An idea for writers with short stories

[Christopher]

I was just typing up a description of my future plans for my empi--er, my book series, when this idea hit me, and I wonder how feasible it would be as a business model and a promotion technique. Surely there must be other people in a similar position.

See, I'm planning a series detective; currently, I have a draft-stage novel up on Inkshares, but I also have a number of short stories featuring the same detective hero, all sitting in my hard drive and being submitted one by one to magazines. I would like eventually to also publish the short stories in an anthology.

My idea is this: part of the point of getting the short stories out is to promote the longer work. They're like the excerpts that we post, but they're also complete in themselves, and they can be sold. What if they could be published individually, like music singles? Electronically only, I think; no need for cover art or physical imprints or bookstore distribution, but with the full force of the marketing and editing that goes into a fully-funded novel. Eventually, they can be put together into an anthology, and the anthology treated like a standard Inkshares project--though of course, all the editing is already done, so we can skip that step. By then, the author should have a pretty wide readership, and the anthology (and accompanying full-length novel) should sell a lot more easily.

What do people think?

(I admit I have no idea what goes into marketing a work (which is why I so desperately need a publisher) so I don't know how feasible it would be to market a short story. I also think such a plan might require that the author have most, if not all, of their short stories written and ready before moving forward.)

[Phil]

Hey Christopher, at the beginning of this year I started writing and illustrating a series of short stories as well. My eventual plan is to collect them in a short story anthology. I'm approaching it as me building a short story collection, but instead of sitting on them as I write them, I publish them online. It's a simple wordpress blog, nothing too fancy, just as a way of getting the work out there and hopefully building some type of audience who will appreciate a printed book of the material. It's basically the webcomics model, or possibly along the lines of an album whose singles are used as promotion on the radio to get people to buy the record.

Not sure, but I'm also thinking of the possibility of including supplemental material in the book like concept art, unused illustrations, and possibly an unpublished story so that even everyone who has read everything I publish online will get something new.

I'm trying to figure it out too, so we'll see how this all plays out.

[Christopher]

Phil, the funny thing is that I'd decided that I would, today, put out a short story on Wattpad in the name of ... well, exactly what you said. I figure that Wattpad has browsing users who might stumble on it on their own power; and I can also redirect from a blog to Wattpad, whereas I don't think I'm allowed to redirect from Wattpad to a blog, outside of the website link on my profile.

The idea of supplemental material in the eventual published anthology is a great idea. I know that published webcomics often have that sort of additional material to attract readers. I don't know what I personally can add, right now, but I'm sure I'll think of something!

[Christopher]

And it is now up on Wattpad: "The Adventure of the Oxford Comma" a short and complete Eric Peterkin mystery.

[Thomas]

Other than submitting to magazines I would think putting them out through KDP could be workable.