I have never promoted my short stories. My experience with sales has been that they didn't sell until the sales of my mystery series has picked up. Now the short stories sell some, not in big numbers. And I get better sales at Apple and B&N than Amazon. I have a trilogy about a Denver police detective - I am going to start giving that away for free as part of a mail list signup and I'm curious to see if it generates sales of the other two stories.
Sorry I don't have any ideas on how to promote them.

 

In my extremely limited experience, they don't sell. If they're free though, you'll shift some copies if the stories are good. You're better off putting them through the submission merry-go-round first to make some money there before selling them yourself.

 

I know quite a few people on Kboards do better with their shorts than I do, but I do okay with mine. I always sell at least a few hundred copies. I think my bestseller is a Christmas short that I've sold around 1,200 copies. For me, they serve a valuable purpose, though: keeping me in front of my reader's eyes in between full releases. I still work a full time job, so I can only get a new book out every 4-6 months. I try to squeeze a short or two into that same time frame.

 

ABOMINABLE has sold over 6000 copies for me, so yes, they do

 

My short stories sell well. I have fifteen in all. Mine are all between 5000 and 10,000 words. The genres are Cozy Mysteries, Romance, Erom, and Horror. I've never done any major promoting. I'll tweet when released and post to my FB page. That's it! Mine do well.

 

My short stories do sell ... not loads, but they do sell. The ones that are part of a series sell best.

Typically, my best promotion for a short story has been to offer it free on Smashwords with a coupon. Invariably, some people would rather buy it for 99 cents on 'Zon, B&N, iBooks, and Kobo. (I discovered this by accident! I was really only trying to reward my fans).

Anyway, although I did my last short only as a big ol' thank you, it still earned out in the first week.

 

Short stories can sell, but most of them are lumped in the erotica category and/or are serials. Novellas are a better bet if you want short works to sell. However, since you've written some, you should give it a good shot. Not the end of the world, but you should consider slightly longer works (15k+) if you want a better shot in selling shorter works. It goes without saying that shorter pieces of work and their ability to sell depends on the genre, and the market that will want to buy them.

You can leave 1, mainly the first of a series, free as a choice to promote. If you're a beginner + selling short works, KU is something to consider as well - gives you a bit more of an edge on Amazon, but forces you to be exclusive with them. It is a boon also because of the fact that short stories are generally priced (unless erotica, or bundles) at the 99 cents category, and KU at this present time can net you far more than the 35 cents royalty.

If you look around the web, or search around here, there are lists of free promotions specifically for short works that you should utilize because, hey, they're free to use.

Good Luck!

 

It completely depends on the genre. There are several people sitting atop the romance author rankings right now that don't write anything over 7k words.

 

It completely depends on the genre. There are several people sitting atop the romance author rankings right now that don't write anything over 7k words.

You took the words right out of my mouth. It totally depends on genre. Romance and erotica short stories sell well. If you look at the kindle short reads, the top books are usually romance or erotic romance

 

What genres do short stories do the best in?

 

What genres do short stories do the best in?

Romance and erotica. But only certain types of romance. Here's Chloe Hawk. http://www.amazon.com/Chloe-Hawk/e/B00VILLTFA/ref=kar_mr_158568011_6 She has only published five short stories and she's the number 32 bestselling author in the entire Kindle Store.

 

What genres do short stories do the best in?

I'd say romance especially erotic romance or new adult romance. Look at the short stories chart on amazon at the moment, the top 20 is all Billionaire or stepbrother erotic romance or new adult romance short stories.

If you look at the top rated short stories, you get a more varied list of books.

 

Olivia Hawthorne writes short erotic romance stepbrother and Billionaire stories and she's at number 5 on The Most Popular Authors in Romance.

 

Olivia Hawthorne writes short erotic romance stepbrother and Billionaire stories and she's at number 5 on The Most Popular Authors in Romance.

I was going to link her too, but she's... insane with that release schedule. It would be almost impossible for us ordinary humans to replicate that. She has 53 releases in just over two months.

 

I was going to link her too, but she's... insane with that release schedule. It would be almost impossible for us ordinary humans to replicate that. She has 53 releases in just over two months.

Yes i know, she's incredible. I am writing my first short erotica book now. I wish i could write that fast and get a bunch of short titles up. Those sorts of stories sell really well.

 

The majority of my books are short stories and novelettes with a few novellas thrown in for good measure. And yes, they do sell, though not at the same rate as novels. Having a series or writing in a popular genre certainly helps. Length doesn't really matter as much. In my experience, genre is much more important and indeed some of my most popular stories are under 7000 words.

And the plus side, if a short story doesn't sell, it's not the end of the world, because the time investment is much lower.

I don't really do any promo except a blogpost upon a release, a newsletter and the occasional tweet.

I have five Kindle Short Reads out in Post-Apocalyptic. They get about 10 - 15 sales or borrows per day (total). When I did the free days they got quite a few downloads (promoted through social media because I haven't found any ad sites that promote short stories).

For those who write in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres, the Speculative Fiction Showcase accepts short stories as new release spotlights and indeed we have featured a few so far. Submission info is here.