Many authors write the occasional short story, but because of their length, may not want to sell them as a single item.
A short story collection is a great way to release some shorts with a word count that makes the price reasonable.
Creating a short story collection is a little different from creating a traditional novel, so here are a few things to consider:
● Collection theme. It’s
good to have a general theme for the collection. That helps ground
readers in what they’re getting and solidifies the reason the stories
are together. A tagline that expresses the gist of your theme can also
help quickly sum up the collection in potential readers’ minds. For
example, if your collection theme is mysteries, you could use a tagline
like, “Mysteries to keep you up all night.” If the theme is cozy
mysteries, maybe you use something like, “Cozy up for a night of
intrigue.”
● Introductions & TOCs.
An introduction is often appropriate for collections. It only has to be
about a paragraph and should let the reader know the general theme of
the collection. While some people don’t believe a table of contents is
necessary in novels, I think a short story collection should have one.
TOCs let readers know all the stories in the collection. They also allow
readers to easily pick a story they want to start with. If that’s the
way they like to read collections, they should easily be able to get to
the story they want to read first.
● Story order. While
this may seem insignificant, story order does matter. You want to lead
with one of your strongest stories, one that readers will devour so
quickly they’ll want to keep reading all the rest. Of course, all the
titles in the collection should be good, but it’s important to start
strong. In looking at short story collections for sale on Amazon, many
collections’ one-star reviews indicated the first story the reviewer
read was poor. On one collection I saw, a 4-star reviewer noted implored
others to give the collection a chance because it starts off weakly.
That’s not what any author wants. Saving the best for last doesn’t work
in books, because readers tend not to wait that long. (I know I
mentioned skippers earlier, but for every person who likes to skip
around there’s another who likes to start at the beginning and move to
the end.)
● Book Description.
Because it’s a collection of stories, you can’t write the typical linear
narrative you would craft for a novel description. Short story
collection descriptions vary in method, but the first thing you’ll want
to do is start with your theme. This is where your tagline can come in
handy. Then, provide a few sentences that describe some of the tales in
the collection. If you have 25 stories, you can’t describe them all.
Pick a few. Some collections list the title of all the stories in the
bottom part of the product description (mainly when there are multiple
authors); others choose to leave that information to the book’s Table of
Contents.
● Cover. As always,
check to see what other covers look like for your genre. Romance
collections look different from horror. People have varying opinions on
this, but I think it’s important to say it’s a short story collection on
the cover. Readers should look at the description, but sometimes they
don’t. It’s best to avoid confusion with a little clarity on the cover.
● Promoting Your Other Work.
One thing marketers suggest is to promote your other work at the end of
your book. One way is to put an excerpt from another novel at the end
of the newest work. With short story collections, you have to make an
extra assessment before deciding if and how much of an excerpt to
provide. If the short story collection is very short, you’ll probably
want to include as minimal an excerpt as possible or no excerpt. While
writers like to promote the excerpt as “bonus material,” readers
sometimes feel cheated if half the length of the ebook is an excerpt
from another work. The longer your collection is, the more comfortable
you can feel adding a short opening chapter from one of your other
novels at the end. The shorter your collection, the more you may want to
think about it.
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