How to Write Short Stories: Short stories as part of your author marketing ecosystem
One short story won’t do much for you as the income and discoverability prospects are small, and the number of new readers and impact on your career will be negligible.
But marketing is not about one story, in the same way that an author career is not about one book. If you keep writing short stories over time, they become a valuable part of your wider author ecosystem, and a marketing asset in themselves.
So, what are the different marketing angles to consider for your story?
Content marketing
Content marketing is giving something away for free that brings people to your work, and for authors, the best kind of content attracts new readers to your books.
Short stories are a natural fit because they’re written in the same author voice as the rest of your body of work. A blog post about your writing process might interest other writers, but a short story draws in actual readers, who might go on to buy your story collection, or your other books.
A short story is also a low-risk way for a reader to try you out. Someone who has never heard of you might hesitate to commit ten hours to your novel, but they might take a lunch break to read your short, and if they enjoy it, you might have a new reader.
Expand your existing story worlds
You can also use short stories to deepen your existing readers’ connection with your story world and characters.
My short story Soldiers of God sits between books twelve and thirteen in my ARKANE thriller series but can also be read as a stand-alone by readers unfamiliar with my work. It features Martin Klein, a popular secondary character similar to Q from James Bond, who discovers something unusual in scanned records from the Vatican Secret Archives which leads him to a hidden crypt under a church in Paris.
A story like this rewards the readers you already have, keeps the series alive between full-length books, and can give new readers a low-risk way into your story world.
Every story is another doorway
Marketing and discoverability are partly a numbers game. Each published story is another product page, another entry in a playlist, potentially another anthology appearance, another chance for human readers — and the platform algorithms — to find you.
Each story gives you a new chance to participate in genre-specific anthologies or pitch fiction podcasts where your story might fit and find a new audience. After you place a story, you’ll have new chances to participate in cross-promotion, building relationships with authors and editors. If you are an active participant, they’ll want to work with you again, and over time, you will expand your author ecosystem.
This all takes time and a long-term perspective on an author career, but short stories compound if you keep writing, and in a few years, you may be surprised at how many doorways lead readers back to your books.
Questions:
- How can you position your short stories as part of your wider author marketing ecosystem?
- Which of your existing characters or story worlds could spin off a new short story?
- Where could your next story create a new doorway — a playlist, an anthology, or a podcast?
Resources:
- How to Market a Book — Joanna Penn
