Publishing Short Stories As eBooks

I've always thought that ePublishing would revolutionise the short story.  With traditional paperback publishing it is pretty much always the case that no matter how popular the author, their novels always sell better than their collections of short stories.

Personally I've never understood why that is, because I prefer to read short stories, especially when written by a master storyteller like Stephen King.

I figured that eReaders would change that as readers could download a single short story for those times when they only have an hour or so to read. On a short flight, for instance, or over lunch.  I have self-published almost twenty short stories over the past two years and they are all selling as well as my full-length novels, so I think I might well be right!

The four Spider Shepherd short stories that I published on Amazon and Smashwords are doing amazingly well - all four are in the Top 10 of the War category in the Kindle store in the UK.

If you want too read them, it's probably best to start with Natural Selection which explains how Shepherd got his nickname during the jungle phase of SAS selection.


You can buy it in the US Kindle store BY CLICKING HERE

And in the UK Kindle store BY CLICKING HERE

At present I'm working on the brand new full-length Spider Shepherd novel, the 11th, which will probably be called White Knight. Hopefully it'll be on the shelves in the summer of next year! It'll be published by my UK publisher, Hodder and Stoughton.

How To Succeed In ePublishing

I came across a terrific article about the 10 things any eBook self-publisher needs to do to succeed.

It's here - and well worth a read - GREAT ADVICE

There has been a huge change in the way that the traditional publishing has reacted to ePublishing over the last few months.  They have slashed the prices of a lot of the eBooks they publish and as a result they have started to dominate the bestseller lists again.  It looks to me as if the days of self-published writers topping the bestseller charts with cheap books has gone.  And it's understandable. If you can but a Sunday Times bestseller for 99p, why would a reader opt for an unknown writer instead?

What I find fascinating is the number of traditionally-published authors who only a year or so ago were complaining that low prices devalue their work are now quite happy to have their books sold at low prices.  One writer I know who spent a great deal of time telling the world how awful eBooks are was on Twitter recently urging his fans to buy one of his old books because it was selling for just £2.49 on the Kindle. And another Sunday Times bestseller who was forever moaning about competition from cheap self-published eBooks now seems quite happy to have his entire backlist available on the Kindle for just £2.99 a copy.  Whenever one of their low-priced books rises up the bestseller charts they are quick to congratulate each other, but there's rarely any mention of the fact that it's the low price that's driving the sales.

It does seem to me that £2.99 is a fair price to pay for an eBook - split three ways between the writer, the publisher and the retailer. That still gives the self-published writers some leeway to get their books noticed but it's nowhere as easy as it used to be. And the big problem these days is that with the traditional publishers now moving to dominate the market, it's nigh on impossible for a new writer to get noticed.

Take Two Riding High In The UK Bestseller Charts

My self-published eBook Take Two - a full-length novel about a soap opera star who witnesses a gangland killing - is still doing well.  According to the Bookseller magazine Stephen Leather's Take Two was at number 9 in the UK eBook bestseller list last week.

That's pretty going because most of the books on the bestseller list are selling for 20p, part of the now infamous Sony/Amazon pricing war.  Take Two is now selling for 63p in the UK, which is still a bargain.  You can buy it   BY CLICKING HERE

My New Spider Shepherd Short Story

The new Spider Shepherd short story has just gone online.  Kill Zone tells the story of how Spider got shot in Afghanistan, and in some ways is the precursor to my new Spider thriller.

I'm enjoying these Spider SAS stories - Friendly Fire is also available - and I plan to release another in a few weeks.

You can buy Stephen Leather's Kill Zone for the Kindle HERE

My crime thriller Take Two, which I released a few weeks ago, has already made the Bookseller magazine Top 10 list, which is good news!

According to the Bookseller, Take Two is number 7.  There are a lot of cheap 20p books on offer at the moment, and I'm sure if they weren't around Take Two would be even higher!

My New Crime Thriller

I've just put a new 92,000 word crime thriller online as an eBook - and I think it's a cracker.  Take Two is about a soap opera star - Carolyn Castle - who witnesses a gangland murder.

But she realises that her fame means that she will be in the firing line if she comes forward as a witness.

The killer is charismatic gangster Warwick Richards - and he's more than capable of killing again to stay out of prison.  But does he know that Carolyn saw him commit murder?

I had great fun writing Take Two.  It's based on an original idea I had for a TV screenplay.  I wrote a few treatments but could never get anyone interested in filming it.  To be honest, I think it works better as a novel! Let me know what you think!

I thought long and hard about pricing.  I'm a big fan of selling books cheaply but there has been something of a backlash against cheap books - especially in the US.  These days readers do seem to equate a low price with low quality.

In spite of that I'm going to sell the book at 99 cents in the States and for less than a pound in the UK.

You can buy Take Two in the UK -  HERE

And in the US - HERE

A Spider Shepherd Short Story

I've always been a big fan of short stories, but in the past there hasn't really been a market for them. The simple fact is that collections of short stories - no matter how famous the author - never sell as well as novels. That's just a fact.

I believe that the arrival of the eReader will change that and short stories will become marketable on a much bigger scale.

I have already tested the water with my Inspector Zhang short stories, and my collection of erotic short stories (though truth be told they're not that erotic!).

I'm now pushing the envelope a bit further by releasing the first in what I hope will be a series of Spider Shepherd short stories.

I'm setting the books during the time that Spider was in the SAS, and the first stories will cover the period when he was in Afghanistan, from November 2001 until October 2002. They're fun because they are war stories so full of action and weapons, whereas in the novels he's a policeman or MI5 officer and therefore can't shoot as much!  The stories which will be more like those written by Andy McNab and Chris Ryan, two writers I really admire.

I'll be keeping the price below £1 and hopefully they'll sell. We'll see!

You can buy Friendly Fire in the UK HERE

And in the US  HERE

Boxed Sets - A Great Deal For Readers

One of the great things about ePublishing is the way you can easily generate boxed sets.  Boxed sets tend not to sell well when it comes to traditional paperbacks, but they are a terrific way of selling eBooks and eBook short stories.

I've recently put up two boxed sets.  There's an Inspector Zhang boxed set which contains four short stories featuring my Singaporian detective Inspector Zhang and his faithful assistant Sergeant Lee.

You can buy it in the UK  HERE

And in the US   HERE

And I've also put together a collection of three of my Asian Heat erotic short stories in one boxed set.

You can buy it in the UK  HERE

And in the US  HERE

So why do boxed sets work?  For the reader, they are a way of picking up a number of stories at a price lower than buying them individually.

But because of the way that Amazon pays royalties, a writer can make more money despite selling the books cheaper as a boxed set.

The reason is simple. If you price a book at below $2.99, Amazon pay you a royalty rate of 35 per cent. If you price the book at above $2.99, you receive 70 per cent of the selling price.

So take the Inspector Zhang boxed set for instance. The price of the individual stories is 99 cents.  If I sell four at that price, the reader pays $3.96 and I get about $1.30.

But I sell the boxed set for $2.99.  And I get $2.09.

So the reader pays less and the writer gets more. It's a win-win situation!

How easy are boxed sets to put together?

Very easy.  It's helpful to have a functioning index at the front.  And you need a cover that shows that it's a boxed set.

I use Brandi Doane for my boxed set cover designs. She's really good and charges $200 for a 3D cover. You can visit her website  HERE

It's worth remembering that Smashwords won't allow you to use 3D covers on their site so you'll need flat covers for Smashwords.  Brandi did those for me, too. Here's the one she did for the Asian Heat boxed sets.

So, if you're a self-published writer it's worth considering putting your work together in boxed sets.

I'm also hoping that my publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, will put together boxed sets of the books of mine that they publish. I'll keep you posted!