I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but sadly as always, the answer is maybe.

Since I just put up my stories The Long Tour and Night Record on Kindle and Smashwords, it would be hypocritical of me to say no…but there are some traps and pitfalls that you need to be aware of before you start putting your short fiction up online.

1. The Shorter The Story, The Better It Has To Be

The minimum you can charge for anything on Amazon Kindle or Smashwords is 99 cents US. This might not seem like much, but considering the fact that you can get entire novels for 99 cents, your short story had better be good if it’s going to satisfy a reader.

This means you have to be very careful with your formatting, you grammar and spelling and you have to be quite sure you’ve got a good story on your hands. Get some other people to check your work, to give you honest feedback on what you’ve written. Remember that your story may end up on the Kindle of someone in the industry you’d quite like to impress, so it had better be the best you can do.

2. You Still Need A Proper Cover

The need for a professional looking cover is something self publishing gurus have been on about for awhile now. Nothing screams “bad story” like a bad cover. It’s not fair, but people really do judge a book by its cover.

They’ll judge your short story too. They’ll judge it hard.

For some reason a lot of short stories and novellas go up on Amazon with covers that look like were designed by an enthusiastic marmoset.

Marmosets are not known for their artistic ability.

I can’t draw, not even stick figures. I have no graphic design skills. Realising my limitations I got the spectacularly awesome Rebecca Treadway to design my covers for me. She did it quickly and well and for a very reasonable price. Even if I don’t break even on selling the stories, having Rebecca’s covers on there is still worth it present a professional image.

If you’re interested in hiring Rebecca you can find her rates here.

3. You Might Not Sell Any

Short fiction is a tough sell online. As I said above for 99 cents someone can buy a full novel, so convincing them to invest in your short fiction can be hard. With that said, the same marketing principles apply to short fiction that apply to longer works.

Word of mouth is king, if you get enough people loving your short fiction it won’t matter that it’s not a 400,000 word magnum opus. A good cover will help with promoting your work, and the more stories you have available to sell, the more you will sell of each one.

4. You Must, MUST, Tell Readers That It’s A Short Story

I’ve already said it can be hard to get people to shell out for short stories, but that is far preferable to annoying potential readers by failing to mention that what you’re selling is a quick bite instead of a full meal.

Makes sure that the words “short story” appear both on the cover and in the description so your readers will know what they’re getting.

5. Be Prepared For Feedback

It’s much easier to judge a short story than it is a novel, simply because it’s shorter. If someone doesn’t like your novel they may just put it down without finishing it, or they may finish it without deciding to leave comments on your Amazon page.

Short stories are different. Someone can read it and comment on it within the same hour. This is great if they like your stuff, but if they don’t you need to be prepared for them to say so.

You can’t challenge bad reviews, no matter how tempting, or how unreasonable the review. To do so makes you look petty. A lot of authors refuse to comment on reviews at all, and to me that seems like the best policy. There are ways to comment without making yourself look silly but no matter what; if you comment on a review, good or bad, you’re taking a risk.

Do you think you’ll self publish any short fiction? Do you have any for sale at the moment? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll pick a commenter at random and send them a copy of The Long Tour and Night Record.

A bus takes a group of tourists on a bus ride through hell, what could go wrong?

When Robert Marsh buys a tape recorder from ebay, he intends to record his late night story ideas, but when he plays the tape back in the morning he hears that his night contained more than he could have ever imagined.

 But it helps.

 I first heard the advice about short stories in Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing. Inside, King suggests that budding novelists strive to get short fiction published to give them a leg up on their competition.

 After spending far too much time online I can tell you that this advice still holds true in some ways. While no agent is going to ever turn away an excellent manuscript because the author hasn’t been published in the short story ezines, it will make your query stand out amongst the other thousand queries the agent has seen that day.

 There are some other benefits too.

 For one it gives you practice at finishing projects, and this is an important skill to have. It also forces you to practice your craft away from the comfort zone of your main manuscript.

 It also gives you plenty of practice submitting, querying and dealing with rejection.

 So even if you only spend an hour a week writing short fiction instead of long, it will be an hour well spent. Who knows, one day you may be able to print a collection of short stories and sell them for cash money.*

 I’ve mentioned this before, but if you want to read a good example of what a book of short stories should be, then you can’t go wrong with man/beard hybrid Chuck Wendig’s Irregular Creatures. It’s three bucks, and it’s a worthy investment.

 Do you write short stories? Let me know in the comments.

 * Beats selling body parts.

Things are actually pretty darn good. For one thing, I’m getting married. I got engaged to my girlfriend DJ, who’s put up with me for coming up on eight years now, last weekend. We’re also about to buy a house.

I also sold a short story Extra Virgin to an e-zine called Forever Nocturne. The zine itself is only a dollar for the PDF, and if you buy it not only do you get to hear about my virgin eating protagonist Sarah (she hangs out at comic conventions a lot) you also get a whole load of other short stories and poems all along the theme of things that go bump in the night…sometimes they don’t wear much while they’re bumping…

Ahem.

Anyway you can get Forever Nocturne’s March 2010 Edition here. It also includes the excellent short story “Campy” by Carrie Clevenger. That’s worth far more than a dollar right there.

How about an impromptu competition? Comment on this post and I’ll do a draw in 48 hours. If I draw your name out of a hat, I’ll buy you a copy.

Hopefully coming soon will be my rundown on the Neil Gaiman speaking engagement I went to, and an awesome interview with Philippa Ballantine (who is a pimp, just in case you were wondering).

The story that’s on there at the moment, Jack’s Echo (nothing to do with my last name, it just happens to be the main characters first name), was written for a one day story competition with a 1500 word limit. We had to include four random elements given to us on the day. I got mine in early, only to realize I’d missed one of the fairly vital instructions on the entry form.

Let this be a lesson to everyone, don’t spend six hours writing and two seconds reading the entry form.