In this episode, we’re talking short fiction: flash fiction, novellettes, novellas and shorter full length works. That are the opportunities? What are the challenges? How can you grow your readership, income base and product catalogue using shorter fiction?

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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 017: Challenges and Opportunities of Writing Short(er) Fiction

Crystal: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele: And I am Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.

Crystal: Welcome to episode 17 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show, we are going to be looking at the challenges and opportunities of writing short stories and short kind of in quotation marks in that we’ll be talking about short stories, but also novellas novelettes and some other sort of flash fiction options as well.

But first, what have we been up to in the past week?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele: Oh yes. Yes. It’s an appointment that I love. So there is one book that I finished, uh, reading. Uh, I mentioned this book by Eileen Cook in one of the previous episodes, and I really liked it. I was able to tell you the first time, Build Better Characters is title of the book if you are wondering, I was able to tell you why that was important to me while I was half-way through it. But now that I finish it, I just want to tell you a couple of more things that I took out from that book. Um, if I had to just say one thing about that book is that, especially by the end of it, you really understand that the hope and the goal of Eileen was to really tell you how much is important to create the backstory of the character.

And I think this is meaningful either you’re writing shorter and we’re going to talk about that a lot today, either you’re writing an epic fantasy that you’re adding a romance or a thriller. The whole soul of the book is telling you, take time in crafting a character that makes sense to you. And after you you’ve done that, I promise you, your book is going to be a thousand times better. Throughout your whole book and especially in the end that when everything wraps up I cannot, I can honestly tell you, uh, if I would have been in the book like eight, by the middle. It was five out of five stars, really, because of the message, it carries throughout old book.

And I wasn’t able to tell you this because the last time I didn’t finish it. And especially today that we’re going to talk about the short stories and why you have to be kind of good in crafting a good character, in a few pages sometimes. I really recommend the book, Build Better Characters because it’s really that good.

And the message she says is really know your characters to have a deeper, more meaningful story. So that was for sure, one of the things that I wanted that to get through and, Michele Amitrani’s wise of course I’ve been, writing, but, one thing that I’m doing differently, Crystal, nowadays, I’m really trying every single time I write a short story, uh, to focus on only one thing.

So it might be a dialogue or it might be plot. He might be description. Mmm. I do think it’s important to just hone your skill in one particular area, especially if you are experimenting. As I’m doing nowadays. Um, so I would say, I am taking a lot of time in trying to understand how the craft of writing works by dissecting it.

So, uh, one of the beautiful things he said, writing short means you can experiment more. And, uh, I’m curious to see where this experimentation will bring me. And, if I have been able to transfer the skills that I am developing in a longer work, so a novel, or a series of books, so I’m experimenting more than usual.

I’m curious to know what have you been up to.

Crystal: Well, I am currently working on kind of a re-facing. I’m doing basically a book sales make-over for my first series, which is The MacAlisters of Rivers End. And the books have been around for a couple of years and they’ve got some pretty good traction, but the covers are a little bit off market.

And they were great for testing, but I really want to just match the market a little bit more fully in terms of contemporary hometown romance with some comedy, but a little bit sexy. So I have redone the covers for the whole series for the eBooks and audio books. And I’m working on uploading that. And as part of that transformation, I’ve been just looking at my book clubs sign up, which is my newsletter mailing list sign up on my website and figuring out how I’m going to revamp that. So to help me with that, I’ve been reading a book called Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby I think is how you say their name. And it’s a marketing book that talks a lot about headlines and subject lines and wording. And it’s about marketing in general, but there’s the last few chapters are very specifically about using a lead magnet in this case, a free book and getting people to opt in.

And then the order of the emails that you send. So that one in combination with The Newsletter Ninja, I’m finding to be just a really good compliment the second book, the sell, like crazy really digs into exactly what formulas you’re using and some of your calls to action and exactly what elements go into the perfect opt in page and things like that.

And complete with diagrams actually have layouts and things like that. So that is really helpful. In terms of just making all of that really clear. So for me, that’s, that’s been my focus has been a bit of transformational work on existing products as I get ready to released a bunch of the stuff in the next few months that I’ve spent the last year kind of working on in the background, gearing up for an exciting fall and holiday season.

Defining short fiction types

Now we should talk about first. How are we defining short stories, novellas and novelettes so just so everybody is on the same page with language and knows what we’re talking about. So flash fiction is generally anything that’s under about a 1000 words. A short story is a thousand to 7,500 words.

A Novelette is usually 7,500 to 19,000 words. And then on novella is anything from 19,000 to, well, full length in your genre. So that can vary a little bit a novella in category romance could be really like 20,000 words up to about 40,000 words, even 50,000, depending on how, how you’re making that break down.

But in the longer genres, you could still be calling it an novella, even though it’s 60,000 words, depending on what the expectation is for that. Does that kind of line up with your. Understanding Michele?

Michele: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve read like novelette it is from a 17.000 words, sometimes but it’s basically the same thing.

So like, we’re talking about small things here, the range that Crystal said, it’s exactly what it is. It’s not 100% of specs because as she said, genre variation very important and they accounts, they do account for the word count. When you hear this numbers always remember, like, that might be some similarities between genres and some small changes, but for sure, a novelette is not going to be 100,000 words.

It’s something on the short side, a novella is longer when you think about epic novels usually we think about one of the thousand words or more. So it depends as always, but the coordinate we are giving to you are useful, for you to understand more or less the length, the thickness of that, of that book.

Crystal: What is it that brought you to writing shorter stories?

What made you start writing shorter stories?

Michele: Basically, because I wasn’t a writing no longer works, so I wanted to write stuff. Huh. And, uh, I decided, uh, okay. So if you are just banging your head on the wall, because you just can’t finish something that is longer than 40,000 words. What about taking a step back and writing something shorter?

Mmm. I really went over this in a previous episode. I started the challenge this year, which is to write one short story every month, this year. And so far, I was able to, if your account, all the words that are published since January 2020, to write and publish much more than previous year exactly because I set a lower expectations.

I would like if possible to talk about expectation. I think it’s important, especially when you’re writing and especially when you are, we are talking about writing shorter than longer. I think there is a story that, some of us tell ourselves that if it’s a short story is not worth necessarily reading or taking seriously, which is not true.

A short story can be as deep as an epic fantasy, if not more, it just depends on the way you are approaching the whole project. Every single time, from the beginning of my 12 by 20 challenge is the name I gave to my 12 short stories in 2020 challenge. I wanted to make sure that my readers took something away from my short stories.

So I made it the mission to put a soul, if you allow me the word, in each one of these works and I like to think that I did that. You can think of a soul as a statement or a theme, whatever you want to call it. But I’m just telling you this because I really, I truly believe it’s very important that you do not dismiss something that comes through the word short.

It has exactly the same value, then a longer book, and it is an amazing way to start and to finish something. And the finishing part is the most important thing that if you have to take away one only, only one thing from what I’m saying to you now, Is this: finishing the story it’s powerful when you start something like a book and when I, when I say book I mean a novel, 50,000, 60,000 words long. Looking at horizon is much more difficult and believe me, because I wrote novels. The feeling that you have when you finish something, it’s an uplifting feeling. And this is another reason why I decided to write short this year, because every single time I finished something, I feel looking myself at the mirror. If you want. Uh, plus I can see that there are products, there are outside myself, in the world. And again, I promise you once you see a cover and the story that you wrote with the title, I promise you, there will be for, you know no difference between a short story or 5,000 words and an epic fantasy of half a million words, because it’s something you’re sending something outside.

So, sorry if this parenthesis was a bit longer than I meant to, but it just because I’ve seen, uh, um, and I experienced it first- hand. I’m telling you this because I was the first one thinking that the shorter work was not as meaningful as a long one. Now that I’ve been doing this consistently for five months I can say I was wrong. I was totally wrong. And I invite you when you listen to us and to the pros and the cons of course, are writing shorter, why this should apply, to you for your specific case. Because maybe you don’t want to write short, but there are definitely something that me and say to you today that you can apply even to a longer works.

Again, what I want to talk about that a bit later, but just to finish the answer to your question, uh, the reason why I want to do ride short is because I wants to finish things and the 12 by 20 challenge, which is something Crystal is helping me a lot, by the way. it’s really letting me understanding what is that I can do when it comes to writing in my second language.

Again, it’s a story of limitations, or a it’s something that you set up as goals. But the reason why I started was exactly because I wanted to test something. And if I screw up something again, I knew that the next month Crystal would have the choice and the opportunity to write something completely new.

So we shuffling, you know, experimented doing these kind of things. Um, I do know that you have a slightly different story. Ah, uh, because we, we’re talking about stories on how to ride short and what brought you to write a shorter length stories. Um, and I want you to the listeners why you started and how did you started?

Crystal: Well, originally it started for the same reason, actually that I was not finishing the longer books. I had a hard drive on my computer with, I don’t know, probably 50 partially finished novels. And when I looked back at it, I discovered that I almost always got to 25 or 30,000 words before, for whatever reason I sort of abandon it.

And so part of it was that, that I also, I really wanted to finish something to feel that sense of accomplishment and also to. Get to the next part of the experiences, right? I really wanted to what comes after you finish the draft and what does the rest of this process look like? And in thinking about my story world, more and more story ideas were coming to me.

But as I was looking at that it was going to potentially be taking for you like 50 years to finish writing all of those full length novels. And I thought, okay, I got to do something differently. And that’s when I started the 40 by 40 challenge, which was that I wanted to write 40 short stories in my world.

And originally I was just going to write like 10,000 words, short stories and what happened was when I got into them, they got longer and longer and longer. So I set a target of 10,000 and then I would easily write 20 or 25. And so if you set out to write a short story, but you give yourself 25 or 30 to actually flush it all out properly and get to know your characters and do all those things you can pack a lot of story into 25,000 words. So I had a really great, Mmm, a really great experience with that. And so that was my sort of creative motivation for doing short stories and the business motivation was that in order to start making money off things, you need products in the marketplace.

And so if you have not finished and shipped something, you are making exactly $0. That’s not moving you forward. And because I had said, Oh, well, You know, I’m going to do it really smart this time and I’m, I’m not going negative in any direction that there will be no owing money to do this book thing.

And I was so determined that I needed to make money off of the things I was doing at the beginning in order to pay for the growth of my writing business, which meant I needed some products that I could sell. I also really wanted to test different sub genres and test out different styles and stories and whatever else and see what was really going to work for me.

Playing with shorter formats really let me do that. So. Yeah, that’s really what brought me into it was just a sense of opportunity and a desire to be able to complete something.

Michele: Which is always important. Um, that uplifting feeling. If you forgive me again, I’m going to be very boring and tell you another Masterclass, story, which I love masterclass stuff.

Uh, there is, um, uh, a very famous, writer. Um, Joyce Carol Oats. And she writes short stories very well, so she wasn’t embodied by the creators of masterclass too, you know, give a masterclass related to how to write short stories. And one of the reasons why I actually started seriously, this challenge was because of something she said, and, uh, she was like, um, writing the novel it’s too long and it takes time.

And what you need, especially if you’re at the beginning, you’re a new, writer, and this is my case because I’m starting right now to write in the English market consistently, she said, you need it. That uplifting feeling like if you don’t have that, that’s like it, you are starving yourself to death.

That’s something I’m saying maybe I’m with my Italian dramatic, uh, lore, but it’s true. Um, if you have that, uplifting thing that you add at the end of finishing a story, I guarantee you, you will want to write a bit more at the same time this is not to say that you cannot drive and over right away.

It might take more time though. And maybe what you need as Crystal was mentioning, you said something okay. That you can let other people read. You don’t necessarily need to sell this thing, especially if you are at the beginning. You can just ask them people for feedback, but it’s more difficult to get feedback from something he didn’t even finish.

For example, a novel we find to be more protective of our works, right, Crystal? Especially. Right. Uh, when, uh, I’ll give you an example. Uh, when I asked Crystal to be my partner who makes me accountable, I tell her, I’m going to give you a very rough draft of the story by this day, but don’t read it.

She can’t read my draft. And I’m talking about the short story here. So I’m imagining if you’re writing a novel. It’s much more difficult, depending on where you’re coming from. Okay. Read this first chapter, or this first three chapters. Again, coming back to the importance of finishing something, let it rest a bit and maybe coming back to that, the beautiful think, uh, with short fiction is that you have more freedom of doing things. Feedback from readers come faster because is a shorter work. You don’t fret that much because like, you don’t think of it like your definitive thing that is going to make you or break you as an older, the beautiful think of short, stories is really that they don’t ask too much in return, if not your love, as an author, of course. What they ask is that you just are present, you are in the moment, you’re giving yourself everything you are giving to the story, everything you’ve got. Mmm. And I just find like, novel-wise it’s a bit more daunting. So I don’t know like your opinion on that.

But I do believe when I’m staring, at project that requires me at 50,000 or more books. I, yeah, it’s sweaty. Mmm. I start to think like, this is a giant, I need a strategy to beat him or her. I need to make sure that I have a plan and that freezes me the same thing that happened for my latest project.

I wanted to write a sequel to a novel and I failed exactly because of that reason. I saw the wall, I saw the giant, I had no plan. I had no idea what to do. But I’m really curious because like, uh, I want to know, why, Crystal, do you think that writing short, it’s not only important for, we’re not talking about new writer, but what you love about writing that short?

What is that? You realize it digging in, probably, if you have a favourite length.

Crystal: Yeah, I definitely do have a favourite length. And I think it comes for me, my calendar, my schedule, the way that my work was always arranged was that I didn’t have necessarily a ton of reading time. I mean, I always made time to read, even if it meant giving up my sleeping in the, in the evenings and I would be studying for school and whatever else.

So I did a lot of school. A lot of my life was spent as a student, but after exams were done over the Christmas holidays I just got to read for pleasure. Not because a book was assigned or I had textbooks to cram in my brain for exams or whatever, but I got to read just for fun. And so I would go to the store and I would buy every collection of romance novellas that came out at Christmas because there was always multiple, um, anthology style books. And this is print books because this is pre eBooks, but I would find all of them and there might have been, you know, five or 10 of them. And that would be sort of, my Christmas splurge would be to buy these collections of holiday romances that were multiple novellas in one book. And then I would read them all. And I would, there’s lots of people in my family who are reading the same kinds of books. And so we would swap them all around and everybody would read all of them. And so I would spend basically my whole vacation reading holiday romance novellas.

So when it came time to, write, my stories, that’s just what happened when I sat down at the keyboard for NaNoWriMo and I, until I had this whole outline for a novel in this plan and I sat down at the keyboard on day one and I started writing something completely different and it turned out to be a holiday romance novella, you know, but it’s, my brain is programmed for that.

So for me, yes, definitely that sort of 20 to 30,000 word range is what comes very naturally. And so I decided just to ride that, because I think there are some really cool opportunities that are available when you are writing shorter. It let me practice the whole story arc and the process of outlining and going through the whole story.

Because often we write at the beginning, the beginning of the beginning, the beginning, the beginning, and we never make it to the middle or the end. We kind of get stalled out. And so it, let me practice the whole story and that, let me kind of reflect on that experience and then write another one. And because the whole publication process is much shorter as well. Editing doesn’t cost very much, right? Compared to a full length novel. If you’re editing on the Vela, it’s very fast to get your feedback from the editor. It’s much less expensive to produce. If you’re doing an audio book version, which you can do, then you also don’t, it doesn’t cost as much as, as it could for a longer length work, I mean, you might be looking at a $2,000 or $3,000 investment to do an audio book of a full length novel. And I was able to do mine for about $500. So that means you can get your whole product produced and out to market for a lot less money, and then it can start earning things.

That was a really interesting surprise for me was exactly how much you can make with shorter books. Because I think as people are busier, our attention spans are shorter and there’s a lot going on and Kindle actually has short read categories that your books get put into automatically if they are just under a certain length.

And so that’s a really interesting tip for you is just to watch the finished length of your product. If you want it to be in one of the short reads categories, you really need to be under 20,000 words, including your front and back matter and a sample chapter from whatever, because that gets you just under a hundred pages, which is sort of the trigger for the K E N P is about a hundred pages.

And there’s no way to ask to get in it. If you are 104 pages, you just won’t qualify, but it’s much better to be on the longer side, in a short read category than it is to be short in a full length category. Um, so yeah.

Shorter fiction and its perks

Michele: And I think it’s important what Crystal is saying because we spoke about niching things down and I want you to be aware that writing short might be the way to go, um, depending on your writing style. Uh, but there are readers out there I can assure you that are seeking right now short works. They want to experience to be full, but quick. Um, and then, and I’m reminded of something that, Neal Gaiman said, uh, which was like a shorter story have their own challenges and we’re going to talk about them. Our experience with writing short and why it is sometimes more difficult than that writing longer works. But what Neil Gaiman was saying, he said the feeling that you add, when you read and finish a short story, it might be very powerful.

It might be a punch in the face. Something that you don’t necessarily have with a longer book because sometimes with the foreshadowing, you kind of guess what can happen and it’s very difficult for an epic fantasy. To give you a punch in the face at the end. Not all books

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that, do not underestimate the power of writing., and publishing and selling short. As I said, niching the market down there can be, and there is for sure, a market for your shorter stories and people that will give you money, that will like up to get you a short story.

What do you mean this, of course, you have to write a good story. Doesn’t matter that it’s very long or it’s short. There needs to be a character that is relatable. A plot that is interesting. At least interesting. And can people we can understand and relate to uh character-wise. But at the end of the day, you can think of it as a miniaturized book, especially if we’re talking, like, for example, Crystal’s works like novellettes, like when you read one of her works.

I’m saying like, just my point of view, but when I read the, for example Oona, I did at the end of it, I did not have the feeling that he was like shorter work for me. It was a book. Period. And I saw people were buying it. Yeah. And we’re reviewing it as they were reviewing like any kind of a longer work.

So again, the point here that I’m trying to make is, do not underestimate the power of short stories. Not only enhance your writing skills, but also to make some money. Um, there aren’t really authors there are just writing only that kind of stuff. They know that they have an audience.

And the importance of having an audience and people that recommend your works. So I guess the importance of all of these is that there might be challenges,, but there are also rewards in writing short. And Crystal was mentioning the way Amazon works and she’s right. Of course, like if you write shorter, you’re going to be selected in different kinds of categories.

And guess what. That’s another way for you to let Amazon promote your works. Big time older, like selling, sending Stephen King. Like they can’t access that kind of category because they write longer. And the reason I nothing bad or good or bad, it’s just the way it works. So if you add several worlks, let’s see 10 or 12 and you can write short, you can’t write long for now. Yet. Try it? See how it goes. Maybe you write like 12 short stories that are connected with something like a plot, location. We already spoke about how to write a series, of stories so you can do that, you can connect to everything in one world, different character, uh, in a similar location.

The point is, again, try, especially at the beginning to play with your strenghts. Um, and I do believe, you have to give yourself the freedom, the liberty of, if you are at a certain point due to a need, I can just write these specific kind of set work. Uh, and don’t think of it as, uh, um, your weak point.

Think of it as your skill. I think of it as something that you are honing. Think of it as a, also selling proposition. Okay. I do believe that it’s important that you give yourself a break. Mmm. And I’m telling you this with an open heart, because it’s something that I started doing again, with my yearly challenge.

I gave myself a break. I was like, just try to write whatever it feels right. And it feels right for me to write short. Mmm. One of the things that we have mentioned, but we didn’t really think, talk, a Crystal is the challenges of writing short. And, um, I want to ask you one question, regarding that, because I think it’s going to be interesting ,an interesting point to start in the conversation and also useful for people that maybe never wrote short and they are considering doing it.

If you could mention the top two, things that for you are challenging when you seat and are about to write your short story? What do you think would be, and why do you think are those things ore than others?

Shorter fiction and its challenges

Crystal: I think probably the most challenging parts is much like, okay, dial back a minute.

So I sort of got my writerly credentials, writing children’s books. And that’s the same kind of challenge because you have to tell a really big story in a really small amount of words. And so I think that’s probably the hardest part is taking the bigness of the story world that you have and managing to communicate and layer in all of that richness, because it’s shorter, but it’s not less, which means that you still have to develop your characters, you still have to make your locations vivid and complete, and well-described you still need good dialogue. You still need all of those things. You just have to do it in a more compressed way. And so I would say compressing that without losing that is probably the biggest challenge in terms of not compromising on the quality of the story, just because it is shorter.

It doesn’t mean you get to leave things out. It just means you have to be really smart and really concise about how you say it. So that I’d say is challenge. Number one. Challenge number two is actually not on the writing side. It’s on the publishing side and that is just, um, dealing with the reader expectations and response.

So there is that middle ground where you write a story that feels like a full-length novel, but then people want it to be longer. So I think that’s a challenge, that I have to remove that voice in the back of my head because after you’ve done a bunch of them and people are like, can’t you make it longer?

Can you make it longer? Make it longer? You kind of have that loop playing in the back of your mind. So it’s very tempting to just be like, okay, yeah, I’ll just write a longer book, but that may not work for you for multiple other reasons. And so I think the managing that reader sort of desire and expectation against your own preferences and your own writing style can be very challenging.

So yeah, that was cause you do hear those voices while you’re writing and there’s that internal battle, which I think is an issue that can kind of frees you up while you’re trying to get into that writing zone.

Michele: I think it’s important, what you’re saying, because like you have to play with your strength and feedback, is always very welcome. Uh, but at the same time, um, again, to quote Neil Gaiman, when you give one of your work to somebody to read and they will tell you something doesn’t work for them, they are right. It doesn’t work for them. But the moment they say, um, they give you the suggestion on how to fix it.

They’re almost always wrong. And this is because like, you are the author of the story, you know exactly what is it that you want to convey. All right. So it’s important, what you said, like you have to look at your horizon while you’re working, you can look ahead and see what’s on the left what’s on the right. If, maybe the next time that you are working, and to use the metaphor means meaning when you’re writing the next story. If you would add something, but that doesn’t mean that you have to go back and change it. Story needs to be, told in a particular way. Every single time.

And no story is the same. Shorter stories I believe they are like a gems, like a smaller gems, you know, when you open a treasure chest. You find a lot of precious stones and stuff like that. I do think, and I do believe that, they should be shiny. Uh, they should be something that the reader reminds them or, yeah, that was like a very short, but at the same time, I still remember the message or I still remember the theme. They have to have personality. That’s something that I would like to convey. It’s very difficult to do that successfully. And I am no in no way an expert in that regard, I’m still learning, but I have been reading, way more shorter story, and, uh, I do believe that, the one that stuck the most were the one that had the theme or a message or a very powerful character.

And if we’re talking about things that are difficult, I mean, crafting a short story, I would say that there is one thing that, at least for what I saw happening to me, these expectations, When I have an idea, and this will happen 100% of the time. Like there is no change chance that will not happen.

It will happen every single time when I have an idea. And I know I need to write a short story out of it. Yeah. 100% of the time, I will derail because I’d try to write a novel out of it. And um, and I know that it’s not meant to be a novel, but it’s the way my brain works. So. One of the challenges for me is to keep it short.

Keep it condensed, keep it meaningful, give it a start and the beginning that make sense. One of the challenge that I have when I sit down and write the story is I need to know two things I need to know who, he’s the main character and what is it, his or her intention. And I need to know the obstacle.

if I know the intention of the character and the obstacle, I am, I would say 35% into knowing how the story’s going to play out. If I know the beginning at the end, I’m 75% through. If I know the theme of the story, I have a story. I will let it maybe sink, but I know basically that where, where I’m going from that point on. And, this is regarding like the biggest challenge. Yeah. Um, I don’t know if you want to add something on that Crystal?

Crystal: And it’s actually just dialing back a little bit. Cause I think it was interesting when you said, you know, if, when people are telling you how to fix it, they’re not usually right.

And I think that can be true. But when you’re dealing with genre fiction, one of the benefits of writing short is getting reader feedback and learning your market. And so I think. There is an exception to that, which is if the expectation of your market is that there will be a happily ever after contained in that story.

And you don’t deliver that in a short form. Okay. Then you do have to adapt if you want people to buy your books. And so I think that’s where it kind of comes in with the authorpreneur side is: no, you never have to change your book to fit audiences expectations. And sometimes you should be telling the story in a certain way, because that’s what works for your story.

But I think you also need to be weighing if, 40% of your reviews are not as high as they could be, because people are saying you didn’t adhere to this genre expectation, or, you know, this is what you set me up for with your blurb, and then it didn’t, it didn’t come through in the story. Then I think that that’s a value of writing short is do you have a chance to correct that in your next story or even corrected in the one that you already did without having major problems? Mmm. In terms of revisions, you can do them on shorter works without it being super expensive, you can learn with the short ones and then make those adjustments. So I think being really aware of your motivations of writing short, like. Is it that you’re writing short because you want to build your product list quickly?

Are you writing short because you want to have consistent releases that are coming closer together and not waiting so long between new books. Are you trying to build up a little bit of traffic? And so you’re writing short so that you have a couple of novellas to give away as part of different promos to build your list.

Like, what is your motivation as an author for writing those short things.

Michele: Yeah, definitely. It’s important, ah, to be able to… How would you say? Put your hear on the ground.

Crystal: Put your ear to the ground.

Michele: You’re listening to what’s going on around. Definitely. 100%. I subscribe to that.

If you are doing this, as you should be doing this on the business side of things you want to be smart about that. What I meant, uh, before, when I was talking about, uh, um, feedback, I meant the beta readers. So at the stage before, yes, but definitely when your product is out. So it’s been edited. You have the cover, you are the marketing plan.

100% reviews are a tough for me to read it. Um, but they are very important. Yeah. One of the suggestion that my good friend, Crystal here, gives. If I’m not mistaken, you are the one you read your reviews if they are below four stars outside. Like in bars or stuff like that. I believe you said something like that.

Crystal: Yeah. That is in the Strategic Series Author book.

Michele: So, and I was like, I actually start doing that. Then it’s meaningful all of this to say you shouldn’t close your hears to constructive criticism. That’s not what I meant. What I meant was like, if you have a theme and the message in the beginning stage, you should protect. Yeah. Okay. But once you’re out, you’re out.

So what Crystal is saying is that you have to be receptive of the critique. Yeah. Um, you have to be careful. I’m not releasing to trolls. For example, but you have to be extremely reflective when there is somebody that says that the expectation has not been met. Yep. And it’s not one person, but two, of half a dozen, you definitely want to listen to those.

And it doesn’t really matter the way they convey the message sometimes can be snappy sometimes can be mean. You have to put your, author hat. Professional author hat, you have to swallow it. And you have to realize that you are in a market that yeah it’s part of it to learn and it’s part of it to grow and it’s part of it to be punched in the face.

I realize I say punch in the face so much, but it’s true. It’s important. That feedback definitely are important. Um, I did learn a lot of things from reviews and, uh, not so good. And I know Crystal did be the same, one of the reason, uh, I believe, you are doing the book make-over is also because you’ve learned right, in the process you learned what was right, what could have been done better. You’re leveling up, right?

Crystal: Yeah. That’s definitely a huge driver for what I’m doing right now is I’m at the point where I have, you know, between 50 and a hundred reviews, I think up to 250 on silver bells now. And that’s enough feedback to really get a sense of where people are at. And I have enough sales data to look at, one of the novellas I wrote kind of as a test, maybe people really want an ending to that. And I had intended to do it as like a four story, a box set like I did with the MacAllisters, but that is going to delay the—the finishing of that product for quite a bit longer. And anyone who reads it in the meantime really wants the ending and so for a variety of reasons, I am actually rewriting that and I am adding what would have been the second book into that, which is going to make it a full length novel, but I will have written it in the form of two novellas so that, um, I, for whatever reason, to me, it felt more approachable.

And I learned from it and I was able to find out if people were willing to have a happily for now ending in that particular sub genre or not, it turns out not so much. So we’re going to fix that. And, um, and we release it because I found out the other things did it’s my bestselling individual title, the cover people love the premise people love, they really got hooked on the characters. And so that, that was fantastic. But the thing that’s holding it back from becoming the sales machine it could be is, is the ending. So then I can change it because it’s my book. So that’s the advantage of being in the driver’s seat is if you are willing to look the tough stuff in the face and acknowledge where you could do a thing better, you have a huge opportunity to then make those adjustments and, and go with that.

One of the things I wanted to talk about was a couple of challenges with things you can do with the short ones. So box setting them is a very good thing to do in terms of bundles and box sets. Now, one of the reasons is you can sell a novella for 2.99 easily that has been a good price point for those.

But what’s challenging is for a regular length, novel, your Kindle unlimited page read income, and the amount you get from selling that book somewhere between 2.99 to 4.99, depending on its length and genre, they are usually quite similar. But what happens when you have a short one and you’re getting paid 047 cents or whatever it is per page that’s red that does not add up very quickly. So I think I get about 20 cents when somebody reads one of my novellas in KU versus $2. If they buy it, that’s very different. So I was seeing a very small fraction of my income from page read so and it made sense to put them in a box set and make that available. But what you have to watch out for is that if the first book in your series of shorts is free, you can’t put it in your box set because you can’t have free stuff in Kindle unlimited in less, it is less than 10% of the total box set.

So if you are going to box that up something, the first free part, it has to come with a whole lot of other stuff after it, to make those page percentages make sense. So just something to be aware of is that, you know, if your strategy for your shorts is to push your KU readers you’re going to make, you’re going to want to make sure you’ve kind of bundled those up so that people are reading through a bunch of them all at once to the point where you’re making about the same as you would on a full length, novel, anything you can do to decrease the friction between people going and finding the next story and clicking that buy button or that download button is going to help them work their way through your work.

So that’s really helpful if you’re thinking of box sets, just think in advance about that. And one more tip around box sets is also, you have to remember that, but the box set is a separate product. So your reviews from the individual books do not map onto your box set. That is a completely new thing. So you’ll need to make sure that you have plans in place to recruit some of the readers who’ve already read your whole series as individual books as it was coming out to then also post reviews on the box for you. In that vein, your box set becomes competition for your individual books, because you may have people purchasing them in either way. So if you have ads running on your single books and you also have a box set available your rank may actually come down a little bit on those individual products, which may actually hurt the effectiveness of your ads.

So I do know authors, who’ve done a box set and then actually removed the box set because it was more challenging for them. Or vice versa. Who, once they put the books into a box that they took the individual books down, they deactivated those listings so that they were able to throw all their advertising revenue and all of their support behind the box.

So you just need to know what your strategy is going to be, and then tailor things around that.

Michele: That is actually interesting. It’s something that I’m doing and I’m discovering how difficult it is. We’re talking about different things because like, in, we’re talking about what I did in the Italian and market, I have four full length books and I also have a box set and I have the same problem with reviews.

So the box set is much more recent and it doesn’t have the amount of reviews that the other books have. So I do believe that’s right. It’s competition. I do believe to go back to the short story subject. There is one thing that might be useful for you to know. It is true that you might get, for example, from page reader, uh, less money because of the length.

If you are enrolled in the Amazon program at the same time one thing that at least for my experience in releasing these shorter works. The word of mouth is faster because people can read the work in … I had experience of people that read my things in one hour or two hours. It’s very unlikely that people were being able to read a book in like a one hour, one sitting possible seven to eight hours.

Uh, so I think what I’m trying to say, it’s another advantage of writing shorter. If you write something that resonates with readers, that thing it’s going to go a long way, way faster, uh, than a book. And again, we spoke about the advantage and disadvantage of writing short , definitely put this on the list of the advantages, because a book, a novella like Crystal’s, you can read it, reading one sitting, and then you want the next one right now. Right? Because like, you want to know how the story goes and that you can do that, and you can also, if I can say something more important, the feeling to have finished something, when you finish a book, I don’t know you, but I feel like, okay, checked this. When you are in the middle, in the middle of a longer work, it feels like sometimes, especially in the messy middle, it’s like, it’s, it’s difficult. I don’t know exactly where I’m going and maybe because there is a need of the, both of like writing longer, maybe because a publisher wants it, the word-count would be 300 or 400 words again, play with your strengths

Shorter works. I mean, if it’s done well, people interested in reading, sorry, in writing more of your works, they can get there faster than others. So you’re more of the dexterity that you have. It’s, it’s better in this regard. Uh, but yeah. If you are, uh, looking to, to have a longer plan, I do believe if you are able to write shorter works based in the same word and you can put them in a box center. Uh, there will be like the best of both worlds, because basically you have the length, you have the story arc and you have things that people already love reading the first book, in the second book.

So I do believe there is a sweet spot. Um, also when you finish,

I do believe there is a sweet spot that, you can write shorter, but if you can, uh, somehow Mmm, come up with a different story from a different character in the same word, or use the same location. Again, you can read book Crystal’s work on that series if you want to know more about this, but there are strategies.

And you just have to be smart about it. I don’t want to say you have to do that, but I’m just saying it is more likely that people will come back to you if you have more products regarding a world that they already love or characters they already love. And I believe one of the reasons why, you Crystal being successful in that you said you harnessed both good things from writing shorts, but by the same time, putting them together in box set, so different products and making sure that people can find it easily once they have the first one they want to see, so there’s a second and third, fourth in your case, a fourth. And there’s a box set. Okay. I’m going to buy that. Strategy. And time, because I don’t think that all of these came to you in like one afternoon. Like you need it, you can talk a bit about that. We’re talking about strategy and we’re talking about authorpreneurship but I don’t think they really realize what that was before the mistakes that you made there. And I do think from your story, like a listener can understand a lot more of what to do and what not to do.

Crystal: Yeah, I think it is, especially when you’re first starting out. I think the opportunities with short are huge because you have no mailing list. You have no products to sell. There’s a really interesting shift that happens once you get, we’ll say three to five products, then suddenly everyone in the authoring world takes you a little more seriously. And if somebody goes to your website to look you up to decide if you’re worth inviting on a podcast or whatever, it seems like three to five is the magic number where it starts to tip. And they’re like, you know what you’re doing! Because that volume is there. And it’s like the social proof right on our books. If we don’t have enough reviews, people aren’t willing to take a chance on us. And as a professional author, if you don’t have enough products, people are less willing to take a chance on you. So when you’re in that building phase and you’re looking at perfecting your processes and testing out. How do you publish a book?

Do you really want your learning to be like this full length novel, you’ve invested $3,000. And who knows how many months or years of your life in producing? Like that’s not necessarily what you want to be your test run. Right? So having a few short works that you can practice releasing, you can go through the process of launching and see if it works or doesn’t work.

And then after you’ve made a little bit of money off of those, and you’ve used them as test products to figure things out, you can make them permafree or you can use them as newsletter cookies, or you can use them in BookFunnel promos and use them to draw people in. So I actually published each of the first books in the series and, and managed to actually make enough money to pay for them.

Before I turned them to Permafree when the next books in the series were coming out. So I leave something as paid generally until there’s stuff that comes after it. That means me giving it away is going to then be promotion as opposed to just a free book, because there’s nowhere for them to go if nothing follows it yet.

So I think it’s, it’s worth working through the kinks and using those early books as, okay, I have this short story and I’m, or this novella, and I’m trying to promote it. Are people buying it? Do they like the cover? Is the blurb effective at actually converting people to the point of purchasing? You know, you can learn to use ads and how that works.

I wouldn’t normally run ads on a novella, but I have tested on novellas just to see if they were converting or not converting. And, and that’s a really interesting place to experiment and just get your, your tools figured out and get your own skillset polished up with lower risk than there is if you’re diving right in with a full length set of things.

Michele: And I think something that you just mentioned goes very well with the experimenting that I was talking at the beginning of the episode. What I’m doing, for example, for my challenge. I’m making sure that this book, at least in the moment I’m talking, they are these short stories that I’m writing. They’re free because my, my first objective now is not to make money, but to invite subscribers and to gather feedback, this was something that I knew from day one.

Like these are my objectives right now. This doesn’t mean they’re not going to be on sales in the future. Maybe when, again, trying to understand which one of them, maybe it can be structured in a series. which one of them people that read really liked. I’m really … what I’m doing now it’s gathering data, which we already discussed is super important, especially if you’re starting out. Listening to data.

Um, at the beginning of this challenge, I had no idea if I would write in English. Well, I now have a bit more confidence. That doesn’t mean that I, no, that I can write English the way I want to write, but from the feedback of people, hopefully all of them were not just trying to be nice. But so far I had like more than 100, uh, feedback. Either on, in review or in emails and I’m counting them.

Most of them were positive. So. The world is beautiful and there are a lot of beautiful and lovely people, but I believe that if my works were flowed then I would know where they are lacking. And when I get feedback I try to implement them and I try to make my next story better under that point of view.

That’s what I was trying to say. When they, you can be nimble, you can just move a bit faster right there. And, um, so I think it’s important for the listener and to know that. You can experiment and once you know, a bit more what’s working, you can double down on that.

Crystal: And what are some of the things that you have learned from other authors who are writing short stories successfully?

So do you have any tips or suggestions that it might help those folks who are just thinking about diving into writing short.

Michele: Absolutely. Actually from a three authors, uh, one of them it’s, I’m going to be boring and say Neil Gaiman, uh, and does this something he read from an essay written by Heinlein, not butchering his name, but, uh, it was an essay that he wrote about people that want to be published. This was meant for bear with me, for people that wants to be published. And I’m talking about long, length novel, I adopted this suggestion and basically what a Neil Gaiman said is: if you really want to do that, one thing is that you have to start writing. You have to finish writing, then you have to give that book to somebody else and then you have to start the next thing. That’s one of the reasons why I started the challenge along with the suggestion from Joyce was that you need to put the product outside yourself.

You have to been able to see it out there, you have to been able to send people to read it and to gather feedback. If you don’t do that, you, we did not create the story that other people can read and judge. This is the first suggestion I took from Neil Gaiman. You have to start something, you have to finish that thing. You have to put it out there and you have to start a new thing. That’s basically the theme of my 12 by 20. The second thing is something that I mentioned. Mmm. Uh, again from Masterclass. Joyce, Carol Oates said. You have to give yourself a price as an author, especially as a new older, and that price is easier to be given to you by yourself if it’s a short story. And the reason is because it’s easier to finish a shorter work, it’s not going to be easy. Bear with me. It’s going to be easier than a novel, uh, but for you. Especially at this point. it is important that uplifting feeling. Yeah. To have finished something. Yeah. Um, to look forward to the thing that is coming. Right?

Then every single time I finished one of my short stories I finish it and I don’t want to really do anymore. I’m ready to bang my head. Like I gave everything I got for you. Next one. So I’m ready. I’m refreshed. I know that I don’t have to think about the previous story, whatever I wrote it’s done. It’s in the past. Got it. Suggestion and number two. And finally the last suggestion that I have,, it comes again from Masterclass and again, and to be boring, uh, and from Margaret Atwood.

When she write a story, uh, or when she started telling the story, every single time she does it in a way that I find that to be refreshing. Okay. And I’m going to tell you a story now to honor her. Um, the second story that I wrote yeah. In my 12 by 20, the challenge is called Not That Fairytale.

And it’s basically a retelling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The idea of that story came from something, she said. In one of the masterclass, she started off right there, uh, Little Red Riding Hood. Let’s think of the story in a different way. It was dark inside the wolf. And that cracked me open.

And I was like, yeah, this is amazing. This needs to be the beginning sentence of my next short story. And that’s exactly how Not That Fairytale begins. So the third thing that I’ve learned from, uh, successful authors. Uh, the third thing that I learned from Margaret is try to put yourself in the story, but try to do it in a way people don’t expect.

Try to flip things that people believe to know, with something they are not seeing coming. The story that I, that I gave you about, Not That Fairytale is I really liked the way did I germinated because I did not expect it coming. And one of the reasons why, uh, I think Not That fairytale one of the stories that people liked the most was because I was not expecting to write that story, but I gave myself permission to, from that first sentence to write something that I had no idea where who was going.

So I will say, this is the thing that I learned from these great writers. Um, and I’m curious to know if you have suggestion on that regard.

Crystal: Yeah, I think the freedom is an important piece is just, just like you. I like the phrase you used, you unlocked. And it, that really is, I think one of the biggest benefits of a short story is that you’re not committing to the next six months or six years of your life to write the great American novel.

You are just going to tell a story. And so I think that freedom to just indulge the creativity and really let yourself just run with it is, is hugely powerful. I think the key things to keep in mind or that you really want a single central conflict if possible. Like if you’re writing a short story, you usually want to keep it pretty compact. So a single central conflict, not too many different characters or locations or subplots, because with each thing you add, it adds an exponential amount of words and the need to really dive into detail for all those things as well. So I think keeping in mind that simplicity is really key.

So you can really elaborate on the parts that do need to be there, and you can really get that depth on the things that are important. There’s a really great master class by Mary Robinette Coell and I’m using the word masterclass, not in the context of masterclass, the company. But in the context of our Creative Academy workshop and you can access it for free if you come and join creative Academy for writers.com and it’s something called the mice quotient, which has some math involved and some great tips on crafting shorter stories and some math that you can do to actually calculate how many words the story should be based on the elements that are in it.

So if you’re not really sure what kind of a length your story might want to be, maybe you want to come and just watch that workshop and work through some of that a story math on your own. Don’t be scared. I know writers sometimes are not thrilled about story math, but it’s actually relatively straight forward and really kind of a cool concept.

So come and participate in that workshop. And then you’ll be able to do your own calculations of how long a story shall be. Now it is our favorite time, which is the curious jar time for those of you who can not see the video, I’m holding up a white cookie jar with a yellow sticker that says curious jar in red across it.

What is the kindest or most surprising thing a reader has ever said to you?

I am going to open the jar and my lovely cohost is going to tell me when to stop rifling around in it and pull out the question

Michele: Ok. Now.

Crystal: Orange one today.

Michele: Orange. Vitamins.

Crystal: Okey dokey. No, this is a nice one. Okay. What is the kindest or most surprising thing a reader has ever said to you?

Michele: Wow. That’s interesting. Okay. Are you ready? Okay. And then I’m going to buy you some time. I’m going to say something that was said to me this morning. Uh, because it’s the last email that I got was from, actually one, of, uh, the people that are reading my stories and, he was very kind, been taking some of his time. Mmm. And he said that, uh, um, the story that I write, uh, remind him of, presently one of the favourite authors. And, uh, there is a passage in the story that I wanted this to be a mention, a tribute to that author. And he, read it and he was like, this reminds me of something that I’ve read, from that book. And I was like, yeah, exactly. That was what I wanted it to be a tribute to that author, I’m not going to say the name or the name of the, of the, of the book, just because of the message I’m trying to convey here is that I really was trying to thank her the author of this book. For something she gave me. The theme of the story that I published was also, um, thanks to the book that I read. And then he finished the message with Although this was a short story, he said, I was pulled from the very beginning and I want to know more on what happens? Uh, so I think every single time there is a reader that takes the time to write you an email, a long email to tell you, you make me stop. And you made me use some of my time to just really merge myself into the story. It’s like, it’s one of the best things that you can have from the world. Um, because it’s really confirmation that somebody out there that you have never seen in your life is reaching out to you to tell you, you did a great job, regardless of what you want to do money, same subscribers doesn’t matter. It’s a compliment for me because it’s an acknowledgement of I’m working my ass off to try to make my worlds more believable and my character more, to make them feel more real. And when I get something like that, I’m like, yeah, I’m good even if I don’t sell a copy of a single quarter, I don’t make anything out of this book. And I know it’s not good because we’re talking about strategic authorpreneur podcast, but bear with me. Even if I’m not selling this, I am good. I can sleep tight. I need something more. There is a story out there and there’s one reader that read it and enjoyed it.

This gives me motivation to go forward, to write the next story. I didn’t want it to be so profound and stuff, but that’s a true story. And I just wanted to share it. We’re sappy here. We share the things as they are. And uh, hopefully that came, I came along the way I wanted to go, which is like a genuine.

I really was pleased when I got this email. Now I really hope that I bought you enough time.

Crystal: I think the kindest thing a reader has ever said, and I’m going to divide my world here into fiction nonfiction. So we’re going to say, because the nonfiction is relatively new area for me to be writing and releasing in, uh, in the last little while.

And I actually just saw an Instagram post a couple of weeks ago. That was someone who had had the, my strategic series author book recommended to them to read and had picked it up and had just read it and said, it was maybe the best, how to book they had ever read. And they were then posting about it on Instagram and they had left a review on Amazon and all of those things.

And so that I think was probably the nicest compliment that anyone has ever paid as a reader and it was not somebody that I know it was just a random stranger, which was fantastic, who is now not. A stranger because I of course followed them back on Instagram. And now I am following along with their series running adventures.

So that was really fun. Um, yeah. So I’d say that would be my kindest and most surprising all in one go. Okay. So we would like to hear for those of you who are published authors out there, what is the kindest or most surprising thing a reader has ever said to you? And you can put that in the comments below the YouTube video, if that’s where you’re watching it, or the comments on wherever you are listening to the podcast, or you can visit us@strategicauthorepreneur.com and find episode 17 and leave your comment there.

If you want to send us a curious jar question and you should, because our jar is getting a little bit low, please email ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com and we’ll add it to the mix and

Michele: for shownotes links to resources we mentioned, and coupons or discounts on tools we love visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com. You can also subscribe to the newsletter in each week, we would send you just one thing that we think will help you on your authorpreneur journey and a link to our latest episode.

Crystal: You’ll get a gold star and a million bonus points in the game of life if you leave a review for us, wherever you listen to this podcast. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to get to know us and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next episode where we’ll be talking about the power of story and the way it shapes your writing life with special guest and story coach April Bosshard.

Michele: See you next week. Bye bye.

Crystal: Bye.