Ask HN: Oh, What Places to Go (Seriously Tho)

11 points by thx 22 days ago | 7 comments

Hey HN — will start by saying this website is my most fav website — ever.

That said — will get to the point.

If you had written 1001 short stories, how would you go about marketing / getting your work out there?

- literary agent? - build a website? - stream it on social media? (if so, which socials?)

Have written a lot of mostly fun short stories, but I don’t know how to go about “publishing” so to speak.

If you’ve any thoughts on how to potentially navigate, I’d super appreciate it.

Have a nice one

krapp 22 days ago |

Just remember that if you publish them to the web, you give up "first publication rights" that might prevent you from being able to publish them elsewhere later. The web does count as "publishing" regardless of whether you get paid.

If you don't care about that, just make a website and put them all on it. Maybe avoid a third party platform since you won't have complete ownership of your content. Any static site generator will work. I personally suggest Nikola but it doesn't matter. Anything that can generate a simple blog format should work.

You might also consider setting up a Mastodon account and pushing links to your stories there. I don't know how big the writing community is there but it's probably not nothing.

I wouldn't bother with a literary agent unless you're a professional looking to be signed by a major publisher and self-publishing platforms tend to be scams.

Problem is everything else is getting eaten by AI so I wouldn't even know how to market in this scenario.

The go-to site for finding markets for speculative fiction used to be ralan.com but it looks like it closed in 2023[0].

[0]Alternatives:

https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/

https://duotrope.com/

vunderba 22 days ago | |

This is true. Personally I always try to get my work published with a third-party first, and then I talk with the editors to clarify policies. Most smaller magazines and publishers are pretty flexible, they’ll often have some provisions in place to allow you to re-publish original works on your own website after a certain period of time, if that’s the route you want to take.

It’s the approach I’ve used in the past with places like Paged Out and 2600 Hacker Quarterly.

thx 22 days ago | |

I know the author of the Martian published that story first on his website, but I don’t really know the layout / or what “first publication rights” be or entail. I have to do my research - and yes, I never have used AI writing any of them so I’m kinda scrambling now to find a way to do this before it can. thank you

ItsClo688 22 days ago |

1001 stories is a serious body of work, respect!

sharing a few thoughts:

- substack is probably the easiest starting point, no algorithm to fight, readers subscribe directly, and short fiction actually does well there if you're consistent. you own the list. - literary agents are mostly for novels, short story collections are a hard sell unless you already have publishing credits. better to build an audience first and use that as leverage. - if you are aiming for larger audience on social, go to tiktok/instagram if you're willing to read them out loud, even lo-fi works. people underestimate how well short fiction does as audio. x/twitter if your stories are punchy enough to tease in a thread.

thx 22 days ago | |

:D Thanks so much / really appreciate it. I’ve video’d like 30 short stories on and off but usually just testing out different social medias and I don’t really know the “PMF” for someone doing 5-10 minute short stories.

Think I will definitely start with substack. Was thinking maybe Patreon but I’m not huge on social medias in general so seeking to find where to go — super appreciate it <333