Publishing short stories

Today’s faff, then, has been all about re-publishing standalone short e-stories.

Once upon a time, I discovered CreateSpace, a wonderful self-publishing tool from Amazon. The best thing about it, for me, was the cover creator. Every single book I thought of writing, as it went into the ideas and drafting stages, was given a spot (and a cover) in my CreateSpace.

Series all looked the same (I think they call it “branding”), and there was more than one series, each series with its own look (or brand).

I was on a roll.

And then CreateSpace folded into Kindle Direct Publishing. 

For the record, KDP isn’t a patch on Create Space, and the so-called cover creator is woefully lacking. (In my opinion.) And anyway, I don’t like to keep all of my eggs in one basket, and so I started to take my self-published books elsewhere.

However, I did have a few short stories on Kindle. They all appear in Twee Tales, but they were also available as standalone e-stories. 

I hated the covers. Detested them. So much so that I think I only left them “live” for a very short period of time, possibly less than a month. And then I stopped publishing on KDP.

Recently, two things happened. 1. KDP released a new ebook creator that you can download, and 2. I found out how to use Canva and bought a pro licence. 

So I thought I’d update the e-stories, adding the new Baggins Bottom Books logo and updating the “catch up with the author” page at the end. And I created new covers for each of the 3 e-stories already on there and 2 that aren’t (yet). 

It took me all day, but I got there in the end, and now the following 3 e-stories are all available for 79p in the UK and 99c in the US. (I chose all the 99s throughout, where I could, but I wanted them to be the cheapest price in the UK and we can’t set them to 49p or even zero.) OR you can get the anthology for £3.49 and $3.99. Unfortunately, these standalone e-stories are only available on Amazon Kindle, but the anthology is available in several formats.

And then I created a new page on the blog that’s dedicated to just short stories. You can access it here or via the menu. 

I won’t be keeping everything on Amazon Kindle as I find them to be quite restricting and they can do so much to affect a writer’s career on a whim, it seems (such as blanket remove book reviews or books, suspend accounts, and even books you’ve already paid for as a customer have been known to vanish off readers’ accounts). 

As I add more e-stories to Kindle, I’ll add details on the short stories page. I’ll also add Twee Tales Too when it’s available, and a link to the paperback for Twee Tales when that’s available. Every once in a while, I’ll also publish a short story to this page. 

Here, then, are the links:

I hope you like the new covers, but I also hope you enjoy the stories. (Bear in mind that they might still be updating, so perhaps wait a day.)

2 thoughts on “Publishing short stories

  1. Have you looked at Draft2Digital? You have to provide your own covers, but their distribution is excellent, and they do both long and short (including on Amazon, but it’s distribution, not direct publishing).

    1. TWEE TALES and DIARY OF A SCAREDY CAT are both with D2D, and SCAREDY CAT is with them in paperback too – thanks to your recommendation before. Once I’ve sorted out the Kindle Unlimited thing that I’m sure I didn’t ask for, I may take the shorts/flashes over to D2D as well. But as they were sitting there on my bookshelf in KDP I thought they may as well earn their keep.

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