How To Make Money Writing Short Fiction With Douglas Smith

hi everyone I'm Johanna pen from the creative pen comm and today i'm here with douglas smith hi Doug hey Joanne thanks for having me on no worries just a little introduction Douglas is a multi award-winning Canadian author of novels short stories and nonfiction described by library journal as one of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction he's also the author of playing the short game how to market and sell short fiction which is what we're talking about today very exciting so Doug tell us a bit more about you and your writing journey a little potted history if you like yeah sure so I guess appropriately enough I did start by writing short fiction I started in the late 1990s I think I spent far too many months writing trying to write my very first short story and I joined a writing group which was sort of the incentive for me to actually get to a final draft and I sent out my my very first short story I think in January the next year and I sold it about a year later so and that that year was sort of just write write writes and submit which is one of the messages in my book but I then I started getting more sales I started getting personal rejections which sounds weird but it actually is a form of validation for beginning writers it feels so good that someone actually send you something personal and I think what I found when I started writing was it was just important to get that feedback that validation and I just focus on short fiction for probably the first 10 years and I found that my stories are getting longer and longer and longer and I figured that was my subconscious trying to tell me maybe it's time I moved to a novel so about the 10 year mark I actually published over the next two years I published three collections one was in French we can talk about that later foreign language for short fiction and I started on my first novel and and now I will dabble in short fiction I'm pretty well focusing my my new words are going into novels and I'm have one novel Wow and I'm about two-thirds the way through urban fantasy trilogy so yeah well that's right in there yeah fantastic so let's just get some definitions clear and so what what is a short story or short fiction versus a novella versus a novel sure so I'm not sure how general these terms are but in speculative fiction certainly for the awards things like the Hugo on the Nebula etc most of the awards follow these guidelines a short story is under 7,500 words or maybe 7,500 words and under but anyway it's that's the limit of a short story if you're between that and I think it's 17,500 words that is called a novel wet and that tended to be where I found most of my stories are ending up and the longer the story we can talk about this weight or - the longer the story the harder it is to sell and there's very clear business reasons for editors for that and then a novella goes from 17,500 words up to 40,000 words so technically a novel was anything over 40,000 words but most publishers traditional or small press are not going to publish anything that's short you've you've really got to get up - it varies whether it's why a or middle-grade but for adult fiction you pretty well have to be at least 80,000 to to sell yeah and it's funny you say that because this is one of the Irate my most recent novel math of shadows I had thought I might submit it to a traditional publisher because it's a new genre for me and then it came in at 60,000 and for me that's about normal because I write really short and then I was like I can't be bothered adding 20,000 yeah great and I'm Dean Wesley Smith who we both know he writes around 60,000 as well I think so it is interesting how that changes but um why so just coming back to you and short fiction why why do you you or why did you focus so hard on short fiction like what is it about short fiction that lovers of the genre or the form I guess love I guess you know I started out I was introduced to two speculative fiction as a kid I read a lot of short stories there I I just found as a reader it was a great way to discover new new writers the anthologies they used to be you know there were so many annual anthologies of the best of could be best of spaced stories or you know certain service free could be anything and one I love the the way that an author could tell what seemed like a complete historian so few words but it's a great way to find new writers like you've read a story oh that's fantastic and you you chased down their other work as a writer I guess one of the reasons I started with short fiction I think when you start out you're you're not sure you can write you're not sure that you're ever gonna sell anything that you're right so to me it was it was a good way to to kind of test the waters it's a great way to learn your craft and if you've written short fiction for a number of years it doesn't mean you have everything in your writers toolbox to become a novel writer but you've got a lot of the necessary tools so it is a good way to learn the craft of fiction a point of view and and pacing and dialogue and setting and and just ever so many so I just I wanted to [Music] try to become a writer in a way also that I could test the waters you find out if you're writing at a publishable level faster as a short fiction writer because let's say we use you know the 80,000 novel weird novel again so that that's probably anywhere from 16 to 20 pieces of short fiction that you could write if you wrote 80,000 words so you can try a lot of different styles and and you know narrative structures and and formats and different points of view and multiple points of view etc you can try a lot of different things in the way of experimenting with forms of storytelling in 16 to 20 short story in a novel you're pretty well you're stuck with whatever a narrative structure you've you've selected for that particular novel so I think you can learn how to write a lot faster the basic core capabilities you need if you're writing short fiction then in a novel and the other benefit is as you finish a story you send it out to market and you start to get feedback and if it's rejection rejection rejection rejection you probably need to keep writing you haven't you haven't developed your craft enough although we can talk more about you know what's a reasonable number of rejections later on but as I said when I started writing you know I got a I got my first sale on a year and I was getting personal rejections and that is a form of feedback rejections are a form of feedback especially when they start to get a little more focused and actually make comments on the story way to to get into fiction writing yeah absolutely and but you're not just a short story writer you are a multi award-winning short story writer and I didn't you know kind of want out you know sort of honing in on the craft what what are your do you have any sort of tips for taking it up to that level because you know did you notice is it just literally were a number of words or experience or do you feel that there are certain types of stories that win awards Wow it's it's tough I mean I've the only non-fiction book on writing I've done is quite consciously on the business side now the creative side I think it's very hard to teach creative writing and I I struggle with sort of answering that III don't think you should you know try to say analyze what are the award-winning stories you can certainly understand why they're good and that helps your writing but I don't think you should target oh I need to write that kind of story to win an award I think the the award-winning stories tend to be you know beyond being incredibly good well-written stories they tend to be all over the map in terms of the type of story er or subject matter etc probably the the key is more how do you once you have your story and what you think as a publishable form how you market it because the stories that are going to get award attention tend to be the ones that are appearing in the top professional markets they get more eyes on them they get more the best of editors looking at them for sure you know anyone who's putting on a best-of anthology for a year is always going to look at the top pro markets the magazine markets in the big in the anthologies and maybe some of the major collections so that's the key well we'll come back to that but let me reframe that question then - okay when you are when you have an idea how do you know that that is a good short story idea so for example I've written a couple of short stories but I've written far more novels of the six thousand and when I have an idea I Len look for ways to kind of slot that into a longer form piece so what when you get an idea around shorts or when you used to write a lot more how do you know it's a short idea you know rather than something that would be a lot bigger okay that yeah I preface my remarks by saying you know every time I think yeah it's 5,000 words it ends up being ten thousand twelve thousand but back to my why started novels I'd say I'm a character writer so I tend to start with a with a character are you one of my favorite writers of all time and the speculative fiction actually in any any genre is Roger Zelazny of the way to American writer he once said that ideas tend to come to him as a character an idea or an image and you know the better the better stories were the ones where you got two of them at once and I'd have to say most of my ideas come in one of those three forms but I know whatever whatever the first kernel for a story is until I know my character our characters I can't start writing a story so I view sort of my story arc is the character arc or the characters arcs as as they intersect so I look at that and I say okay what what journey am I going to take this character on what is the initial problem that they're either facing or have been thrown into and you know what are the major events that are going to occur before that character can come to the end of that journey and usually from that I can I can for a short story I can say okay I've got I don't have lines for stories anymore I probably did at the start II can't really remember but I can usually figure out yeah that's these number of scenes and typically that's probably gonna be somewhere in a 3,000 words story or an 8,000 words story so I guess that comes with experience and then when I started writing novels interestingly enough I had the same problem my first draft my first novel was a hundred and sixty thousand words ended up being down under 120 but still fairly long I think the more you write and this is another reason I'd strongly suggest people if they're thinking of getting into creative writing to start with short stories we stride for a year because you do get an idea of after you've tried to write stories and you have to finish them that's the other best piece of advice I think that's a Neil Gaiman favorite piece of advice you have to finish what you're right because then you really do understand what a story is and whether what you've written is a story the more you do that you you get a feel for that idea yeah that's short story that's not novel at length that's wow that could be huge sometimes when you start a short story you find that well I could go this way I could do this I could do this and it might grow into a novel idea the other advantage I found in short fiction is that it's a great way to explore novel ideas my very first short story I ended up I revisited that set of characters five years later for the novel and when you get to the point where you're marketing the novel it's really good to have a short story that is the preface the prequel to it to a novel to so short fiction is another good way to explore ideas for short for longer works like novels and also give you marketing tools so I'm not sure if I directly answered your question I just I think my only answer is start with short fiction and you'll really get an understanding after you've written a few you know probably at least a dozen when you do get an idea you'll have a better feel for whether this is is a short short story or a novel ladder a novel are maybe even something you could grow into a novel okay cool so let's then talk about the markets for short fiction because you it used to be very clear like you said you would write a short story you would mail it to whichever magazine or editor and you would get a rejection or it might get published but now you know there's not just print magazines there's digital online magazines there's Indies doing you know self-publishing short fiction there are it seems like the-- there's an explosion in possibilities for short fiction so how do we know what is a good market like you mentioned a pro market versus just another marketing mechanism I guess sure so I might I might have to get a bit into licensing of rights here but my so I hope I'm not taking this too much out of sequence but it's hard to talk about where you should send your story first when when I haven't discussed rights so I think the most important thing for for writers to to learn when they're beginning is understanding the rights that you have to the intellectual property you're creating your story and the most important thing to know is that when you're when you're selling a story you're not actually selling it when a publisher wants to buy a story and publish your story there they're going to be a licensing a certain set of rights from you for a certain period of time and the publisher will try to get as many rights as possible for as low a price as possible and you as an author in a friendly business you know negotiation mode should be trying to give them as few rights as possible for its good price as possible you usually can't negotiate rates on short stories but sometimes you will encounter situations where a publisher is asking for more rights than they need rights are you know if it's a print magazine they just need print rights if they're asking for electronic rights you can ask for that to be removed because it does those possibly limit some of your future markets for reselling the story but the most important right is what I call the occurrence rights and the very first time you sell story you are selling first rights you can only sell first rights once that may seem obvious but a lot of writers don't understand that and first rights are very valuable because they can only be sold once so because it can only be sold once you should be trying to sell your first rights to a story to the best possible market that you can and when I say best possible market I go by the science fiction writers and fantasy writers of America guidelines which is Pro market means you're paying they're paying six cents us a word or more which isn't great I mean you're not going to get rich at six cents a word but it does define most of the top professional markets so my first rule is when you're selecting a market start at the top make sure you find a professional market a market that has good cachet so they appear on award lists a lot etc etc so that's the first rule because flip it around let's say you sell to a for the love market or or for copies or for a semi-pro rate and you submit to their and you sell it you'll probably when you get that acceptance letter your email you're probably be very excited but you probably your next thought might be wow if they bought it what if you know what if the next market I'll get about it or what if you know what if that talk market would have bought it maybe it's that good and you'll never know you can't send it to those markets anymore because they don't take reprints or what is called licensing second rights so the top markets only want first rights in other words they want to be the first ones to publish your story so if you're already published it in a semi pro magazine you're not gonna so it to a top market ever they don't do reprints they don't license second rights so my first piece of advice to all beginning writers is when you start to send your work out do your research on the markets in your genre and that send it to the top market so you figure out what you want the top market to be but there's there's a bunch that pay pro rates and send it to them first and if you're writing a lot of stories it doesn't matter if they're taking three months to get back to you you just send it out to the next one when you get back in and just keep sending all your stories keep them in the mail is my main piece of advice on this so that would be and I've totally forgotten your original question how you use how you start yes I guess my question was like you've defined there the top markets you know those paying that you know they want those first rights but I guess if people are starting out it's unlikely they're going to get I mean yes sure send it to those and if you get a rejection maybe look at other options and because many of my listeners are self-publishing there is there are a lot of digital-only markets but there are also in these now self-publishing to their audience so writing short fiction and just publishing you know a story on Kindle or Kobo or wherever and sending it to their list so not even going anywhere near the markets so what are some of your thoughts on on sort of other options for stories and you know any sort of pros and cons that you would consider so when I wrote the book it was aimed at the beginning writer who is starting as short fiction so there there's no other incentive for them when they're marketing a story other than to sell that story to the best market they can in the author and you have perhaps you know you've built a world you have multiple novels in a particular universe or around that set of characters I can see the logic in putting out a short story indie publishing it as sort of a treat for your for your readers and possibly as sort of a loss leader to attract more readers to that world I can see that but you know my what I'm talking about in the book is someone who is starting out as a fiction writer and I'm recommending the the road of starting with short stories and marking them to traditional markets I don't mean big publishers I mean the traditional top magazines and anthologies and I still recommend that if you're starting out I strongly strongly advise against indie publishing or short fiction if you're just doing that to get the story published you're you're just throwing away your work in my view you're not getting most of the benefits you could get from selling to a top professional market you're not going to get award recognition or consideration you're not going to build a resume if you're submitting a novel to even a small press later on and just have a list of indie published short fiction no one's going to be impressed as opposed to if if you are submitting to a publisher for a novel and you have you know sales to some of the top Pro magazines and anthologies and you've hit award ballots etc that's not a guarantee they're gonna buy your book but it's a strong item in your favor that you're gonna jump out of a slush pile and they might actually read your novel faster which actually is a good thing so you just you don't you you're wasting the the chance at a resume if if you're starting out in short fiction so I'd say indie published short stories one once it's in your back list in other words the rights are reverted to you I've done that with all of mine or if you have an other reason it fits into a marketing strategy that you have for your longer work your existing longer work yeah I really like that advice it's funny I mean I'm part of the reason I wanted to talk to talk to you on the show was because I think for a lot of indie authors this is actually a great way to you know to get things into traditional markets in a less long you know it's just it feels that getting an agent getting a traditional publisher for a novel these days is a minefield whereas for what you're saying with short fiction you don't need an agent right you just submit direct to an area of a magazine and then you do the contract it's not a big contract it's quite similar it's and and it just seems to mean and then like I buy a lot of anthologies now too and then you are just you are being discovered by new readers who then might check out your novel whereas if you for a novel it might take you a year to get an agent a year to get a deal another year before it's out or whatever so would you see that that sort of hybrid approach with short fiction is you know can be good for the marketing aspect as well as the sales yeah I obviously I'm somewhat biased I think there can be reasons to put a short story indie without trying to sell at first but I'd recommend that you do so again I the only reason I'd put out a short story directly Indy publish it is for example you know when I have this trilogy of novels published if I come up with some short story ideas and I want to I probably try to sell it to some of the good markets but I might consider just putting that story out directly maybe for my mailing with subscribers and then they you know that's a sort of a a hook hopefully for them to get into the series itself but other than that I think they're you're just throwing away too many possible benefits of selling to the the tribute when I say traditional short fiction markets it's totally it's not like the big New York publishers you're right you can we can talk about how you can easily find markets for your short stories you just email them now you attach them you know to an email or you go through a submit a bowl or some sort of online submission system the market uses you know you'll get you'll get the email back with with whether you've accepted or not it's just so easy to do as you say the contracts and I cover this in my book there are a few things you need to look for I think there's about eight different things I focus on in the book for short fiction contracts but really there's there's the top three and that's you know what rights are you giving away when do those rights come back to you and a couple of others which escape my mind but they're easy they're they're not complex and if if if you go through you know that advice where you've done it a few times you quickly would warn to what look for an internet search action contract anything as the right to come back to you yeah and that's why I like about the idea and you mentioned three months for a sort of timeframe it would that be a normal timeframe if people were submitting would they expect to hear back and within that timeframe it sort of the average or put it another way and I I had this from like Gardner Dozois who's one more Hugo awards and nebula awards for best editor than any other editor he said it is appropriate to query an editor if it's been more than three months so three months was pretty typical for the for the big magazines you'll find some of the wrought faster some of them a lot slower I track submission rates there's online tools that track the average response rate response rate for four markets but three months is pretty typical and if you think wow that's gonna be a long time I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs well no you're reading more stories and you're sending that not to so you know don't worry about it get it get it in the mail or the email and just move on to the next story when you finish that submit it to you just you just keep the stories out there in in the submission process another one of my recommendations is you know just keep it in the mail it's an it's a numbers game the the writer with the most stories in front of the most markets is gonna is got a win even though we're not competing with each other but but the point of view of progressing your fiction career you're going to win a few if you write a lot and keep them in front of markets so I'm just on the submission there and keeping things in the mail and I mean you know I have a big spreadsheet with just you know what I have now intellectual property assets which are mainly longer as I said but into it you know with short stories and also you know sometimes the title of a short story if you have lots so imagine you're forgetting like Dean talks about finding you know all these short stories that he wrote so do you have a spreadsheet or do you you recommend specific software or how are you tracking all this different stuff sure so yes you you as you start to submit your stories you have to keep track of where the when you submitted them because you well you just have to so I have a huge spreadsheet and it's basically all the markets down the left side on all my stories across the top and then I have codes I put in in terms of you know a and M in a date means I mailed it on that date an R and a date means it was rejected on that date an S and a date means it was sold on that date and then I have lots of macros that summarize all that stuff for me you you have to you know you don't want to be submitting a story again to a market that you know rejected a two years ago or something like that so yeah you do have to keep track of them so I have a big spreadsheet because I like spreadsheets there are submission trackers that you can use on on the web make sure that in the context of also mentioning some of the the market lists that are out there there's a market list called the grinder and I think the whole just gotta get on on my screen the whole URL is the grinder dot diabolical plots dot-com so if you go there if you just just google the grinder you're going to find that website now it's a good market list it's free so you can search for fiction short fiction markets by genre and also has a submission tracker that you can use while we're on the topic of market lists for science fiction and fantasy for genre Rowan calm ral a.m. dot-com is it's been around for since I started writing it's free it's run by a writer in Denmark he's an English writer but was in Denmark called Roland Conley it's still a great one and he breaks it out by Pro markets and anthologies and semi-pro you just need to look at Pro and anthologies in my view if you take my advice of starting at the top and yeah but some somehow you have to find a way to track your submissions and the responses and the sales and everything because you'll you will get sales so yeah plan ahead so and it's just interesting in the context of the chain the changes in publishing in general with with digital and the rise of indie for example if it almost feels as if the short story market has stayed quite similar in in the fact that the way of submission and the tracking and you know that that's actually stayed more stable than maybe the rest of publishing do you is it do you see being disrupted in any way or have new markets emerged or other are those magazines that the top still the ones that you've been submitting to for years no I I have a bunch of email folders of the magazines that I've submitted to over the years and I mean it's in the hundreds and there aren't hundreds around or if there are there they're different ones so I what I saw in short fiction when I started in the late 1990s when you're submitting your you were your mail it physically snail mailing or your manuscript in the magazines were print only and what you saw over the next decade was a steady decline in the number of those magazines because print distribution in your production and distribution is incredibly expensive and as readership started dropping off you know they many of them went out of business and then what we've seen in last I don't know five years probably started at least five years ago a lot of the magazine's finally embraced the you know the e-book or the electronic revolution so the ones that have stuck around and a lot of the new ones that you see coming up have electronic some of them are only electronic for a lot of the new ones are just online or you might be able to purchase each issue as an e-book etc and usually pretty well all the the big Pro ones that I know of have electronic editions so you know it's reducing their cost I haven't tried to buy a print magazine and long time so I don't know if I walked into some of the big stores around here if I'd actually even be able to find them but it's it's saved a lot of them and what I've seen is an explosion in the number of markets in paying markets is probably more magazine markets now paying pro rates than there was when I started out so I personally think it it's it's a very healthy market for for short fiction is another reason I encourage writers you're gonna find a lot of options for for selling your work you may you may find that you know when you sell it and it's published you get to look at it on online you don't have something physical to hold in your hand which always was cool when you got your contributor copies but some some of them are do both print and an electronic so you may get a current copy as well I think it's it's once again become a thriving short fiction market fantastic I'm just thinking for more questions today so you mentioned French so what's the I mean obviously you're Canadian so maybe you're you you're bilingual know what about licensing for languages is that just something that people should watch out for in contracts or you mentioned that earlier what was the thing you wanted to mention well sometimes your when you sell a short story a magazine may actually asks for other language rights you if they're only publishing in English you're you're you have every right to kind of ask them politely you know why why do you need those rights I prefer to only give you English rights some of them have a valid reason the big magazines are Gaza mobs and I think fantasy and science fiction they have standing agreements with some non-english magazines around the world where those magazines will publish selected stories from from the English editions so that's about a reason but usually they don't need to ask for non-english rights if you keep your foreign language rights what you can do you can do it now I mean you if you have a story you could send it to a French magazine and without jeopardising selling it in English because you're not going to be giving away first English rights you're gonna be licensing first French language rights what I do is that I submit I've sold in get these much stuff I think it's 26 languages in 32 countries but what I do is I wait until I've sold the story in English and then I submit to foreign language magazines and so you think of it as submitting reprints that they think of it as buying first rights but from their point of view they're they're more likely to want to buy a story from you if it appeared in a top English market it cuts down their editorial you know the slush pile reading there they're more likely that they're going to be reading a good short story and it sometimes helps by being able to put that on their cover that you know this first appeared in in analog or Asimov's etc so it's a it's another market this is another reason why I I stress to writers that they have to understand the licensing of their rights don't give away rights you don't need to because if you sold a story and they took all the foreign language rights you can't submit that to any foreign language market and if you're looking for foreign language markets by the way if you go to my website I keep a foreign language market West foreign meaning non English so these are publications magazines typically that you can submit to directly around the world and they will you don't have to write in the languages submit in English they have translators they will translate your story into their language and a lot of them are paying market so it's just like any reprint mark and even in English it's found money for you that's a possibility to find other other readers for your work also you might have some very cool things that happen I I sold a story to a French magazine and the editor was one of my shapeshifter stories so you loved that and he bought two more from me and then there was a there's a great Canadian magazine called Solaris and they only take submissions in French well I don't write in French but after I'd sold to the French the France French magazine I I was able to submit the French translation to the Solaris magazine and they actually published those as well and one of those led to one of my Awards so I got actually got an award for a French story which is pretty interesting yeah but even better that that magazine editor in France came back to me and said you know if I ever have my small press a small press that I won't put together I'd love to publish a collection of your fantasy stories and this was well 15 years ago and I thought well that's very nice but I didn't think anything would ever happen but in 2010 he established his own small press and he reached out to me and and hence I now have a French collection that was published in France and and was shortlisted for two awards in France and that all came from you know submitting one single short story to this editor and way back when so it's a way to broaden your readership and just cool things may happen yeah it was it was a collection and an award that I got from submitting to one one France magazine which is so cool and I think so often indie authors now just focus on quite established marketing techniques whereas what's interesting with short stories is you improve your craft you can get paid multiple times and it can also be a marketing mechanism to find readers who are never going you're never going to reach in any other way because they are traditional market readers so I think it's awesome and I always I always think yes I'm gonna get into this with an eye back away but you know you're helping me I did want to ask one more question about on writes is the audio because interest you know we're in this Renaissance of audio you and I doing a podcast right now so you know what about is it worth trying to license audio rights or anthology audio rights or podcast your own short fiction or you know what are your thoughts on audio for short fiction first of all good it's it's it's another right and that's back to rights again make sure when you're signing a short story contract that they don't grab audio rights because it's one more thing that you can sell separately and also a caveat is sometimes though they might have an electronic version like it might be a web-based magazine so the last four electronic I always in the contract add exclusion excluding audio rights because audio is electronic as well so let's say you've done that and you have your your back list of short fiction there are a lot of audio markets out there certainly in science fiction and fantasy most of them pay and the cool thing about them and is that they prefer reprints most of them will prefer reprints my point of view it's a way to cut down on their slush pile editing if they get something that's been published in a top pro market they're gonna say okay it's a good story they'll so read it but they can they can cut down a lot of their own you know the work involved in going through a slush pile and then if they buy it most of them are paying some of them are 50 dollars some of them are a hundred dollars they're usually mostly audience audio markets I know are in that range it still found money it's a story you've already sold and it's quite cool hearing someone read your story the downside is I've had mostly good experience with narrators I've had one story that was just awful just the narration was it was just awful they tried doing different voices and and yeah it didn't work but then I've also had my most recent one was just just a beautiful narration of the short story that ties to my novel so it was okay this is really good so it's fun I'd say most cases you're gonna have a wonderful experience it'll be really cool to to point your readers to someone narrating one of your stories and you can find more more readers that way too because there are people who prefer you know audiobooks so they will subscribe to these these podcast magazines as well what about you what about reading them yourself have you considered that I have it it's very time-consuming I have not got into doing like audiobook versions of my collections or my novel because it is very expensive if you do it yourself it's a major time commitment I don't know I have sort of I would have the voice I would certainly know where to put the emphasis and and and on on the pros because it's my own short fiction that's one thing you can miss with it with a narrator but it's a huge time commitment so if I do go that route I'm probably going to go the route of you number of options you can pay for a narrator directly you can offer them the royalties and you can do some where things through something like audible there's other other audio book publishers where they will cover some you know the technical skills of the narration and the production yeah fantastically now it's it's down my list but I think for short fiction I I definitely recommend that you submit to audio markets once you've sold it brilliant well we are out of time so where can people find you and your books and and stories and everything you do online Smith writer all one word.com so SMI thw RIT are calm so that that has everything and and gives you links to all of my fiction various retail outlets where you can buy it subscribe to my newsletter and subscribers get freebies I give out a free ebook each month short story ebook and you get lots of new stuff and contests and you can get a chance to be beta reader for novels things like that and you know follow me on Twitter that's also on my website fantastic well thanks so much for your time Doug that was great okay and thank you Joanna for having me on it's just been great appreciate it

Channel: The Creative Penn

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Keywords: joanna penn, thecreativepenn, the creative penn, douglas smith short story writer, how to write short stories that sell, selling short stories, marketing short stories, writing tips, how to write a short story

Id: IaJOOlu7a34

Length: 41min 55sec (2515 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2017