First of: what do you call a story that is 16000 words long? a short story or a novella? I'm asking because I don't know how to market it. I've finished one of my stories and I will make it free on amazon, iBooks, and Smashwords, but I am considering making a collection of about 5 to 6 stories of the same size and sell the collection. Still the other stories will be available for free seperately. That said, should a collection of stories have a common theme? a common narrative? or is that less important? For instance, all the genres are different and one story doesn't have any relation to the other. Sorry for asking so many different questions... Just choose one that you feel like answering
I would say 16K is a short novella. Some people try to use the word "novellette" for books of about that length, but it's not too common. I think generally a collection of shorts has SOMETHING in common, at least genre. If your genre is going to be different, I think it would be best to have something else in common, yes. It'd be cool to play around with the same character in different genres - like, no memory of her life in different stories, but in one she's an outlaw in the Wild West, in another she's in space, or a contemporary bookshop owner at war with a handsome real estate developer, or...! You could really explore the way her character is influenced by her surroundings. (Sorry, that's just my imagination taking a spin. No real connection to your questions...)
Japan has a pretty popular book category in that word range called a Light Novel. Usually they're directly related to each other, but not always.
There was a fairly short-lived serialization trend a couple years ago - died out pretty quickly. I think mostly because the lowest price Amazon allows is $.99, and there are people selling entire NOVELS for that price (or giving them away for free). It's pretty hard to convince people to pay that much for a single chapter. If you wanted to give a book away in serial format? I'm not sure why it would be a marketing advantage. As a reader, if I like a book, I want to read the whole book at once, not in little bits. And if I'm not crazy about the book, I'd be pretty unlikely to bother downloading it chapter by chapter...
Only works with graphic novels and manga. Unless you've got a really good story on your hands it's better just to finish the full thing then sell it as a full novel.
I've only used smashwords to put books for free because I'm not sure how to sell and price books on Amazon what does one need to do?
It is a short story. No reason to try to make it more than it is. Sell it for 99 cents on Amazon and SmashWords and see how it goes. Get a good cover made...
