Writing And Selling Short Stories With Douglas Smith

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.

In the intro, S&S imprint says that authors no longer need to get blurbs for their books [The Guardian]; James Patterson will be headlining Author Nation 2025; How to sell books from a table [Novel Marketing Podcast]; My lessons learned about screenwriting; Death Valley, a Thriller.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

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 Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• How beginner writers can use short fiction to improve their writing craft
• Overview of the different short story markets
• First rights and second rights for selling short stories
• Financial expectations for traditionally published short stories
• Tips for self-publishing a collection
• Benefits of exclusive short stories
• Using Spotify playlists as a discoverability mechanism – here's a playlist of my short stories on Spotify
• How to market a second edition

You can find Doug at SmithWriter.com.

Transcript of Interview with Douglas Smith

Joanna: 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 Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition. So welcome back to the show, Doug.

Douglas: Oh, thank you, Joanna. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me back.

Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up­—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and short stories, in particular.

Douglas: Well, I guess I did a fair bit of writing in high school and a bit in university. Then I just drifted away from it, pursuing a business career and raising a family, etc. 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.

That just drove home the fact that none of us are guaranteed of a someday. So I started writing that summer and turned out about eight short stories. I joined a writing group to get feedback on my writing.

Then about a year and a half later, it was actually on New Year's Eve of the following year, I got my first acceptance letter. 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.

Joanna: What was your previous career?

Douglas: I was an IT executive. Just in case people are wondering, I remained an IT executive. I did not give up the day job, so writing was done in spare time. Especially when I started with short fiction, it's very hard to live and raise a family on the proceeds of short stories.

Joanna: I think that's a really important thing to say. I suspected you were going to say that. Then just with perspective—

So what year was it that you did that first sale?

Douglas: That story came out in '97, so a long time ago. That story actually ended up winning an award. So, yes, 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 seemed kind of daunting. I finally did decide that I needed, for the same someday issue, that I wanted to move into novels, and I better not wait any longer.

Joanna: Yes. 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 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?

Douglas: Yes, I did, and my novels as well. My collections, which were the first things I put out, they came out from traditional publishers that are small press publishers, one in the UK and one in Canada.

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. 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, so 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.

Joanna: So let's get to some of the pros and cons, I guess. So you said there you do think fiction authors should start with short stories. Why do you recommend that?

Why write short stories? What is fun about it? What are the good craft reasons?

Douglas: Yes, 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. The 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 that it helps you learn your craft. It teaches you how to be a writer.

There are far too many indie novels out there that are, quite frankly, terrible.

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 onto novels.

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.

One of the complaints I have with a lot of the indie writers out there is, and 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 an algorithm.”

There are good marketing approaches. The problem is, if you come up with a good marketing approach 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 dif