Promote Your Books with Short Stories and E-book Singles

Both indie and mainstream authors have discovered a powerful promotional tool: short fiction.  From Stephen King to aspiring authors, writers are tapping into greater sales potential by giving readers samples of their prose and genre by writing short fiction in the range of 25 to 50 pages (and sometimes slightly longer).

Not only does a reader get to sample a writer's work, but the author can also create short stories around existing characters in his or her published novels, whether stand-alone or those that are part of a series.  This marketing strategy not only gives an author greater exposure and additional royalties, but publishing short fiction, such as Kindle Singles, enables writers to provide backstory for characters that might disrupt the flow of a novel-length works.  Such stories make characters more three-dimensional, believable, and leave the reader wanting to know more about the people they fall in love with in the pages of novels.  If a reader hasn't read the novels yet, however, these short stories can serve as teasers that are as effective (if not more so) than ad copy or jacket blurb.

When an author publishes a "single," Amazon and other sellers will recommend the author's other works more frequently.  It is free and highly successful targeted advertising courtesy of Amazon's algorithms, and when you kick-start Amazon's algorithms, good things happen.  You pull in new readers who become hungry for more of your work.

The bottom line is that short fiction that uses established characters or demonstrates an author's genre, style, locations, or backstory from a novel develops and reinforces a writer's brand.

~William Hammett

Contact: wmhammett@aol.com

Short Fiction

I grew up reading the short stories of Arthur C. Clarke.  Short story collections still exist, but most authors who write short fiction do so for literary journals.  Short stories don't reach the larger reading public to the degree that they used to.

Writing short fiction takes a lot of talent and discipline.  One must work on a smaller canvas, and that means plot, characterization, and pacing have to click off with great precision.  Most great writers from decades past began by writing short stories, and I am left wondering if so many very successful writers today have rambling, poorly constructed plots because they never cut their teeth on short fiction.  Maybe they simply haven't put in the hard work and discipline that it takes to write a really great short story.

Short stories were generally practiced by authors of literary fiction, and with literary fiction falling into the midlist (with notable exceptions), short fiction may be suffering because fewer writers wish to explore these traditional waters.  And then there are the millions of aspiring writers who want to pen the blockbuster novel.  They want to write thrillers and haul in millions of dollars.  They have tunnel vision and don't want to learn their craft and pay their dues.

It's a pity more people don't spend time writing short stories.  A real pity.

~ William Hammett 

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