Is Audio Fiction Breathing New Life Into Short Stories?

I've said this several times over the years on this blog, but selling short stories is a Herculean task. Whether it's doing digital marketing for titles I've been involved with, or hand-selling books at a convention, it is hard as hell to find people who are willing to check out these books. One of the only successes I've had in this regard is From A Cat's View: An Anthology of Stories Told By Cats, but it's sort of the exception that proves the rule (since everyone loves cats).

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.

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, which wound up over on The A.L.I.C.E. Files YouTube channel.

Alternatively, consider the below 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, the two of them combined have amassed hundreds of views (and a few thousand views back when they were hosted on a different platform).

 

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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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

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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"The Rejects" is My New Release For 2020 (and You Should Totally Check It Out!)

2019 was an extremely busy year for me, as a creator. I started the Great Reshuffling, where I started moving and re-homing old articles of mine to my Vocal archive, which is a process that should be done in the next few months for those who've been following along. I had several RPG products released onto the market (at least 1-2 a month, if I'm being accurate), such as the Dungeons and Dragons module The Curse of Sapphire Lake, as well as working hard on 100 Kinfolk: A Werewolf The Apocalypse Project. I took on several short-term writing contracts, I judged a fiction competition for the first time in my career, attended a few conventions, and finished off a manuscript for a new novel.

However, it's been a hot minute since I released my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife last year, so I wanted to make sure my readers had something new from me to start the year off right. So this past summer I started putting together a unique collection of short stories that I like to call... The Rejects!

Come on... you know you're curious.

What is "The Rejects"?

Folks who've followed my career know that I've written a lot of short stories over the past dozen years or so of my life. For a while I was putting out 1-2 a month, on top of running blogs, handling freelance assignments, etc., and I had a fairly steady acceptance rate of around 80 percent or so for several years.

However, that still meant that roughly 20 percent of my stories came back to me.

Yeah, that math checks out.

Some of those stories eventually found homes with other publishers in fresh calls, but a lot of the ones I'd written kept getting cut for length, or being not quite right for the publishers I sent them to. One tale in particular, Dressing The Flesh (which you can read part of in the book's free sample) had a terminal case of, "Always a bridesmaid, but never a bride."

After a fresh consult with my beta readers, and deciding that I still loved these stories, I figured it was time to take matters into my own hands.

But what kinds of stories are actually in this book? Well, as someone whose tastes and writing projects have been all over the genre spectrum, I can say that the only really unifying themes are that these are stories I've written, and they were all rejected at least once before they wound up here. There's horror, science fiction, steampunk, thrillers, fantasy (traditional as well as modern), a weird Western, a ghost story, and many more.

In addition to genre, though, this collection boasts:

- A love-lorn ifrit
- A troll that eats child molesters
- The second story ever published in my Chicago Strange setting
- Several flavors of vengeance
- Two short stories inspired by gaming projects
- Two short stories about metahumans that are from opposite ends of the tonal spectrum

In short, it's a bag of trail mix! There might be some parts of it you like more than others, but if you've been a fan of my work thus far then I have a feeling you won't find too much to complain about if you dip a hand in, and scoop up some stories!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

In Case You're Wondering, Novels Really Are Easier To Sell

I love reading short stories. I've always enjoyed the art form, and I treated both collections and anthologies as a kind of sampler platter. Which is to say, they were the thing I checked out when I wasn't sure what I liked in a genre, or when I wanted a lot of different flavors by the time I closed the back cover. These books were often how I found new authors, and how I explored new aspects of genres I liked. That was why I started writing short fiction; I figured it would give people a sample of my work so they could decide if they liked it or not.

Then I wrote a novel. And let me tell you, the difference in selling these two very different products is like night and day.

"So this is my fantasy novel-" Great, I'll take two.

People Really Like Novels (While Shorts Remain A Tough Sell)

For folks who haven't been by My Amazon Author Page lately, I've been a part of a lot of short story anthologies over the years. I've also released my own collection of steampunk noir shorts, titled New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam. From fantasy and sci-fi, to horror and romance, short story anthologies have been universally difficult for me to sell. That is not to say that they don't sell, of course, but you really need to have your pitch down perfect to get people to take a bite on a bunch of shorts. And even then, you're more likely to get them to take a card than you are to close a sale.

By contrast, I released a sword and sorcery novel last year titled Crier's Knife. And you know something? It is a lot easier to get people to buy copies of this book than any short story collection with my name in it.

Speaking of, go buy your copy today!

To be clear, I am not selling gangbusters. But in my experience, both online and in-person, novels hook more potential readers (and buyers) than short stories do. Especially because, with an anthology, someone tends to get entire stories with their sample. With a novel you only get a few chapters, which is enough to draw you in, but not enough to satisfy you. When you combine that with the fact that readers seem to enjoy long-form fiction, it's just easier to convince people to check out your book if it tells a single story, and has a bit of heft to it.

I'm not the only author who's noticed this phenomenon. Jason Sanford talked about it on his blog in the post Should Authors Avoid Short Stories if They Desire Literary Success? In this post he brought up something interesting... mainly that we don't consume our fiction the way we used to. Which is to say that in the old days we got our sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. mainly from magazines. They were all over the place, and they were paying big money to fill their pages. So much so that many writers would use short stories to pay their bills while they completed novels, thus making it seem that you should write short stories to build your audience and start stacking checks, and then release a novel to cash in. Then, as novels began to grow more common in new and burgeoning genres, they became the main meat for readers, and short stories became a kind of side dish.

In today's Internet age, magazines are niche publications. While there are lots of digital places where short stories are more than welcome, collections tend to move minimal copies unless the people in them are already famous, and have a following eager to gobble up any new content from them. And while you can do well with novellas (at least according to some metrics), short stories still tend to fall into the bottom of the barrel most of the time when it comes to sales.

There's A Market For Everything

Now, does that mean you can't make money writing short stories? Of course not! You totally can. Writing for open anthology calls can make you semi-regular paychecks, get your name out there, and help you build both your network and your readership. It pads your archive of work, and helps draw more people to you.

However, if you had the option of spending a year putting together a collection of short stories, or a year working on a novel, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck out of the novel. Whether you're bringing it to readings, trying to move copies at a convention, or just doing online link sharing, a novel will almost always score higher, all other things being equal.

Just something to think about.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing installment. For more work by yours truly, check out my Vocal archive. Also, I'm on Pinterest now, so come take a look at my boards where you'll be able to find all kinds of fun stuff! To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

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Sell More Books By Choosing The Right Anthology or Collection Theme

My long-time readers know two things about me; I've got a healthy amount of experience with anthologies, and I like to sell books. Getting into anthologies is a lot easier than selling them though, mostly because you need something unique to get them out of your inventory and into the hands of your readers. Maybe it's a bundle deal with a more popular book, an awesome book cover designed by a famous artist, a Big Name who contributed a short story, or another gimmick entirely.

Holding readers at gunpoint is certainly different, but not in the way you're looking for.

One unique selling point that a lot of writers overlook when it comes to anthologies as well as single-author short story collections is the theme. If you can hook readers with a theme they haven't heard before you'll get them to read your sample. Once they've dipped a toe in you're that much closer to snapping up another sale.

Dare to be Different

Since folks like examples here's one that's hot off the presses.

Seriously, go take a look inside!

What you're looking at is my latest release, and the first book I've never had to share with other contributors. New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam contains 10 steampunk noir stories, each of which is connected by a single theme. Is it romance? Tragedy? The corrupt heart of the clockwork city that drinks the blood and souls of those who dig too deep?

It's all of those things, but specifically the book acts as a guided tour of New Avalon.

From the steam-shrouded souk of the Grates to the concrete bunkers of Cranktown, from the soupy, rotting alleys of the Gutters to the misty quays of Headsman's Wharf every story takes the reader by the hand and leads them on a district-by-district journey. Readers see the possible and the impossible, meet residents of the city, but more than that they see New Avalon's many faces. From the miraculous to the monstrous there's something for every reader in this book.

Assuming of course you aren't a fan of happy endings?

Know What You're Selling (Preferably Before You Write It)

Anthologies and collections are similar to other books in one way; it's easier to sell them if you know your market before you start. If you're writing a horror story for example, who are you appealing to? Will the latest hordes of zombie fans want to devour it? Will it be the latest fad among the vampire sect? Are you appealing to old-style fans of shows like The Twilight Zone and Tales From The Crypt?

While there's no need to pigeonhole your project before you even open up a blank word document, you need to think about what selling points it has. Returning to our above example, New Avalon has several fulcrums I can lever to get it into the hands of fans. Those include:

- Noir Steampunk: While the genre is no stranger to mysteries and detectives something that's more Sam Spade and less Sherlock Holmes is something that turns readers' heads.

- No Happy Endings: It's right there in black and white in the introduction, which I think of as the user-agreement for this book. New Avalon is a place happy endings go to die, so for those who find catharsis in tragedy this is definitely a book for them.

- Guided Tour: As mentioned the book's stories are all separate, but they are used to paint a picture of a single place. This can give it a serialized feel not unlike Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City. While stories may intersect like gears in a watch, none of them know what the others are doing.

- Single Author Collection: One of the big hurdles when you're trying to sell a multi-author collection is that even if someone likes your work they're only getting one of your stories. This book offers multiple tales, but they were all penned by the same hand. If you're putting together an anthology though you'd want to get several well-known authors to make the book feel like a safer bet.

- Free Sample: Not sold yet? Check it out and read the first two stories for free!

Do I Need To Do All That?

That depends, are you selling as many books as you want to?

If you're reading my blog then we both know the answer to that question.

Some authors will get lucky their first time out. If you look at the news it seems like all some authors had to do was get one influential person to see their book and bam! overnight bestseller! Whether it was a viral send off on social media, or just the spirit of the zeitgeist taking hold they happened to write a winning ticket.

For most of us (and even most of the authors who look like they hit it big overnight) that isn't how it works. We write blogs, participate in community forums, guest post, get reviews, find guest slots on podcasts, try to catch the attention of local media, set up signings, and go to tons and tons of events. And because every yutz with a computer and Internet access can become an author that means there are hundreds of thousands more books out there for you to compete with. If you're peddling short stories you're already at something of a disadvantage, which is why you need to try and turn that weakness into a strength by finding a way to sell it.

Also, May is National Short Story Month! Use that as a crowbar if you can, and see how many doors you pry open with it.

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