Question About Short Stories Collection

Get the stories published first. Agents don't really do anything with short stories that you can't do yourself, and it's pretty hard to publish a collection of shorts these days. Hardly any agent would even consider a collection at all unless you're a big name or many of the stories have been previously published.

kuwisdelu's advice is spot on. Get your stories published first. It's not uncommon to have some new, never-before published stories in an authors collection, but the author will already have a proven track record and readership behind him.

Collections are a tough sell, based on what I've heard. Possibly if they fit a specific niche market -- all the stories set in a specific locale, for example, you might be able to find a regional market. Collections don't seem to be viable until you've had a successful novel.

If there were ten stories, you could perhaps get away with a couple of them not being previously published,

Yes, collections are a tough sell, unless they are themed, by different authors and sponsored in some way by a larger than just one author entity (like Best Of or Sisters in Crime or Crimebake, etc.) These anthologies sometimes do reasonably well, but authors generally have one entry in the collection.

A collection of one's own shorts - unless you have a big name out there - is unlikely to find much of a market. I have over a zillion* shorts in print, but I don't think a collection of my stuff would find enough of a market to interest a publisher.

*okay, closer to a hundred. That's Absolutely Nothing compared to authors like Ed Hoch!

Everyone's advice seems to be spot on. I did have one agent suggest that my own short story collection might find a home at an independent press so you could possibly look into that.

I've pretty much decided to shut mine in a drawer for a little while while I work on my current WiP which is a novel.

You could try searching for small/independent publishers who publish collections such as the one you're proposing, and contact them to ask what they're looking for.

Cheers,
Rob

Some publishers run contests for short story collections. A little research might reveal some leads with these, but I imagine that they are very competitive.