I have finished one book (unpublished) and have several ideas for another. However, one problem with publishing the first is that it is difficult in today's market for a new book writer to even get an agent without some kind of writing credentials, especially for mainstream (not genre) fiction.
My plan is to go back to short stories to try to build those credentials. I'm thinking of writing up some of the second novel material as short stories, then incorporating them into the novel later. If I sell those short stories, how soon will the rights revert back to me?
Is this a practical idea?
(It's been many years since I published short fiction, and it's like a new world to me, so consider me a newbie in this area).
Thanks!
It's no harder to find an agent an a publisher without credits now than it ever was. It's much easier, in most ways, simply because it's tougher to get credits now. There used to be hundreds to thousands of short story markets, but those days are largely gone.
All you need to attract a good agent and a publishers is a novel they believe will sell well to the reading public.
Your research is seriously lacking. Credentials and platform are for nonfiction, not fiction. Agents and publishers do want credentials and a platform for nonfiction, but asking for either with fiction is very, very rare.
Here's the thing. Short story sales, good short story sales to the
top markets in your field, can help. I sold my first novel largely because I had short story sales to the top markets in the western field, and the other two writers in contention for the single open slot did not. I also made a mystery sale a few years back because I had short story sales to the top mystery magazines.
But I don't think you understand
why short story sales help. They help because they're easily ten times as hard to make as a novel sale. A hundred times harder in the top mainstream markets. Only sales to top, well-paying markets help, and you can't just be good to make these sales, you have to be
better than the best short story writers in the world. This is how you break in. You're a complete unknown, and each month any good, credit worthy magazine will be able to pick and choose between two dozen big name writers, and a couple of hundred other well-published writers, for, at most, two or three open slots. To beat out all those writers with names, you can't just be good, you must be better.
You have to make the editor say, "Well, I was going to give my last open slot to (Insert big name writer), but this story by an unknown is so good I'm going to tell that big name writer to go fly a kite."
There aren't many credit worthy markets for short stories out there, especially for mainstream stories, and the few that do exist usually receive thousands of submissions each month, including those from darned near every big name writer in the world.
Seriously, think about the credit worthy magazines. Think about where you want to sell short stories. Take a look at the writers who do sell stories there. And the thousands who try and fail on a monthly basis.
And publishers are not becoming more and more commercial. They've always been commercial. In fact, it's the reverse of what you think. Short story sales were far more important in the mainstream genre decades ago than they are now.
But it all comes down to this. Trying to sell short stories to credit worthy markets in order to sell a novel is like trying to learn arithmetic by first learning quantum mechanics. If you go this route, be prepared to write dozens and dozens of short stories, be prepared to receive hundreds of rejections, and still not make a sale. I can't begin to tell you how much "easier" it is to sell a novel than it is to sell a short story to a credit worthy market.
And it has, of course, been a long time since "mainstream" was a particular type of fiction. To publishers, a mainstream novel is any novel the mainstream readers buy, regardless of genre. Stephen King is considered a mainstream writer. So is Dean Koontz. So is Tom Clancy. So is John Grisham.
The only sound reason to write short stories is because you
love reading and writing short stories.
