one more thought on Kindle Unlimited for self-publishers

Apropos of my last post about short stories and Kindle Unlimited, I got an email from another writer saying that it seemed like a good idea, but he really hates writing short stories.

Well, yes. This strategy would only work if you actually like writing short stories.

Myself, I quite like writing short stories. In fact, for years short stories were all that I wrote, since in the Bad Old Days before ebooks, it was way easier to sell short stories than novels. So I got really good at paring down a story to 4,000 words or 6,000 words or whatever the word count limit of the particular market was. Of course, now that we’re in the age of ebooks, those limitations are artificial, and my short stories tend to want to land at 9,000 to 12,000 words or so. (I think that’s technically a novelette or a novella, but whatever.) That said, short stories are generally not very profitable, but I like doing them, and I enjoy using them as free giveaways for my longer books.

But if you don’t like writing short stories, I don’t think you should force yourself to write them just because it seems like a good promotional strategy. Book promotion should not make you want to tear your hair out.

-JM