SFFMP 87: Writing and Selling Short Fiction That Actually Sells with T.S. Paul

Science fiction author T.S. Paul joins us to discuss how he’s sold thousands of copies of his short fiction since getting started just over four months ago. Not only that, but he sells those ebooks at 2.99 instead of employing the typical bargain basement pricing. He’s publishing in the space opera field and gaining momentum by putting out new ebooks every two weeks. He’s currently in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited, so he’s also getting a lot of borrows on those books too.

Here’s a little more on what we covered:

  • Using an on-going series to make shorter fiction work and keep people coming back for more
  • Selling short fiction ebooks at 2.99 (and collections at 7.99)
  • Whether more people buy or borrow (for those in Kindle Unlimited) at the higher price points
  • If short fiction is still doing well now that KU pays based on page reads instead of straight-up borrows
  • Publishing character interviews and short fiction on your blog to keep up reader interest between releases
  • Using Canva to create images for Facebook ads
  • Making Facebook ads work for science fiction
  • Do bad reviews actually affect sales?
  • Getting troll reviews taken down on Amazon
  • Finding original artwork on Deviant Art and licensing it to use for your ebook covers (T.S. finds this much more affordable than commissioning custom artwork, and it gets you something far more original than grabbing images from stock photo sites)

Check out T.S. Paul’s books on Amazon and visit his blog to see what he’s up to.

 

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5 comments

  • What’s wrong with OpenOffice? I use LIbreOffice (based on OpenOffice) to write my books, works very well for me. And I use InDesign to do layouts for printed versions.

  • He had some great ideas in this podcast! Thanks for sharing them!

  • Steve

    I will have to listen to this podcast again. He has some very interesting ideas and seems to have stumbled on a unique writing model. I have been building a universe for a steampunk series and wanted to keep the books short and action packed. Maybe shorter is better, hmmmm.

  • james

    You can also try http://penpee.com – a platform to read short stories, write and get paid each time someone new read a chapter of your story.

    Creators can publish stories that consist up to 8,400 words, spanning over 5 chapters, depending on membership plan and will be paid when readers finish each chapter. This means that authors earn money by the chapter and not by book, so they get to have the flexibility to upload chapters at their own pace.