activity on FB analytics, as well as engaging my readers). Then, rather than paying someone to format the short story for me, I learned to do it myself, uploaded it myself and priced it at $0.99. Lastly, since this is a YA tale about young love, I included an excerpt from THE WORLD OF KAROV, specifically highlighting a scene about two teenagers in love–and then included the link to buy the book.
This endeavor cost me nothing but time and now I have a great little short story up on Amazon with a very cool cover. Only advice? Make the short story meaty. I’ve heard readers feel short-changed if you give them a flash fiction piece and make them pay for it. I’d recommend a story over 4K at the least. (just my two cents) If you’d like to grab your copy to see how it came out, please see below:
THE SUN AND THE STAR:
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/172kooL
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1bDY9Ff
I’d like to thank Dana Beth Weinberg for the great idea! She’s a social scientist whose newest project is exploring the experiences and careers of writers during this incredible digital revolution. She can be reached at http://www.danabethweinberg.com (don’t think I won’t be hitting her up for more awesome ideas! 
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