Query Letters for Short Story Collections

There is a forum here called Query Letter Hell in the Share Your Work forum. You can't post your letter until you have 50 posts, but you can comment on others and read to see how others do it.

Not to be a downer, but short story collections are hard to sell, especially if they haven't ben published. When I've asked the same questionas you, even about a collection of shorts starring the same characters, the advice has been to get them published separately first then try to sell the collection. My experience so far of querying the collection has born this out. But I love publishing shorts, so that journey can be rewarding in itself.

It's really the same as any other query letter, only easier, I think. It's really tough to sell a short story collection unless most or all the stories have been previously published in decent magazines. Even then, it's far from easy. Unless your name is pretty darned well known, short story collections just do not sell well. Even many famous writers have relatively poor sales with short story collections.

Nothing is impossible, but I'm not sure anything is tougher for a new writer to sell than a short story collection. It has happened, but it's extremely rare, especially if you want a paper an dink sale.

Maryn said:

That's a lovely typo, James: paper an dink.

Maryn, grinning

Click to expand...

My best one is "doe snot" for "does not". I've even sent it to editors a time or two.