Why are we chasing our short stories into the gutter?

[Bilinda Ní Siodacaín]

My thoughts on the race to the bottom and the state of the short fiction ebook market.

http://bilindanisiodacain.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-are-we-chasing-our-short-stories.html

Bilinda

[Shaun Jeffrey]

Yes, it's a tough call on pricing where short stories are concerned. I'm having the same issues wondering what to price the novellas I'm soon going to be releasing at. I don't think there's a definitive answer. People will pay if they want to read it, but if it's priced too high there might not be too many takers. Decisions, decisions. 

[CoraBuhlert]

I agree with you. My short stories are 99 cents, novelettes and novellas are 2.99 cents. I takes me time and work to write those stories and prepare them for publishing, I take care to make my books as good as they can possibly be and I think I deserve to be paid for that.

Very short stories (under 2000 - 2500 words) and flash fiction are either posted for free on my blog or bundled with other work, because I feel uncomfortable charging for very short fiction. But everything longer costs money.

I'm not a fan of 99 cents or even free as the price for a full length novel anyway, at least in the long term.

Good blog BTW

[Decon]

Hell, I can't even give away my FREE novelette, Amnesia of the heart, today, never mind charge for it. Only 15 so far in the US.

Sorry for that rant, the fact is that single stories are really hard to shift a 99c, but I have no trouble with my collection at $4.99. I would like to see Amazon give short stories a break and at least allow them to go for 49c. I agree that the 99c book price gives a distorted sense of value.

[Victoria J]

When I first started epublishing (June of 2011) I gave everything away. However, I didn't have a full length novel out back then either. What I've learned was surprising to me, though it may not surprise those with better business sense. One thing I am learning is that short stories seem to sell better in a collection than by themselves.

There are many people who do not appreciate things that are cheap or free and when they are accustomed to getting something for free they expect it to be free all of the time. The tremendous amount of work you've put in  to the book/product to bring it to them does not matter to those people. Even a short story can be a lot of work to write well. Why should it be free? There are a few short works that I continue to give away but my prices are trending upward these days and I will never give away a novel.

[Andrew Warwick]

I write mostly short stories/novelettes. I'd much prefer reading one over a novel any day of the week.  And yes, it can be a hard market for those of us who do go that way.

I generally compile them into a 2 to 3 story collection (which comes out at around 15-30K in length) and offer them at $0.99.  I am planning, when the various series get long enough, to further compile them in novel length collections of 8-10 stories and go for the $2.99 price.

Will I get rich writing short stories?  Doubtful, but it is what I love.  Then again I probably wouldn't get rich off novels either...

It can be a struggle going against $0.99 novels, but if a story is good, it can still shine.

[Laura Lond]

I completely agree, we work hard and we have the right to put a fair price tag on our work. Given the fact that more and more readers are coming to expect cheap or free books, it's not easy to sell our works for a fair price - I suppose that's why so many authors give up and price their books cheaper.

I'm finishing a short story right now that I thought to release at $0.99, but it has turned out into a nearly 20,000-word novella. I've spent months working on it. I'm going to price it $1.99.

[Feenix]

Hey there!

My shorts are priced at $1.49 while the shortest is at $1.29.

I design the story covers, so I want to think that I can make a few extra cents by doing that along with writing the fiction.

My novel, over 90k words, is at $3.99.

Dave King

[Doomed Muse]

I price anything over 7k words and up to 13k words at 1.99.  13k to 30k is 2.99. 30-60k or so would be 3.99 or 4.99 for me, over 60k is a novel in my mind and I price mine at 5.99 or 6.99 (depending on where it is in the series and what genre it is).

I keep my shorter stories at .99 usually though. Seems to be a price that works fine.

[Bilinda Ní Siodacaín]

You would think in this new age of publishing that short fiction could make a proper come back, but it can't as long as we keep undervaluing ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we need to price our work extravagantly but we should price it fairly and I really don't think $0.99 is a fair price (in my mind) for anything over 10,000 words. I know some won't agree with me, but if you are treating writing as a business and you are doing your utmost to give your readers the best possible product you can why not value your work and price accordingly. If we as writers cannot value our own work then how can we expect readers to value it?

Bilinda

[Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson]

You would think in this new age of publishing that short fiction could make a proper come back, but it can't as long as we keep undervaluing ourselves.

"A book of less than 300 pages is hardly worth picking up." So goes the one star review I recently received to one of my short stories. This is the kind of response I expect to see more of with the deluge of free novels raining from the sky. As for the race to the bottom, that's precisely what hurts the short story market. It's always going to be tough to sell short fiction at 99 cents in a market saturated with novels selling for the same price or less. Just another self-inflicted wound indie authors will have to deal with in the years to come. As mentioned above, one of the only ways to address this problem is to offer collections or to market your short works to readers who love short fiction.

[tkkenyon]

Yes, it's difficult to price a short story.

I have short stories for 99c, compilations for $1.99, and plan novels for $2.99. $3.99, and $4.99 price points.

Really, perfectly honestly, I understand frustration with the "race to the bottom" mentality, but the reality of the situation is that ebooks have a great drawback: you can neither lend nor borrow them.

I remember reading many years ago that the average mass market paperback book was read 6 times before it went to the dump. Hardbacks, more. I know that I purchased a minority of books that I read. My friends and I, when at each others' houses, perused each other's stacks and took home books. There was usually a perfunctory, "You mind if I borrow these?" involved.

That number, "6", is interesting.

Many mmpbs are priced around $5.99. $6/6 reads = $1 per read.

The most acceptable price for a non-lendable ebook for a lot of people is 99c.

I think that books that are available as mmpbs should be 99c, and I plan to price that way.

Trade paperbacks, usually priced around $12, should be $12/6 reads, or $1.99.

New issues, like hardbacks, should be $23.99/6 reads = $4, or $3.99.

Really excellent, large novels should be $29.99/6 reads = $5, or $4.99.

I think people are subconsciously doing that math, and I think that's why the price points have settled out at those numbers.

Short stories should, really, be 29c or 49c, at most. I wish Amazon would let us do that.

TK Kenyon

[Asher MacDonald]

Hell, I can't even give away my FREE novelette, Amnesia of the heart, today, never mind charge for it. Only 15 so far in the US.

Sorry for that rant, the fact is that single stories are really hard to shift a 99c, but I have no trouble with my collection at $4.99. I would like to see Amazon give short stories a break and at least allow them to go for 49c. I agree that the 99c book price gives a distorted sense of value.

The credit card processing fee would eat up a lot of that $0.49. It's really not viable. Maybe you sell two for $0.99?

I dunno -- if the marketplace is unwilling to pay for what you'd like to charge, not sure what you can do. The reality may be that a lot of good books for one reason or another won't sell. 

[Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson]

Short stories should, really, be 29c or 49c, at most. I wish Amazon would let us do that.

I actually think 99 cents is a great price for short stories. Sell enough of them and it becomes profitable and helps to supplement your income earned through the sales of your novels. Anything less would only exacerbate the devaluing of short fiction. As the OP mentioned on her blog, 99 cents is less than a cup of coffee. Why is that considered asking too much for a reader to pay to enjoy a piece of well written fiction?

[Krista D. Ball]

A question (which no one needs to answer) to those who DIY pub short fiction: how much short fiction have you bought before publishing? Did you have subscriptions to Asimov's? Did you religiously go to the library to read Analog? Did you get annoyed over the Realms of Fantasy troubles? How many anthologies had you purchased?

One of the things I've found is that those currently publishing short fiction have never been supporters of the form to begin with. It's a way to make a quick buck (ignoring that most of people these don't even know how to write short fiction). They don't understand how to price it because they've never bought it before.

As for earning potential of a short story, I have found selling it first somewhere and than DIYing later helps (from terms of editing of it, adding the former publication information, and the fact that you got paid for it!).

As for the race to the bottom, like Kevis said, it's just another way that DIYing shot themselves in the foot. 

[Doomed Muse]

Krista- I always send my short stuff to pro markets first. It's always nice to make a few hundred before self-pubbing.  Why would anyone write short fiction who doesn't like to read it? This baffles me. Of course, I'm also baffled by people who want to write fiction in genres they don't read.  But to each their own, I guess.

[J Dean]

My short stories, ironically, did quite well for downloads, but unfortunately they were all free

No more.  From now on they'll be priced, with the exception of flash fic.

[David 'Half-Orc' Dalglish]

Selling them alone might be tough, but collections do just fine, and are probably the best way to go about things.

[Doomed Muse]

For what it's worth, my individual short stories sell much better than my collections.

[Krista D. Ball]

Krista- I always send my short stuff to pro markets first. It's always nice to make a few hundred before self-pubbing.  Why would anyone write short fiction who doesn't like to read it? This baffles me. Of course, I'm also baffled by people who want to write fiction in genres they don't read.  But to each their own, I guess.

One of the biggest mistakes I see new-to-short-fiction authors making is never trying to sell at least some of their short fiction to market. I just got paid $60 for a short story I wrote start to finish in a lunch hour. I know I don't make $60/hr at my day job. It just seems logical and good business sense to make a chunk of money upfront, then DIY it later with the proceeds of the original sale. I still come out ahead, since I'm not going to spend $60 on a cover and I won't need an editor.

As for the short fiction, why does that surprise you? We've had a few authors on KB over the year I've been here say they don't like to read. Or, the people who want to write erotica because it's a quick buck (but have never actually read any erotica...and in a few cases, have never had sex).

As for writing in genres they don't read, I don't mind so much if you are writing something because you want to explore an aspect of the genre. Or, maybe you hate a lot of what's in the genre and want to try something new. I have a lot of tolerance for that, I admit.

[Krista D. Ball]

For what it's worth, my individual short stories sell much better than my collections.

And some genre short fiction sell a lot better than others. It's difficult to map out and say XYZ will sell X.

[Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson]

A question (which no one needs to answer) to those who DIY pub short fiction: how much short fiction have you bought before publishing? Did you have subscriptions to Asimov's? Did you religiously go to the library to read Analog? Did you get annoyed over the Realms of Fantasy troubles? How many anthologies had you purchased?

My books Pryde's Choice, The Grey Elk, and The Blue Witch spent years making their rounds to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and a laundry list of other short story magazines, e-zines, small presses, etc. They were rejected because the editors either thought them stylistically too old-fashioned or just not flashy enough for their readers. On the other hand, I got great feedback from those editors which I used to improve each one of them. So not only did I support the form by reading those magazines, in a way you could say my shorts were vetted through the submission process. By the time my shorts got into the hands of my editors, they were pretty polished. So I totally appreciate both the form and the work that goes into creating short fiction.

[ChadWilliamson]

Interesting conversation. As one of the newbies on here, it's interesting to find out what folks are doing with their short fiction. Like a couple of you, I always try to submit it to a pro market first (I haven't worked up to posting it as freebies or whatnot on here yet), mostly because it does take time to write and develop; the work involved in a good short story (or even a short story I write) is more than most people appreciate.

Now all of this idea goes out the door in a few months, though, when i put up the prequel novella for my YA series for free in hopes of piquing a little interest in the novels themselves.

[telracs]

Sorry, as a reader, I rarely if ever pay 99c for a single short story.  However, I will happily pay 4.99 for a bundle of 5.  It has nothing to do with the value of your writing, but more my perception of the investment of money versus time.  It takes me just as long to buy one short as an anthology, so I'd rather buy more at once.  Also, for me shorts are like potato chips, I rarely read one at time, so an bundled work or an anthology is better fills my appetite.

But as with all things, there are some people who will happily pay 99c or ever 1.99 for a single short, some people who will never pay that, and some who just wonder where the bar is.

[StephenLivingston]

Interesting blog Bilinda.  I too write short stories and I believe that a good short story is great value at only 99 cents.  I considered pricing mine at $2.99 (to take advantage of the better royalty rate) but didn't want to discourage new readers from trying them. My collection of twelve short stories "Kindling" is priced $5.99 and I believe it is very good value at that price.
Best wishes, Stephen Livingston.