← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Writing And Selling Short Stories With Douglas Smith
01:00:39
How can you use short stories to improve your writing craft across different genres? How can you make money from licensing your short stories in different ways? How do you structure a short story collection? Douglas Smith shares his tips.
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- [00:01]
Joanna Penn
Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 794 of the podcast and it is Saturday 8th February 2025. As I record this in today's show, I'm talking to Douglas Smith about writing and selling short stories, how writing shorts can improve your craft, why Doug recommends pitching traditional markets for short stories, although he does self publish his novels. How to get paid for shorts and what are the different kinds of rights you can license, how to structure a collection and more. So that's coming up in the Interview section in Writing and Publishing Things. A welcome announcement from Simon and Schuster. As reported by the Guardian, Sean Manning, publisher of Simon and Schuster's flagship imprint in the us has written an essay for Publishers Weekly explaining that as of this year, he will no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books. He says expecting authors, agents and editors to secure blurbs can create an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent. Now, I love this. As indie authors, we don't really do blurbs and it's quite freeing when you realise you don't have to do that. So that's great that many traditionally published authors won't need to do that. And there are quotes from from a number of authors who basically like, oh, I'm so pleased this is going away. And of course, the publisher of Simon and Schuster did say if a writer reads a book because they want to, not because they feel beholden and comes away so moved by it that they can't resist offering an endorsement. We will be all too happy to put it to use. And I have done some blurbs and they really have been reading books because I enjoy them. But I know a lot of traditionally published authors are sort of sent books every week with blurb this, blurb this. So this is a really interesting move and it certainly I feel like it levels the playing field in a better way for indie authors. Also, some very exciting news about the Author Nation conference. James Patterson will be headlining the press release says James Patterson, the world's top selling author and visionary who revolutionized the author entrepreneur model, will deliver the keynote address at Author Nation 2025 and Sign Books at the sister event Reader Nation. This historic convergence marks the first time Patterson will share his groundbreaking business strategies with the next generation of authorpreneurs at publishing's largest and most forward thinking conference. The next decade of publishing won't be defined by traditional versus independent. It will be defined by authors who think like entrepreneurs, said Joe Solari, Managing Director of authorn. James Patterson was the original authorpreneur. His decision to speak at Author Nation validates what our community has known the future of publishing belongs to authors who master both craft and business. In his keynote, Patterson will share his revolutionary approach to building a sustainable writing business through strategic partnerships. And of course he uses a lot of co writing and collaboration, also creating innovative content delivery systems, developing multiple revenue streams through cross genre expansion and mastering the art of scalable storytelling. If I didn't already have a ticket, I would get a ticket to go to this. And if you notice that this very much is pitching the conference at authors who want to think like entrepreneurs rather than trad versus indie. So this is really going to change things. I feel this is going to open up Author Nation to a lot more people. You can get your ticket at Authornation live. And yes, Vegas is tough for introverts and every time I go I'm like, I'm never going back. But it is so worth going to this conference for many reasons. If you want to run a business as an author, if, if writing is a hobby for you, I don't think it's a good conference for you. But if you want to run a business as a writer, then I think it's good now, even if you don't think James Patterson is a, in quotation marks, good writer. Because some people are very snobby about James Patterson in the same way that many people are quite snobby about things like romance. But basically he is the top, the best selling, most loved author in the world. And in fact I was in Waterstones in Piccadilly, London which is one of the biggest bookstores. I don't know if it's in the world, but it's, it's a huge bookstore and I went to the thriller section and there were like four shelves of James Patterson books. He had the most real estate there and of course there were people browsing and they were picking up his books and I was like, damn James Patterson, he's the man. I also love his masterclass on masterclass.com with him. Brilliant. Really, really good. And I've read a couple of his books and the pace is incredible. I absolutely respect the man in so many ways. So I would be going if I didn't already have a ticket. And I really hope I will get to speak because I do think that they will be upping their game. We definitely do have a Patreon meetup though. I have that confirmed. The first thing we do at that Patreon meetup is we get into kind of genre huddles. I force you to talk to other people who write in a similar genre so you can meet people. And that is on the Tuesday morning of the conference so you won't feel so alone. And several people said that was useful to them because they didn't know anyone before they came. So we will do that. And then I basically answer questions for patrons. So that is happening. That is November. I know it's a way off, but I have a feeling the ticket sales are going to spike with the James Patterson announcement. So that is Author Nation live now. James Paterson will also be signing at the Reader Nation event. And if you haven't been to one of these before, it's a sort of massive. It's a conference centre hall with loads of tables with authors on. I don't know how many were there last year, but I walked around it and there had to be hundreds of them. But he will clearly bring people in. If you buy a ticket, you can be part of that signing as well. And I learned a lot from looking at the different stalls and on this topic, the Novel Marketing podcast has an interview about how to sell books from a table with Sarah Hickner and this is a great interview. It also has a transcript with pictures which I suggest you at least have a look at. They go through how to draw people over to your table if they are walking past. What to do for giveaways, what to do visually so people can see whether what you sell is their thing or not. And this is so key. You have to have like a genre specific table. So I couldn't do Joanna Penn and J.F. penn because they're quite different. Different vibes. How to start a conversation about your books. How to find out what quickly interests a person. Especially if you have a lot of backlist. Like you need to ask them questions about what they like. How to sell audio and ebooks with QR codes, payment options, bundling and I like this. Sarah's key takeaway. The person who talks the most is usually the one who feels the best after the conversation. So ask people questions and give them a chance to talk about themselves. I want them to feel good when they walk away. This is such A great tip. How can you just ask a lot of questions so without almost giving away anything about yourself, like, what about them? Sarah also covers mistakes people make, like staring at your phone and not focusing on the people walking by. Now, I know our phones are often a comfort blanket. They are for me. It's like, oh no, if I look busy, no one will speak to me and then I won't have to deal with how difficult this is. But if you are there in person, engage in person. And the benefits of in person sales like personal connections with other authors and event organizers. So it's a great interview. That's the Novel Marketing podcast, How to sell books from a table link in the show notes. And of course, selling in person is all part of the double down on being human aspect that is more and more important in the age of generative AI. On that, I am doing a library event here in Bath on 22nd February 2025 between 11am and 3pm if you live nearby and are on my email list, you should have got an email about it. So come and say hi. I will have some books to sell, but if you have any that you've bought before, I will sign. I'll do selfies, but I had planned to be better organized, but I think I've worked harder in the last five weeks than I have done in a long time. And that's saying something because I usually work pretty hard. But I've been working very, very hard and I have not organized my banners, I have not organized my swag, I've not organized a payment processor. Luckily the library, there is a cash machine downstairs, so I'm gonna have to say to people, sorry, cash only, or I will invoice you later. But I will have some books for sale from Joanna Penn and J.F. pen. But I am mainly going to other authors and librarians and anyone who comes to say hi to me. But I just thought, okay, even though everything's not perfect, I need to just go and do this. Face a fear. This is a fear for me and I know it will be for many of you. I've never done this before. I mean, I've done my own events, but people know they're coming to see me, so of course they're gonna come and see me then. But this is one of the first, the first event I've ever done. Certainly locally, I've kind of hidden. Even though I've lived in Bath since 2015, so 10 years now, I've basically stayed hidden. I've not been a local author at all. So now I'm being a local author. We shall see how it goes. So that kind of brings me into personal news. This week, while Death Valley is in line edits with Kristen, my editor. I've been working on the adaptation of Day of the Vikings in preparation for the Berlin Film Market, which I am going to this Friday. I now am very happy and excited. I have completely reframed it in my head. I think I mentioned before, it was like, I was like, oh, what happens? What happens? And now I realize it's just like London Book Fair, which I've been going to for, you know, a lot of years. And it's just a book fair, but it's a film market. It's like the same thing. So now I feel a lot better. As well as my pitch deck and my outline, I am now writing the script. Now, if you've been listening to the show for, let's say, the last decade, you will have heard me talk about screenwriting multiple times. And in fact, back in 2018, I did a course at the Film and Television school here, well, in London. And I did a solo episode on Lessons I Learned about it in 2018. It's episode 368. I'll link to that in the show notes. But that was a solo episode. After I did like a four day course in screenwriting. And I have written some scripts before. I have dabbled. I've been to London Screenwriters Festival, I don't know, five, maybe five times over the last 15 years. I did pitch Catacomb last year and there is a shopping agreement on that book. I've done various things over the years, but at some point I would have said on this show I'm not screenwriting anymore. I'm going to focus on novels. But yes, once again, I am getting back into it. I'm leaning into opportunity. And this is why I've been super busy, because I did not expect this to happen. But an opportunity came up around this Vikings thing and I was asked to have a go at the script and I was like, okay then. And I did. So I've done 15 pages and I've had some very positive comments from those initial 15 pages from people whose opinion I respect. So I am going to continue with it. Now, I was thinking about this because I think what I didn't know back in 2018 and what I've really only realized in the last few years is that our brains all work super differently. So I've had people on the show who say they don't Have a mind's eye, right? They can't see in their head. And what I've realized is that is how I write. So I see like a movie in my head and that's what I write down. So I'm. And I don't hear anything. I'm. I'm almost completely non auditory in what I imagine. So that's why I think I write so visually. And my novels are very visual. So that is one reason I was like, okay, well then I should lean into this more. And the other reason is that I have also realized that writing a script, although obviously it's a different format, that not everybody has as many ideas as we have, that imagination and curiosity are something that not everybody taps into. Whereas I have ideas coming out, just popping out all the time. I have so many ideas. And my main problem is time to get all these ideas into the world. I also think that with the development of AI tool and there's certainly Partnership Runway and Lionsgate, and there's a whole load of innovation stuff happening at the Berlin film market and also at Cannes next in May, which I am also going to go to. Yes, I'm going to Cannes. So I'm like, this is a shift in the industry, a bit like the shift with AI tools in the writing market. I'm like, okay, I can use these tools. I can do book trailers, I can do good pitch decks. Like, I've had comments about my pitch decks that the visuals are really evocative because I know what I want visually and I can use Mid Journey to turn that into images and then use them in my pitch decks. This is another way I feel like doubling down on being human, but also using the tools to amplify me. And so all of that to say I am now doing all kinds of things I did not expect to be doing this year. I would like to do a short as well for Seahenge. If you've read Seahenge, you'll know it's super, super visual. And I would like to work with someone who does short film with either. With pretty much with the AI tools, because it would be impossible to film it. If you haven't read it, then, yeah, it's got some elements of fantasy and apocalypse that you really need some CGI to do. But these AI filmmaking tools can now bring this to life. So if you are at Berlin, if you're at Cannes in May, or if you are involved in the sort of AI filmmaking stuff or shorts, I would love to hear from you. JoannaTheCreativePen.com. right. Thanks for your emails and comments and photos. This week Kay sent a lovely smiley picture from a misty graveyard. This is one of my favourites St. Worburg's Blackwell in Derbyshire. Year I have many family members who reside here and I always shout hello as I drive by. Am I mad? No, not at all. Okay. Love the podcast. Learning loads, writing more and coming up with too many ideas to fit into my lifetime. That is great, Kate. And that's how I feel as well. Which is why I love the AI tools. They help us to achieve this. So really lean into that creativity, I think. Okay, you can leave a comment on the podcast show notes@thecreativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel. Message me on X at the Creative Pen with a double N or email me. Send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or graveyard, ossuary or crypt. I like those too. Joanna@thecreativepenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation so this episode is sponsored by prowritingaid because however you choose to publish, whether you go indie or you want a traditional deal, you need to make the book the best it can be. ProWritingAid is one of my absolute must use tools in my writing process for fiction and non fiction and yes, short stories. As we're talking about today in the interview, once I finished a first draft, I use prowritingaid to fix up any issues and of course I don't accept every single change that it suggests, but I do accept probably 80% of them. Then I print and I hand edit my manuscript and then I put it. I make the changes. I use Scrivener. But ProWritingAid integrates with loads of different tools. So I put my edits into Scrivener and then I run prowritingaid over it again. So I do at least two passes, sometimes three, with prowritingaid before sending it to Kristen, my editor. Then Kristen gets it. She sends back my edits. So in fact I've been using I guess I used prowritingaid last week, whatever with Death Valley. Once it comes back and I do the edits that Kristen suggests, then I may also use ProWritingAid again, since every time we touch a manuscript we can potentially put more issues into it. Now prowritingaid knows all the rules of editing and helps you apply them, but of course you don't have to make the changes. I find it helps with making writing more active, finding repeated words, finding, you know, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation issues, typos, spacing issues and more. There are also a useful set of reports including story strengths and weaknesses, areas for improvement and other analysis, and a developmental editing report, which I have had a sneak preview of, of, and that might even be out now depending on when you listen to this. It's coming out in February 2025. So why use software to help? Why don't you just learn all the rules and apply them yourself? Well, we all use tools to improve our process and we're also often blind to our writing issues and I would rather pay my editor to fix the things that software can't. And Kristen's been on the show and has talked about how she's very happy that her authors use ProWritingAid to fix up things. Check out the free edition or get off the premium edition by using my link prowritingaid.com Joanna J-O-A-N-N-A prowritingaid.com Joanna so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com TheCreativePen thanks to the 11 new patrons who've joined this week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio and articles covering topics on writing, craft and author business, as well as tutorials and demos on AI tools. And my patron only Q and A solo episodes and live office hours I demoed recently ChatGPT's Zero1 Pro model for fiction and non fiction as well as Claude. Last week I did an article on why I'm rebooting my books and travel podcast and I guess a sort of overview of my current book marketing stuff. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. You get access to everything, all the backlist content. So you could just join for a month and then disappear again. You can come in and out as you like. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePenn Write let's get into the interview.
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Douglas Smith
Douglas Smith is a multi award winning Canadian author of novels, short stories and NonFiction with over 200 short fiction publications in 36 countries and 27 languages. He's also the author of Playing the Short how to Market and Sell Short Fiction now out in its second Edition. So welcome back to the show, Doug.
- [20:49]
Oh, thank you, Joanna. It's great, Great to be here. Thanks for having me back.
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Joanna Penn
Oh, yes.
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Douglas Smith
So first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and short stories in particular.
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Well, I. I guess I did a fair bit of writing in high school and a bit in university, and then I just drifted away from it, pursuing a business career and raising a family, etc. But I always told myself I would go back and chase the writing dream someday. I remember I was in my early 40s and I came back from a family vacation and one of the first things I read was the obituary for one of my all time favorite writers, Roger Zelazny. He was the American science fiction fantasy writer and he had died far too early at, I think 56 from cancer. And I guess that just drove home the fact that, you know, none of us are guaranteed of a someday. So I started writing that summer and turned out about, I don't know, eight short stories. I joined a writing group to get feedback on my writing. And then about a year and a half later, it was actually on New Year's Eve of the following year, I got my acceptance letter. And so that was a great way to end a year and start a new one. So that's how I started. I started with short fiction. I started because one of my favorite writers died far too young.
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And what was your previous career?
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I was IT executive. And just in case people are wondering, I remained an IT executive. I did not give up the day job. So writing, writing was done in spare time and especially when I started with short fiction. It's very hard to live and raise a family on the proceeds of short stories.
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Yeah, I think that's a really important thing to say. I suspected you were going to say that. And then just with perspective. So what year was it you did that? First sale?
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I would have been. That story came out in 97, so a long time ago. And that story actually ended up winning an award. So yeah, it was a good start. But I stayed with writing short fiction for about 10 years. Part of that was inertia and part of it was just writing a novel at that time to seem kind of daunting. But I finally did decide that I needed for the same someday issue and I wanted to move into novels. And I better not wait any longer.
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Yeah, I mean, obviously the publishing industry is quite different from 1997. And we'll come back to some of the other markets. What have you noticed, I guess with short fiction in Particular or in general, with the indie author community and things changing. I mean, this book, playing the short game. You self published this, right?
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Yeah, I did. And my novels as well. My collections, which were the first things I put out, they came out from traditional publishers. They're small press publishers, one in the UK and one in Canada. But when it came to the point where I was ready to publish my first novel for me, I saw no upside in trying to go a traditional publishing route. Ironically, my advice is quite different for short fiction, I think. One, I think writers should start with short fiction and that they should pursue the traditional short story markets that are, if anything, far more numerous now than when I started. Thanks to the option of a lot of these short fiction magazines or anthologies, they put out ebook editions. It's a lot easier. You don't have to worry about the physical distribution, physical production of the magazines. There's still a lot of print magazines around, still a lot of print anthologies. But you'll find there's a lot of options for selling short fiction, much more than when I started.
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So let's get to some of the pros and cons, I guess. So you said that you do think fiction authors should start with short stories. Why do you recommend that? Why write short stories? What is fun about it, I guess, and the good craft reasons?
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Yeah, it is fun. I mean, if you do not like short fiction as a reader, it's going to be difficult for you to be successful as a writer. So that would be the first thing. And standard advice for any writer is you've got to be a reader. If you don't read, you're not going to be a writer. Why short fiction? To start with, my main, strongest argument is it helps you learn your craft and that teaches you how to be a writer. There are far too many indie novels out there that are, quite frankly, terrible. And the good thing with short fiction is that it gives you a method where you can try out a lot of different types of stories, types of story structure. You can basically build your toolbox as a writer. And many of those tools are the same ones you're going to need if you move on to novels. But the other thing is it gives you a benchmark if you're writing short stories and sending them out to professional markets, and I assume we'll get into that, you get a wonderful little measuring stick for when you've become a professional writer, or in other words, when your writing has become good enough that someone out there wants to pay you money to publish it in the hopes that they will make money from what they publish. So if you don't do that, if you just jump into indie and send your stories out into the world, put them up on retail sites, quite frankly, it's probably not going to be a very good piece of writing. It's hard to develop a craft. And one of the complaints I have with a lot of the indie writers out there is that you see it. If you go to convention, all they focus on is, I've written a book, now how can I market it? Please tell me the secret to beating Zahn's algorithm. And there are good marketing approaches. The problem is if you come up with a good marketing approach for your, for your novel, your first novel, it's probably going to do you more harm than good. Because if you get a lot of people to read it and they read it and say this is not very good, they're never going to come back to your writing. As opposed to if you've taught yourself the craft of writing and you become a competent writer and you get to the point where professional publishers are willing to give you money for your short stories, your writing has reached that point. So when you move to a novel, it's going to be a different beast than short stories, but you're going to have a lot of the skills already in place that you've honed over the time you've been writing short fiction. So that's my main argument, is that it teaches you how to be a writer. One more thing is the example I love to give is you can try a lot more things, points of view, first person, third person, different story structures. Thing you want to try genres, horror, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream. You can try more of those over 25,000 word short stories than you can in 100,000 word novel. You've written the same number of words, but you're going to come out of at the end of those 20 short stories being much more knowledgeable and a better writer than writing that first 100,000 word novel.
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I mean, I totally agree with you there in terms of the potential for doing shorter stories. I mean, you said 5,000 words. What is a short story range in terms of word count? Because people often get obsessed with this.
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Yeah. And the definitions I'll give are from the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers Association. So a short story is anything up to, I think it's 7,500 words and then a novelette is above that up to 17,750 or 500, I can't remember which. Then a novella is above that up to 40,000 words. And then flash, it varies. Anything, typically up to a thousand words is called flash. But your typical short story, if you look at markets out there, they will want something in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 words. And if you write above that, the other tip I'll give is the longer the story is, the harder it will be to sell. If you've got a 10,000 word story and an editor loves your story, but they also love to 5,000 words stories from two other writers, they're probably going to buy those two stories as opposed to your one big one. They're taking a bigger chance on your single story.
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Okay, well, let's talk about those markets then, because you mentioned the traditional short story markets, but that there are a lot more of them these days. So maybe just give us an overview of what you mean by short story markets. And obviously, just so everyone knows in the book you are, you go through this extensively. So I highly recommend people get the book for more detail, but just give us an overview.
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Well, generally speaking, your markets for any story that you write and we're going to have to get into the rights that you'll be dealing with when you're trying to market a short story. But simply, it's a magazine. Lots of magazine markets out there and those are ones that come up with a different issue. Not too many do it monthly anymore, but you know, four times a year, three times a year, and they are either in print format or, and, or electronic edition. So they're called serial publications. And then the other main market is an anthology, the anthology markets. And those are books that contain stories from different authors. So those are your two main options. Anthologies. Anthologies typically are themed, so they have the advantage of if you've got a very strange story, you may luck out and find that there is an anthology coming out of, you know, radioactive chickens from space or something. And you, you haven't been able to sell that story of yours and now you probably have a higher probability. So anthologies and magazines, the other major market would be audio markets. And again though there can be audio anthologies or audio zines as well, and they will be producing essentially a podcast version of your story. They will have a narrator that will read your story and dramatize it. And yeah, that's, that's the third type.
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Okay, and then, then now let's talk about the different rights because it is quite different, isn't it, to long form fiction and nonfiction?
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In many ways it's very similar. And the main thing that if you're going to start writing at all is understand that there are. You have rights. As soon as you finished a story or a novel, you have rights associated with that creation. So for short stories, when a publisher that you've submitted to comes back to you and says, hey, I love this story, I want to publish it, we typically say, hey, I sold a short story. You actually haven't sold anything. What you're going to be doing is licensing a very particular set of rights to that publisher. And they're going to have a number of dimensions. The first dimension I deal with in the book is I call the media dimension. And we just talked about the three different types of markets. So if you're selling to a print magazine, they're going to want a license print rights. If they're only in electronic format, then they'll want electronic rights. And if they're an audiobook publisher, they'll want audio rights. So there's that. There's three dimensions of types of media, and that's combined with whether they're an anthologist or a magazine. So, for example, if I sold a story to a magazine that only has print editions, they would want to license serial print rights. Serial means they're a magazine and they need print rights to legally publish my story, because that's the format they're in. If they also have an ebook edition, then they'd ask for print and electronic serial rights. The other dimension is language, assuming most your listeners are going to be writing in English. So. And then the other dimension is geography. Some publishers, short fiction publishers, are still restricted to a particular geography, and that is usually only for print publishers. So if a magazine publishes in Canada only and distributes in Canada only, for example, they would ask for first Canadian print serial rights. So all these things in English, all these things, as you see, get combined into a collection of rights that they'll be licensing from you.
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And you mentioned first serial rights there. And this is what's quite different. Is it that with short is that you might have first rights and then reprint rights.
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Yeah, I call them occurrence rights. And the very first time you sell a story, they will be licensing first rights from you and will be first whatever those other rights were, first print rights, first audio rights, etc. After that, there's a time period associated with rights, and it's called the reversion period. After your story has been published, the rights will revert to you, meaning that the publisher will say, hey, the story is yours again. You can do whatever you want with it. Typically, if it's a magazine, they will ask for a reversion period that will be somewhere around where the following issue comes out. So if they publish four times a year, you'll probably ask for about a six month reversion period. And that's very fair. Anthologists will ask for anything from a year to two years after the publication date. So let's say that reversion period has passed. The rights come back to you. Those rights come back as second rights, not first rights. You only get to sell licensed first rates rights once. When you do have those rights come back to you though, you can now what we call sell a reprint. You can, in other words, you can market to another publication that accepts reprints and sell the story over and over and over again. And no matter how many times you sell a reprint, you're always licensing second rights. So there's no such thing as third rights or fourth rights or anything. It's one time for first rights and after that you can license second rights as many times as you can find a market who wants to publish your reprints.
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And I feel like that is one of the big differences with rights for a novel in that, I mean, I see a lot of authors are getting sort of term of copyright contracts or you know, really, really long time limits. Whereas as you say with shorts, then maybe six months, maybe up to two years, but then you can keep selling it over and over again. Which is why you hear people, I mean, I'm sure like you have sold some of your shorts multiple times over, over decades.
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Yeah, for sure. I've got stories that I've sold 30 plus times.
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Wow. Well then for people listening then, 30 plus times, how much money are they expecting to get for a short story for let's say some of the premium traditional markets?
- [37:27]
Well, so that's a good question. And it leads into what my strategy is for short fiction that I recommend to writers is that you're only going to get the, the top rates from a short fiction market if it's a pro market. And pro markets only license first rights, they don't take reprints. So I'll eventually answer your question. But the main point I want to make is my strong recommendation is that when you're sending your stories out, when you're trying to sell them for the first time, you only submit to the top professional markets because that's the only time you'll ever get a chance to get into an Asimovs or a Fantasy and Science Fiction or a lightspeed, etc. Because once you've sold that story, they're never going to be interested in it. So you need to, as I say in the book, start at the top. Start at your most desired markets, the ones that have the most cachet. And those are also the ones that pay the top pro rates and also the ones that get the most award pressed and nods, etc. After you get the rights back from that, you can market it to any market that takes a reprint and you'll find anything. You'll find markets that will simply publish your story and not give you any money. You can find markets that will pay you up to 5, 6 cents a word for a reprint. Whereas prorates are, I think they're still at 8 cents a word for sifua. So it really ranges. So how much money you can make from a story kind of depends on what you want to sell your reprint at. I, I personally warn authors that if you sell a story anytime, it's going to involve work and time on your part. So you should set sort of a minimum dollar amount that you're willing to accept to pay you for your time to work with the editor, you know, go over the print copy before it's published, etc.
- [39:44]
So on that 8 cents a word, it'd be around $400 then for like a 5,000 word story at premium market.
- [39:52]
Yeah, at, at US dollar rates.
- [39:54]
Yes, US dollar rates. And then let's say in six months you get that story back and then you can do what you like with it. As you said, you can license it over and over again. Just on the. It's so interesting. And you talk. I've written now a few short stories and have been in a few anthologies, but basically I've never been, I've never submitted to any traditional markets just mainly because of my lack of patience and the fact that I guess I know that if I publish it myself and put it out now, right, like right now, then I'm going to get some money. Especially if I'm selling direct, I'm going to make more than that, $400 from my own audience. So it's a very different definition of success, I guess in terms of cachet and awards versus money in your pocket now. And I noticed that you do sell direct as well. So how do you balance that side as well?
- [40:51]
Sure. So one comment on that. I mean, you have a name and you have a huge audience and platform, so it's more conceivable that you're going to be able to indie publish a piece of short fiction and get more money than a beginner so my comments are focused at the beginning writer. And if you want to get the most mileage out of your short story that comes from selling it to a top pro market, it helps you build your resume. You can also build up a backlist, you can attract fans and subscribers to a newsletter, etc. You can use some of your short stories as reader magnets, etc. So it helps you build up your own network so you know you're in a position where you already have that. But if I'm a beginning writer, my advice to them would I still start with short fiction? So, yes, I also. All my short, I shouldn't say all. Probably about two dozen of my early short stories are available in ebook format. So those are all stories that I sold first rights for to a traditional market. So in other words, when I did an ebook for those stories, the rights had already reverted back to me. The story had been out. A lot of them were award winners or award finalists. And I did it at the time because I was sort of just getting into looking at indie publishing. I didn't have any novels, so I thought I'd try just putting out some of my short stories as individual ebooks, use them as reader magnets, etc, etc. I got a great artist who gave me a great deal on producing covers for them. So they all have the same cover. It was a price that made it sensible to try that experiment. So, yeah, if you go to Amazon, any of the retailers, if you go to my website, on my book bookstore, on my website, you'll be able to buy my short stories individually. But that's not how I started. And I would never put out a new short story that way. I'd still go to a traditional market for it.
- [43:13]
Okay, I think that's really interesting. I do want to point out to everyone that I grew my audience and that everyone has to grow their own audience over a long, long time. And you've obviously done the same thing and I think starting at different times. I started a decade after you. So 2007 was my first book that I self published. So it's. It's kind of interesting how things change over time. But I do want to just ask about collections because obviously you have collections. And here I'm seeing a collection as a single author as opposed to an anthology with multiple authors with shorts. So what are your tips around doing a collection? Since I am thinking of doing this myself.
- [43:56]
Sure. The first step is to make sure that you have enough quality stories. So enough means, you know, minimum 80,000 words I think a dozen stories that is at least that length would be reasonable. The main point is that those stories all have to be good a collection. It's like as a chain, as strong as the weakest length. It's going to be judged on the worst story in the book. So as soon as the reader hits a weak one, sadly, they're probably going to remember that one. So you really need your 12, whatever best stories. So you need to have written more than 12 stories because probably the 12 that you've written aren't the best. They all should have appeared in a top market because that is one of the ways you can tell it's a good story. Someone paid you prorates for it. If you have any award winners or award finalists or stories that appeared in annual best of anthologies, they go in as well. So that's the main thing. They have to be quality, quality stories. Because you know this collection is going to be a calling card for you. After that, it depends the next piece, let's say you've picked your great stories that you want to put in the collection. The next thing is what order do you put them in? And the rule for doing collections or anthology is pretty well, has stayed the same since I started writing. Anyway, you want to put your figure out what your best three, four stories are. You put the best one first and another really good one last. And you put another strong one second. So the idea is you want to pull the reader in with two really good stories and then leave them with a positive of the collection when they read the last one. And if you have another one, another really good one, you should put it in the middle as sort of a tentpole in case things are flagging. But that's the quality area for sorting through what order you want to put your stories in. And after that it comes down to, as I say in the book, trying to craft a reader experience. And you, you have to sit down and think, okay, they just finished this story, what should come next? And there's so many ways to do that. I write in science fiction and fantasy and horror and some slipstream, etc. So do I mix all those? Do I put one section for all my science fiction? Do I put one section for my fantasy, etc. The questions I put out, I alternate, but I also look at the tone. And you have to look at the length too. By tone I mean if you have a really, really downer story, you might want to follow that with something more upbeat. And the reverse is true too. And if you have a Couple that are like novelette lengths, you probably don't want to put them back to back. You want to have a shorter story following a long story.
- [47:27]
So it's interesting.
- [47:30]
Crafting the reader experience.
- [47:32]
Yeah, I mean, as I read a lot of short story collections and anthologies and my. It's more that I dip in and I never ever read them in order. And I usually only read like one story at a time.
- [47:47]
Joanna Penn
Like.
- [47:47]
Douglas Smith
Like something I do before I go to sleep or something on, you know, just before bed. So it's very weird because I feel like the different. Different readers have different experiences. So we can try our best, but readers might just decide to do what the hell they want. But I do have two other points on this. So what about exclusive short stories? So I'm going to do a Kickstarter for my collection and I'm thinking of including a couple of short stories that have not been seen anywhere else. So they're real exclusives. And then also I was wondering about extra material. So I always do an author's note as to what inspired the story. And I was thinking of expanding those sort of into interstitial pieces. So any thoughts on those two things?
- [48:31]
Yeah, both. Both good points. One is you. You should. If you have a story that has not been published anywhere else, you should include one of those. One, it's a bit of a teaser. If you have a fan who's a completist and they just want to read everything that you write, the only way they're going to be able to read that story is if they buy the collection. So it is good, a good policy to include one previously unpublished short story in a collection. The additional material the author notes around story I personally love and I'd recommend it. I mentioned Roger Zelazny as one of my favorite writers and he had a lot of collections. And what I enjoyed about his collections were his either forewords or afterwards where he talks about the story and how the idea arrived and maybe how it ties into other stories he'd written, etc. I love that. But I know I had a couple of comments on my collections where people were saying they didn't like it, they just want to read the short stories. So I mean, you can't please everybody. But I would say in general, most of the feedback I've received on my short stories, my collections, has been that the reader enjoys learning more about the story, either how you wrote it or why you wrote it, it or. Or whatever. So I'd recommend putting that in. And sometimes I've done It as forwards, sometimes afterwards. Depends if there's any spoilers. Yeah, sometimes both.
- [50:11]
Yeah, I think that's really good. I mean, I'm thinking of my. In my special edition for the Kickstarter, I'll include photos if I can, as to some of the things that spark the idea or thing to make it a special, special collection, which I feel is. Is possible now with the print possibilities we can do. I also wondered just on the audio. So at the moment I narrate my own short stories and just release them as individuals, but with a collection again, I will narrate the whole thing and release that separately. I wondered if you had any thoughts on audiobook collections for short stories.
- [50:49]
Hmm, interesting. I'm not sure I have the patience to do my own narration. So I think it's a personal thing and I certainly don't have the expertise to talk about producing audiobooks. I've had a lot of my short stories produced as audio plays, but that's because I've submitted them to audio markets. There are good productions and bad productions. Most of the. I've sort of found the ones that I absolutely love and who will actually cast a story and they'll have different voice actors for the different characters. I find that just so awesome. But it's a thing to. I think if you're an indie writer and you're thinking of doing your audiobooks. I know I would say, first of all, am I willing to invest in the necessary audio setup? Do I have the patience to do the narration and do the editing, etc. Yeah, I think it's a personal choice. Audio is a growing market, so.
- [51:55]
Yeah. And it's really interesting because I talked to Spotify at Author Nation last year and they said what they're often now doing is audio that's under an hour. And generally a short story, you know, an hour of audio is about 9,000 words. So all, pretty much all short stories are going to be under their range of an hour. And they're kind of serving those in their discovery thing for people's commutes, because that's the average commute. So just a tip for people listening, creating playlists on Spotify of short story collections or anthologies just with other people. You don't have to publish them, you can just link to them in a playlist. I think that's actually a really good discoverability mechanism for things like Spotify, which is now trying to get more and more people into audio fiction and audio non fiction.
- [52:45]
Yeah. Especially if. If it leads listeners to your other work.
- [52:50]
Yeah.
- [52:51]
Joanna Penn
Exactly.
- [52:51]
Douglas Smith
And you can do cross promotion that way. So you know, I can link one of my short, my horror short stories to one of yours, to one of like Mark Leslie Le Fay, you know, so we can make these playlists, mixing stories that we like just as a more discoverability mechanism, as I mentioned. So I think that's like, that's something new that's really only emerged in the last couple of years. And anything else on short stories? Because I do have one other question before we finish.
- [53:17]
Yeah, now I'm making notes here because that's going to go into the next edition in terms of audio versions and Spotify. I mean there's so much to talk about. One of the reasons I put out the second edition is, well, one, it had been 10 years since the first one and then two, when I looked at my notes, there had been so many things that had changed over the past decade.
- [53:43]
Well, that is my last question, which is I've also just done a second edition of my how to Write Nonfiction which now includes memoir and all of this. And I know a second edition can be a right pain. And I wondered if you had any thoughts for non fiction authors who are listening. When do you do another edition? When is it worth it for you? And also what is the difference in marketing it since many people, including me, also have your first edition?
- [54:13]
What I did when I put up the first one, I my emails in the back and people can get in touch with me via the website and I encouraged writers to reach out to me because it was sort of my way of paying forward to new writers to write that book and if they had any questions interpreting what I'd written or something I didn't cover, please reach out to me. And a lot of writers did. And sometimes I was just clarifying what I had in the book, other times it was, wow, that's a really good question. I didn't think of that scenario. And I would just start to keep a file of things to add to the second edition. And then so when I realized it had been a decade and I started coming across things like Rowland.com, which was my go to market list, and he stopped dating his website, I realized that there, there's probably a lot of other changes. So I looked at that file and said, yep, there's ever so much I can put into a new edition. So it was that. And when is the right time? I think when you start to look at the first version and say, wow, no, that's actually not right anymore. Or I should say more about that particular topic.
- [55:29]
And then what about the challenges marketing it?
- [55:35]
I'm not big on marketing. I guess I do a lot around that and probably should do more. This one, I told my newsletter subscribers, most of them are readers, not writers, but there is some overlap. The retailer sites help because if the first edition sold pretty consistently. So now if you go to Amazon and look for this, you're only going to find the second edition. So, you know, linking the first edition to, hey, there's a new edition, things like that. But honestly, that. That was it.
- [56:10]
Joanna Penn
Yeah.
- [56:11]
Douglas Smith
Well, I must say, you didn't pitch me for this. I pitched you because I saw it in, I think it was a story bundle last year.
- [56:19]
Yeah. Christine Catherine Rush, she will do these wonderful writer bundles. Does at least one a year, etc. And. And I communicate with Chris and Dean fairly regularly. And she reached out to me and said, I see you're putting out a second edition. I've got a story bundle that's coming out in two months. Would you have an edition ready for that, an ebook edition ready for that timeframe? And I said, yep, sure. Can you write a new introduction for it?
- [56:50]
So I think that's important because people think marketing is just like. Like paying for Facebook ads, but it's also your network and you've been growing your network for a really long time. And obviously Chris is an amazing writer. She was also an editor in short story markets and all that. So that's part of your network giving you opportunities. Right. Which is just as important.
- [57:11]
Yeah, no, for sure. And. And Story Bundle. I know Jason who runs Story Bundle, so it. It all helps. There's different ways to market, but I know Chris and Dean because I went to their workshop a couple of decades ago and the first one I went to was how to write Short fiction.
- [57:29]
Amazing.
- [57:31]
Led by Chris and Gardner Dozois. The late Gardner Dozois. And I think Chris is the only person who beat Gardner for Hugo for best editor.
- [57:41]
Joanna Penn
Wow.
- [57:42]
Douglas Smith
So that. Yeah. And I've been on Dean and Chris's workshops and things like that, and that's kind of, I guess, how I've ended up discovering your work. So, you know, just for people listening again, sometimes these things take decades to come around, but that's okay. So where can people find you and your books and your stories online?
- [58:04]
Sure. My best starting point is my website, which is SmithWriter, all1word.com. You can find links to my own bookstore or to all the retailer sites. Most recent books I just completed urban fantasy trilogy called the Dreamwriter Saga. And the books are the Hollow Boys, the Crystal Key and the Lost Expedition. The Hollowboys won two awards when it came out and the third book, the Lost Expedition just came out last year and I had an earlier novel as well. You can find links to those and all my collections on the website.
- [58:46]
Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Doug. That was great.
- [58:50]
Okay, thanks for having me on again, Joanna.
- [58:56]
Joanna Penn
So I hope you found this interview interesting and that Doug gave you some encouragement if you want to write short stories or if you're just generally interested in the writing craft. And of course his view is based on the traditional market and I do things quite differently. As I mentioned in the interview, I don't even submit my short stories to the pro markets. I publish them wide narrate them myself. I sell directs as well as all my books are on all the platforms, all my stories short stories are on all the platforms. It is a different business model between us, but the craft elements are still there. You get to choose your path. So let me know what you think. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel. Comment on X at the Creative Pen or email me joannathecreativepenn.com Send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Next week I'm talking about the Happy Writer with Marissa Meyer, how to keep the joy and flow in your writing and business processes, the ups and downs of the publishing journey, and much more. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today.
- [60:05]
Douglas Smith
I hope you found it helpful.
- [60:08]
Joanna Penn
You can find the backlist episodes and show notes at the Creative Pension podcast and you can get your free Author blueprint@thecreativepen.com Blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook Fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.