The general consensus is 1,000 to 20,000 words is short stories. At 500 words per page single spaced that's 40 pages or 80 pages if double spaced [250 words / page]. A lot of short stories become novelettes - as in there's more than one story per book. I wrote a novelette with my brother at 14, never made any money but that wasn't the intention as it was more for the fun. As for audience - depends on what you write. And the nice thing about short stories, is you can literally write it to any genre. Though I believe the general idea is between 10 & 3oish.
Interesting choice of words for this question. In my mind many TV shows are nothing more than short stories. Rod Serling's whole Twilight Zone series was short stories in my mind, and had a great viewing audience. However you're probably thinking of a reading audience and things like Grimm's Fairy Tales come to mind for me, but even that is more directed at a verbal retelling of a story I suppose. I doubt if very many anthologies ever sell as well as a good single story book but that doesn't really mean there is a small audience either.
Do you mean short stories vs. novels? I'd say there are probably more people making a living from novel writing than from short story writing, but there are precious few making a living from either. So... write what you like, and don't worry too much about the market. Once you get a few things sold, you'll develop your own ideas of what to write next.
Stephen Kings short stories have been doing pretty well economically. Also you can extend short story to a novel. It's harder the other way around.
I'm not a fan of short stories, myself, but they have one big advantage. You can enter them in competitions. If you win the competitions, then that's something you can use to market your future work. If you write short stories in particular genres, like science fiction or fantasy, they can also be included in anthologies. They will need to be published in specialty magazines first, of course, but many genre magazines do encourage entries. So yes, it can be worthwhile to write short stories. Do be aware, though ...writing a short story and writing a novel do not employ the same skills. Both need different approaches. Of course if you become a famous author, like Stephen King or E Annie Proulx, or Alice Munro, you can market short story collections and be very successful as far as sales go. But in general, it's hard to market a collection of short stories if you are an unknown author. Not impossible though. Good luck with your writing, whatever form it takes.
I can't write short stories. I can't really write stories. A plotless novel can work. A plotless short story is pointless.
Bear in mind though, they didn’t before he was famous. Plus, I’m not aware of him selling individual shorts now. They’re always released as an anthology of shorts. I believe there is an audience for short stories; I just don’t know where you’d find them. Personally, I like to read a good short. However, I don’t think there’s a paying audience for short stories and I don’t think the majority of people want to invest time reading short stories by unknown authors.
Here's a link that might help. It was just published on 7 January, so it's very up-to-date. http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/9-ways-writing-short-stories-can-pay-off-for-writers?et_mid=714102&rid=239329351
