Carmella Borchers

Selling Short Stories and Novellas

Is there a market for short stories and novellas? Find out how you can sell shorts.

There is a myth in the publishing industry that short stories & novellas don’t sell. Many writers give up great ideas and sometimes abandon writing itself because they struggle to write a full length novel. But is there a market for short stories or novellas?

Flash fiction, short stories, novelettes and novellas are different terms to describe the word counts of fictional works. However a majority of these terms haunt writers, especially those who are not published. Many times in order to increase word counts writers add unnecessary ‘fluff’ and descriptive prose to reach the status of a novel. Erotic Books are a perfect example of this case. In erotica everything has to be fast paced, the story, plot, characters and the sex scenes have to keep the readers reading and involved. Every single word needs to be important, otherwise the reader will simply lose interest in the book rather quickly. Many romance and erotic writers add unnecessary elements to reach higher word count which kills the entire book.

But why do authors add fluff? Because they simply don’t want to write a novella or a short story out of fear that people won’t buy them. This is a myth and sadly this myth is killing great potential books. Authors should realize and learn from bloggers or print magazines. Your readers are paying for quality not quantity. Quality shouldn’t be compromised to reach a falsified and broad status in terms of quantity. If you can say something in one paragraph, then you should do so, rather than dragging things out for several pages without necessity. Nobody wants to read a book where nothing interesting happens in entire chapters.

However the same is not true in all cases, humor, mystery and Romance Books for example can satisfy a reader even if it is a short or a novella. The rule of thumb is to avoid adding fluff. Always get to the point, show rather than tell and keep the readers involved. Short stories and novellas do sell. Price and quality are the two indicators you can use to find out if your book will sell or not. Writers that find success in short story or novella writing often write them as part of a series. This means once you have 2-3 novellas from the same series, then you could easily compile them into a full length book and sell for a higher price. Creating series of novellas or short stories is also a profitable venture in many cases. If your readers liked the first story that you wrote, then very often they will remember you as a top quality author and will want to read more content produced by you. When you are ready to release the next novella, they will be jumping with excitement at the prospect of reading it. So the golden rule here is: quality and not quantity!

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Article Tags: Short Stories

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