Playing the Short Game

Craig Tuch and Roland Hulme of Hidden Gems Books interview me here on their "Fully Booked" podcast for authors about "Untangling the Complexities of Short Story Rights." Here's the teaser:

Just as writing short stories is very different to writing novels, there’s a lot more to selling them as well. Generally, a short story is sold for a fixed amount to a publisher, meaning you don’t get ongoing royalties – but if you do things properly, you can have the opportunity to sell that same story to other publishers again and again.

The most important thing is to understand all your rights. That way, you can only sell which rights are strictly necessary to each publisher, while ensuring that at some point most of these rights revert back to you. Multi-award-winning author Douglas Smith is an expert in this subject, having written extensively on how authors can maximize the value of their short story rights. Today, he sits down with Craig and Roland to go through everything you need to know on the subject: From understanding the different markets, to the format you’re selling in, to the various dimensions of rights that need to be considered like geography, language and occurrence.

By following Douglas’ advice, authors can maximize the reach of their stories as well as their earnings, ensuring that each one has the potential to bring in income for years to come.

If you're a writer interested in this subject, give the interview a listen here. If you want to know more, I cover all of this and much more in my writer's guide, Playing the Short Game: How to Market Sell Short Fiction.

I'll be giving my entire three workshop series covering my writer's guide, Playing the Short Game, for the Markham Public Library in May.

Each workshop will be presented online via Zoom. Attendance is free, but you need to register ahead of time, and attendance is capped.

Here are the dates and registration links for the series:

Workshop #1 (May 4, 2023, 7:00-9:00pm): Topics covered include the benefits of writing short fiction, avoiding traps for the beginner, understanding rights and licensing for short fiction, finding short fiction markets, selecting the right market for your story, submitting short fiction to a market, what not to do when submitting, what to do after submitting

Workshop #2 (May 11, 2023, 7:00-9:00pm): Topics covered include understanding how editors and slush piles work, why editors choose or reject stories, what to look (and look out) for in short fiction contracts, and how to ask for changes, how to work with an editor during the editing process for your story, how to handle rejections and reviews, how much promotion is reasonable when you sell a story, cool things that might happen: Awards, “best of” anthologies…and even movies

Workshop #3 (May 25, 2023, 7:00-9:00pm): Topics covered include leveraging your backlist, selling reprints, selling in foreign languages, selling audio rights, publishing a collection, the indie option for short fiction, discoverability tools and promotion for established writers, career progression in short fiction

Hope to see you there!

I'll be giving a series of three workshops in early 2022 via Zoom covering my writer's guide, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction. The workshops are free and sponsored by the Richmond Hill Public Library of York Region and will be offered the first Thursday evening of March, April, and May (Mar 3, Apr 7, and May 5) from 7:30-9:00pm.

Topics covered in workshop #1 (March 3, 2022) include:

• The benefits of writing short fiction
• Avoiding traps for the beginner
• Understanding rights and licensing for short fiction
• Finding short fiction markets
• Selecting the right market for your story
• Submitting short fiction to a market
• What not to do when submitting
• What to do after submitting

If you're interested, go here to register ahead of time. Note that you'll be registering for all the Jan-Mar workshops offered by the library. They're all free, and you don't need to attend any other workshop (but you're welcome to).

Registration links for workshops #2 and #3 are not yet available, but I'll post here when they are. I look forward to seeing you there.