However, while my personal experience is that fewer and fewer people are interested in sitting down and reading short fiction, it seems like more and more people are actively seeking short audio stories... which is an interesting opportunity for folks who enjoy creating short stories, but who may be telling them in the wrong format to get the numbers they need.
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| Because who doesn't want to hear a good story? |
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Listeners Instead of Readers?
Several years ago I put out a short story collection titled The Rejects, which was a gathering of all the short stories I'd written that I felt were quality pieces of work, but which had never gotten picked up by an anthology open call. While I've personally sold several dozen copies by hand, and moved a fair number digitally, the book has only managed to garner 7 reviews (positive reviews, but only 7 of them). It's got a handful of fans who've told me they've enjoyed it, but it hasn't made that much of a splash.
Now consider the audio version of Dead Man's Bluff, one of the stories found in the collection that I've dramatized.
For those who haven't checked it out, this weird Western short story tells the tale of the itinerant gambler James Garnett, and him playing a hand of cards with a ghost from his past. The audio has garnered about 1,500 unique views, and I can say for a fact that is far more than the number of people who have even heard of the book it came from.
And that's not the only time this has happened.
Consider the above story, Suffer The Children. A dark, modern fantasy tale of an Old Testament bruiser in the City of Angel, Malachi is on a quest to save a child from the fires of Moloch, and to send a message to the brazen bull's followers that there are rules even in a place as corrupt as Los Angeles. While not quite as popular as the weird Western, it's garnered about 1,200 unique views, which is (once again) far more than the number of eyeballs that have even seen the book the stories come from, much less read any of the words out of it.
Now, it should be mentioned that the audio versions of these stories are free to listen to, while the book itself costs money to buy. However, even with all the giveaways I've done for the collection, I've never had that many people take me up on getting a free copy of the stories. I've shared the links to both in the same venues, and I've put the same marketing behind both of them, and overall people seem far more willing to check out the audio than they are the text version of my short stories.
Why People Listen Instead of Read
Reading a book, whether it's short stories or novels, is an activity that requires one to put their full attention into things. Whether you're sitting on a couch, on your lunch break, or tucked into a spot on a train or a bus, reading a book is something you actively do, and it takes your eyes and hands to do it. However, most people who listen to audio books do so while they're actively working on something else. Whether it's walking on the treadmill, going for a jog, cleaning up around the house, painting miniatures, doing data entry at work, driving somewhere... situations where someone cannot actually use their hands to hold a book, or their eyes to scroll the page.
While some listeners will still prefer novels for these scenarios, there seem to be quite a lot of listeners out there who are looking for something bite-sized to get them through a particular activity. Sometimes listeners just want tales of a particular genre, sometimes they want a series they can pick up at any point and enjoy (such as the various SCP podcasts and freak-of-the-week horror casts where one can come in on nearly any episode), and sometimes they want a full narrative series that plays out in multiple seasons following the same characters through their adventures. However, whatever format of story folks seem to prefer, and whatever genre it is they like, short fiction seems to be far more enjoyed by the listening crowd than the reading one.
Does that mean you can't still sell short stories in their traditional print format? No, of course not. However, consider the fact that the original short story of mine The Final Lamentation got a few hundred reads, while the audio drama of the story is at 169K views at time of writing.
Something to think about.
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That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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