Writing And Selling Short Stories With Douglas Smith
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Joanna Penn
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How can you use short stories to improve your writing craft across different genres? How can you make money from licensing your short stories in different ways? How do you structure a short story collection? Douglas Smith shares his tips.
In the intro, S&S imprint says that authors no longer need to get blurbs for their books [The Guardian]; James Patterson will be headlining Author Nation 2025; How to sell books from a table [Novel Marketing Podcast]; My lessons learned about screenwriting; Death Valley, a Thriller.
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Douglas Smith is a multi-award-winning Canadian author of novels, short stories and nonfiction, with over 200 short fiction publications in 36 countries and 27 languages. He's also the author of Playing the Short Game: How to Market and Sell Short Fiction, now out in its second edition.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
* How beginner writers can use short fiction to improve their writing craft
* Overview of the different short story markets
* First rights and second rights for selling short stories
* Financial expectations for traditionally published short stories
* Tips for self-publishing a collection
* Benefits of exclusive short stories
* Using Spotify playlists as a discoverability mechanism – here's a playlist of my short stories on Spotify
* How to market a second edition
You can find Doug at SmithWriter.com.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, |
| 0:08.0 | bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing craft and creative business. |
| 0:14.7 | You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint, and lots more at thecreativepen.com. And that's Pen with a |
| 0:23.7 | double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode number |
| 0:30.6 | 794 of the podcast. And it is Saturday the 8th of February 2025 as I record this. |
| 0:43.6 | In today's show, I'm talking to Douglas Smith about writing and selling short stories, |
| 0:49.7 | how writing shorts can improve your craft, why Doug recommends pitching traditional markets for short stories, although he does self-publish his novels, how to get paid for shorts, and what |
| 0:56.1 | are the different kinds of rights you can license, how to structure a collection, and more. |
| 1:01.5 | So that's coming up in the interview section. |
| 1:07.6 | In writing and publishing things, a welcome announcement from Simon & Schuster, as reported by The Guardian. |
| 1:15.8 | Sean Manning, publisher of Simon and Schuster's flagship imprint in the US, has written an essay for publishers weekly, explaining that as of this year, he will no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books. |
| 1:29.6 | He says, |
| 1:30.4 | expecting authors, agents and editors to secure blurbs can create an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem |
| 1:38.8 | that often rewards connections over talent. |
| 1:42.8 | Now, I love this. |
| 1:43.8 | As indie authors, we don't really do blurbs, |
| 1:47.1 | and it's quite freeing when you realise you don't have to do that. So that's great that many |
| 1:53.5 | traditional publishing, traditionally published authors won't need to do that. And there are quotes |
| 1:57.3 | from a number of authors who basically like, oh, I'm so pleased this is going away. |
| 2:02.4 | And of course, the publisher of Simon & Shuster did say, if a writer reads a book because they want to, |
| 2:08.2 | not because they feel beholden, and comes away so moved by it that they can't resist offering an |
| 2:14.3 | endorsement, we will be all too happy to put it to use. And I have done some |
... |
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