Which is better? Kindle or Magazine

EmperorWolf

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Just want people's opinions on what they consider to be the best way to make money. Option A: Making an anthology of flash fiction stories you have written and selling it on kindle. Or option B: selling your flash fiction stories individually to a magazine.
 

thothguard51

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Depends, if making a lot of money by writing is your goal, you might want to consider another form of money making, like collecting aluminum cans along a highway for recycling. Plus you get more exercise and fresh air...
 

alexshvartsman

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Just want people's opinions on what they consider to be the best way to make money. Option A: Making an anthology of flash fiction stories you have written and selling it on kindle. Or option B: selling your flash fiction stories individually to a magazine.

Unless you have developed a solid reputation and a following, you will sell very few copies of a short story/flash collection on Amazon.

Selling to magazines serves both as the income stream and a way to advertise your writing to new readers.

Having said that, there is very little money to be had in short fiction. If money is your primary motivator and you absolutely insist on trying to earn it by writing fiction, attempt a thriller/mystery novel.
 

highorbitview

Do what gives you the most exposure. If you like doing short stuff then do as many as you can to get some creds. You'll get schooled, I mean, learn your craft and if people want your stories they will start paying real money for them.
 

Beasley

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Technically you can do both eventually. Try to sell your flash to magazines and when your rights revert back, collect them in an anthology of sorts and sell them that way. It doesn't have to be either or. However you can't do both at the same time.
 

Torgo

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Just want people's opinions on what they consider to be the best way to make money. Option A: Making an anthology of flash fiction stories you have written and selling it on kindle. Or option B: selling your flash fiction stories individually to a magazine.

No direct experience of this, but some things do occur to me. I have never posted in this subforum before, so I expect to be corrected on loads of this, and would appreciate that:

Option B: Magazines pay by the word for fiction, I think, for non-exclusive rights. Maybe they pay a flat fee. But I don't buy any magazines containing flash fiction. In fact I barely ever read flash fiction, and when I do it's usually via some social media link or other. So I'm going to assume any magazines containing flash fiction are niche products, not in the commercial mainstream, and thus don't have loads of money to play around with. Their rates are going to be awful, and you're going to sell one a month. This doesn't feel like 'a way to make money' as much as 'a way to defray the cost of one dinner a month'.

Option A: Does anyone sell a lot of flash fiction collections on Kindle? Dunno. But at least here you could bundle up a lot of content into an extent that someone would consider paying 99p to read. Again, this feels like pin money unless you can point to someone making a living out of it.

The only times I can recall spending significant time reading flash fiction:

1) Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction (published in the late lamented SciFiction, I think?)

2) This guy Joel Golby whom I follow on Twitter and who posts links to amusing flash fiction he writes - I think it's a Tumblr.

The only times I can recall spending significant time reading short stories in recent history:

1) Ebook collections and anthologies

2) The two magazines, The New Yorker and Harper's, I subscribe(d) to (placing stories there is left as an exercise for the reader)

3) Online - Tor.com, SciFiction (as was), Strange Horizons etc.

Just going by my own experience as a reader, it's a rare writer who can make money out of short stories alone, and flash fiction feels like something nobody makes money out of. There's a guy on our list who has won every award going for his novels, and who has a stack of flash fiction nobody can work out how to publish in a worthwhile way.
 

Myrealana

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Neither one is going to make you a fortune - or not even a living wage, in all liklihood.

I'd say the best long term investment is to go for Option B first. If you can't get any magazines to take the story, you probably need to work on your craft, so that's one way to find out if you're ready for "prime time."

Then, once the rights on the stories revert to you, you can collect them together and sell them on Amazon with the knowledge that you already have a built-in readership.

And then take all the money you made and go buy yourself an ice cream ;)
 

sic_scripsit

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This advice helped me a lot.

I was thinking of publishing an anthology of short stories on Amazon. I have a day job... I just want to get my work published and get it out there and see what happens; hopefully build my way up to a novel.

Looks like you're saying Amazon's not the best way to go for that. But... Seems like a lot more people these days have Kindles or Nooks rather than read magazines. I know I've put down 99¢ for some stuff that was crap, but I've also found one or two authors that way that I follow now.

I have three WIPs that I could expand into novels, turn into a serial or stunt their growth and make into short stories. Hopefully I'll be able to post them on here soon and get some feedback.
 

milkweed

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Just want people's opinions on what they consider to be the best way to make money. Option A: Making an anthology of flash fiction stories you have written and selling it on kindle. Or option B: selling your flash fiction stories individually to a magazine.

I've only purchased one anthology of short stories ever, it was a kindle book called A Land of Ash edited by David Dalglish (I think there were seven different authors for the shorts). I really enjoyed the book, the shorts were all centered around Yellowstone experiencing a major eruption and it was interesting to see who each author took on the theme.

Since this is my only experience with a short story anthology I haven't the foggiest if all of them focus on a single theme or not, maybe other's here would know?