Publishing a short story to kindle free

Unless it was edited professionally by independent eyes, I would probably shy away from it. Remember you generally only have one shot at hooking your reader and if the reader notices a bunch of errors then they likely won't read the book and you lost a follower. As for page count, it'll vary slightly.

In my experience, short stories do not sell as well as novellas or full-length e-books. My short stories are generally around 13,000-15,000 words, roughly 25 printed pages.

I just published a short story to Amazon/kindle and it's doing okay. I first treated it like I did my soon to be released novel, I had beta's read it. I also had it edited by two different people even though it's only 19 pages.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-With-White-Face-ebook/dp/B00IQCYU46/ref=zg_bsnr_7588837011_6

Remember with KDP you can only make it available for free for a limited time. When I recently made it free It was downloaded very heavily, but I also know that while that got my SS read it probably hurt actual sales on the story. I'm about to release my second SS which I will do the opposite with, I'll make it free only after it's been sold for quite awhile.

Both Short Stories will be used to give fans that I already have a taste of my writing until the novel is launched this Spring. I think short stories can be used effectively as a promotional tool, but kindle might not be the best place for that. You can simply post it on your website or you can try and get it picked up by an online mag or genre site.

Remember to make sure it's the first impression you want out, meaning if the SS is not 100% polished and representative of the brand you wish to build for-yourself then it can do more harm than good.

Just my opinion
Micah Ackerman

The readership for short fiction is small and the market is competitive. Even if you sell the story to a pro magazine, and then put it up for free, chances are few will read it (most downloads will not result in someone reading it). I'm not saying you shouldn't put it up, but do have realistic expectations. It's not likely to build a significant following for your writing. I release shorts because I like short fiction... it's the novels I expect will actually build a following.

The exceptions are in romance and erotica where there's more of a market for shorts, but it doesn't look like you write in those genres.

Pushingfordream said:

I have been thinking a lot about publishing a 4,500 Word story to kindle to build up some followers for my writing. I was wondering what people thought about this idea. Would it better to have it published in a magazine first?

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I'm going to look at this from a total business angle for a minute.

My first question is what kind of followers do you want to build up? If you plan on publishing a short literary story and making it free, what readers do you hope to gain? If you have no other offerings on Amazon, it's not going to gain you readers for your next work unless it comes close on the heels of the first one. If it's going to be months, they'll have forgotten about you by then. If you want to publish a story in the hopes of getting tons of great reviews and some popularity to help with publication in high-paying or prestigious lit mags, I honestly think that's a waste of time. Editors look at the story in front of them, and if it's not what they want, no heavily downloaded story from Amazon will change their mind.

Now, if you wanted to have a free short story that was the first in a series, or a prequel to a longer work, your odds of gaining readers are better, especially if the work is in romance or a popular genre. For literary fiction, this trend doesn't seem to hold.

If you're writing literary fiction, and I'm guessing you are from your site, submitting it to the proper magazines is most likely the way to go. You can always self-publish the stories separately or together later. Probably the best thing to do is write as much as you can and submit to the places you'd like to be published. Keep writing and submitting.

If you're talking genre, there's much more benefit in a short freebie, but you have to do it right to get much of it.

Also how many kindle pages is 4,500 words?

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Amazon seems to calculate their pages based on about 350 words per page, so a 4500 word story will be about 12-13 pages. You'll have to price it at 99 cents until it price-matches to free from Apple, Kobo or B&N, or enroll it in Select where you get only 5 free days per quarter.

Pushingfordream said:

Publishing a short story to kindle free

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The only way to make something free at Amazon (for more than a few days as a special promotion) is to have it available free somewhere else and then persuade Amazon to "price-match". Sometimes it's quick and easy to do that; sometimes it takes many months. Otherwise their minimum price is $0.99.

Pushingfordream said:

Also how many kindle pages is 4,500 words?

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15 pages, give or take a page or two.

Your suggestion above is certainly one which has worked successfully for many writers.