A regular novel of about 90 000 words takes about five or six hours to read end-to-end. That is, if you count all the time you spend reading, that’s what it will amount to, which means a lot of reading and a lot to remember. Unless you choose some Read-in-One-Sitting ebooks to load onto your electronic eReader.
Read-in-One-Sitting books are those you can read on one train ride, say. Or one visit to a dentist’s waiting room. Or one stand in a long queue, or at a bus stop.
My experiment lasted a few months, and numbers of downloads showed that the form was rising in popularity. I had two bundles of two short stories each, and a novella, all formatted properly, following the instruction manual at SmashWords. I uploaded them, and made simple covers using patterned wrapping paper and a bit of typography. This led to re-bundling my short story collections into their present form: a minimum of six to a bundle, each with its own title, cover and design. And it also led to creation of my ‘car’ short stories – all of which are inexpensive Read-in-One-Sitting eBooks.They are books you can load onto your portable device, and enjoy in one hit. One lunch-break, or one ferry trip. How neat. They are becoming quite popular, because they are cheaper than the regular novel. Some even come free. I have several of these Read-in-One-Sitting books up online at various retailers at the moment, and a couple are free. I tested the market way back in 2010, and it proved to be an interesting exercise. People love short eBooks in the form of novellas, short stories and other short forms.
Can you do the same? Probably: look through your old files and find stories whose rights are entirely yours. Give them a good edit so that they feel fresh, correct, and very readable. Make sure the word count of each eBook comes in at about 20 000 words. Read them aloud while timing yourself. Each book should not take longer than about 20 minutes to read. Just the right length for a commute, a long wait at the doctor’s, or that lag time between lectures. They make good lunch break reading, too. Imagine your reader sitting under a tree in a park.
Decide how you would like to go: Kindle? Read the instructions at Amazon. SmashWords? Read their manual. Formatting for these two is rather easy – there are others that are slightly more complicated. Upload your eBooks after you have made yourself some covers (you can probably do a lot better than my first experiments!) and try to price them within reason, always remembering they are only little books that take no time to read and enjoy. They make excellent ‘tasters’ for your kind of writing, so you can use them as freebies to excite readers about your work. Hold a few ‘twofer’ offers from your website, and give away one of these little eBooks as a bonus purchase. Readers will then purchase your longer works more eagerly.
Matching covers are not hard to make if you use a patterned background, some stock photographs and excellent typography. I like to use GIMP – an image manipulation program that’s a free download with lots of options. Making these short Read-in-One-Sitting books becomes easier the more you make. You might find your readers coming back for more.
ROSANNE DINGLI, author of Death in Malta and According to Luke, has written quite a bit of fiction since 1985. Some of it is collected in seven volumes of stories that were awarded, commended and published in anthologies, journals, supplements and magazines. For more about Rosanne Dingli, visit her website , or her blog.
A version of this story appeared on Rosanne Dingli’s blog in 2010.
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Good post, Rosanne. I've been thinking about this for a while. Probably in six months, once The Biker has settled. I think you're right, short attention spans and long novels do not mix well.
I've been thinking about this, too, but I didn't know if there was a market for it. So, thanks for the post. Also, three cheers for GIMP!
There is, Krista – people love the convenience of pulling down something quickly on the wireless app, reading it in one grab, and getting on with the day. And paying a dollar for that is nothing. Free is even better – so have a variety and see what happens.
Where would we be without Gimp?
This is a good idea. I've been meaning to write some more short stories
They are so useful, Matthew. I wrote about a hundred between 1991 and 2001. They can be bundled into collections, sold to magazines and journals – and some of mine gathered a clutch of awards. Used as samples, tasters, freebies and "also by" pieces, they fill out an author's back list and genre repertoire.
I read somewhere that short stories have gathered momentum with the advent of the ereader. I rarely gave them a second look before my Kindle, and now I have read quite a few, which much to my surprise, I really enjoyed. I found they can be as satisfying as a full length novel and you get a certain satisfaction saying 'I read a book at lunchtime'. No one has to know it was only 50-60 pages….do they?
Ha ha – very true, Cathy!
There is an elegant sufficiency contained in a nicely turned short story or novella. I put quite a bit of work and thought into mine, especially when it comes to well-researched historicals such as Vision or Delusion, which is all about the history of photography in Belgium.
And yes – it's not just you. The way we live now is perfectly suited to the short grab… or perhaps it's the other way around.
Short stories is not a form I have used and I am not sure I could do it well. But I think what you say makes a great deal of sense for many people with our hectic schedules.