How to Write Short Stories: Your publishing options

Your words are valuable.

Your story grew out of your curiosity and your craft and your life, and it has worth, whatever you decide to do with it next. So, before you rush to publish, sit for a moment and consider. What do you want this story to achieve?

Here are some possibilities:

• Do you want your story published in your favourite magazine, anthology, or brand-name short-story market?
• Do you want to enter it in a competition and aim to win a prize?
• Do you want to bring new readers into an existing series with the same story world, using the story as a free reader magnet?
• Do you want to please the readers you already have with a new story they’ll love, and self-publish it so it’s out there quickly?
• Are you aiming for an audio market first, either narrated by you or another voice artist?
• Do you want your story to appear in a printed collection or anthology, perhaps as a crowdfunded special edition with foil and sprayed edges?
• Do you want your story to keep earning for you, licensed over and over again in different ways, bringing in new streams of income and new readers over time?

Your answers change the path ahead and while one story can have multiple incarnations in its life, that first step will shape your direction.

As an example, The Dark Queen was originally commissioned in 2017 for an anthology magazine, Fiction River: Feel the Fear, and I was paid professional short story rates for the work.

After six months the rights reverted to me, so I self-published the ebook as a ninety-nine-cent single and also narrated it myself, publishing it as an audiobook on my store as well as on Spotify, Audible, and YouTube.

In 2022, it was licensed for another anthology, Amazing Monster Tales: Into the Briny Deep, and I republished it again in my collection The Buried and the Drowned as part of a Kickstarter campaign in September 2025, and then published the collection everywhere a few months later.

The story is only 2,500 words, and yet it’s earned well over £1,000 already (around US$1,200) already, alone, and as part of the anthologies and collections, and it has introduced my work to many readers along the way.

One story can travel many winding roads, but you do have to make some decisions to shape the path ahead. You might take your time chasing prestige with one story and speed to market with the next, or favour literary possibilities with one and genre readers with another. The more stories you write, the more choices you have. The chapters ahead will show you the possibilities.