Five aspects to consider when selling your short story:

1. Shelf Life

2. Contracts

3. Editing

4. Payment

5. Future Options

 

Shelf Life -- Simply put, most short stories won't have the same 'life' as a novel. (The exception, of course, being category novels with their month of shelf life.) Many magazines will be on sale for a month, but some are only on the stand for a week! Some anthologies will last longer, but ultimately when you're selling your story you have to know up front that your work will only be available for a short time. Consider which magazines you submit to accordingly.

What do you want from your story? A name? Submit to big-name literary mags. Money? Woman's Weekly. A cult following bowing to your name? Check out the small press magazines and see what strikes your fancy.

The important point? Don't waste time or money publicizing your short story sale. Most short stories are paid for with a one-time payment and your readers are going to be, with very few exceptions, those who subscribe or who already pick up the magazine on the newsstand. Anthologies, of course, are different, but again, payment for an anthology story is often a one-time payment and a few copies of the book, if you're lucky. (Here I'm referring to 'open call' anthologies, not the anthologies put out by the NY big boys that feature big-name writers.)

Contracts -- When selling your novel you know that your contract is going to be a doozy. A lot of authors choose to get an agent, or have a lawyer look over contracts. When you have an advance and you're talking about commencing -- or continuing -- a career, these measures are understandable, even encouaraged. Most short story contracts are short and rather simple. There's no need for an agent.

Things to check for are: number of copies of the magazines/anthology you'll receive; what rights they're buying; term of rights, if applicable; and when you're going to get paid. Some reputable magazines buy all rights (they own your story forever) and don't send author copies. (Confession magazines, for instance.) Many guidelines state what rights a magazine is looking for, though, so if you want to reprint your story in the future (in a collection, another magazines, or even on your own website) you may want to check before you submit.

Editing -- Where editing a book can involve a lot of time and revision, magazine edits are generally small, if at all. If your story has a characters that needs a little more work or a plotline that almost-works, even if your prose sparkles, it's going to be rejected. Some editors send your story back with detailed instructions of what they want done, while others (again, confession magazines spring to mind) will pay for your story and then change what they want to how they want to. Don't expect exhaustive feedback back-and-forth with an editor or galley copies for a short story. (Though I've heard that some of the big-name science fiction monthly magazine editors can work closely with authors if they're 'almost there'.)

Payment -- This is another thing to check before you send in your story. Most magazines are very up-front about payment, and most pay on publication. For most science fiction magazines, payment is per word. Supermarket mags like Woman's Weekly and the confession mags pay a flat fee. Open call anthologies often pay a flat fee, but not always. Sometimes they throw in a percentage of the royalties. 'For the love' anthologies and magazines offer payment in author copies and publicity. (And we're not talking 100 copies of the magazine for the author. Most often you'll get 2 - 5 copies for your contribution.) Again, things to consider when you're choosing the market for your short story.

Future Options -- And here's the tricky part. Like chess, marketing a short story can be a complicated match of long-term goals and short-term successes. Before you sign that contract, or before you submit that story, think about what you might want to do with your story in the future.

Stories tailored to the confession market only have a few outlets, and most of them are owned by the same company. If you're going to write a confession story you have to be realistic -- chances are that you're not going to want to do anything else with it, so giving up all right may not be that bad. Some stories hook you and hold tight, and when you set them on the world you have that niggling idea for a collection of stories in the future -- for those, you may want to make sure you only sell your First North American Serial Rights so that when the contracted term is over you can do what you want with that story again.

People who actually make 'money' off of short stories often pick their markets with care. Science fiction writers will serialize a story and then edit it into a novel (Catherine Asaro) or will write short stories based on a world that they have novels set in (Sharon Lee and Steve Miller), or publish novels set in the world of their popular shorts (Kage Baker). Erotica writers often re-publish in the Best Of... compilations or in themed anthologies.

Now, you ask, what about me, the romance writer? Sure, science fiction writers have a thriving short fiction market, and erotica authors seem to have a lot of choices, but what about me? Where can I play my love stories? Some thought on Targeting Your Romanctic Short Fiction to Non-Romance Markets is the next article in this series. Check it out!