I'm seeing some writers who sell them on other websites that specialize in shorts and considering submitting to them, too. Nokblok is a new one, (the editor responded to one of my posts here) there's a Sci-fi one that sends me emails with a new story every week. I'm sure there's more that I'm just not thinking of right now.
I crashed on Constant Content this week. :(
Over two years ago I sold a few articles there and did okay. Had one rejected. Then got a new job and stopped using them. Last month I resubmitted my rewritten rejection and it was rejected again. Then submitted two and both were accepted. Yay! Both those were on cooking. My next submission was a How-to art project. It was rejected so fast I don't think the editor had time to actually read it. The reason for rejection was grammar/punctuation. A blanket response I've seen other's complain about on the CC forum. Its like the editor's lazy response for "I found a mistake/don't like the subject/its 1 a.m. and I'm tired" excuse. That doesn't sound like "editing" to me. It really upset me at first because I work hard on these articles. Then I went into the forum and found a lot of questioning about the editor's responses. Mostly it seemed they just had cut and paste responses that they tossed out haphazardly. Some even questioned if there was a new editor on staff that wielded a reckless sword even on writer's who had 100's of accepted articles. After the third rejection in over two years they suspended my account. Three strikes you're out. Blah.
That experience got me thinking. Do I really want to write that stuff? Sure, it's money and I can find another place to sell, but really? Is that what my soul wants to write?
No.
Simply, no.
I want to write stories. Which brings me back to the short story questions. Where and how to sell.
I also thought of another idea which might be toooooo ego driven, but hear me out.
What about a blog to post these stories with a note; If you liked this story please help keep the stories flowing. Contribute $5 via paypal here.
Would something like that work? Would it make more or less than the few bucks a short story place would pay?
Pros;
I could write what I want. Any genre, any time.
Blogs are timeless. You can write something three years ago and it's still crawling around the internet today.
$5 isn't much so people might think, sure, why not.
Blogs are free...where's the risk?
Adsense could be added to this blog (not that Adsense ever made me much anyway, but hey, a nickle is still a nickle.)
Cons;
Nothing could happen. No readers, no income. Readers without income. (so what? I just take the blog down)
How do you tax this? Pay taxes?
I'm not a well established enough writer to bring in the crowd.
It's on honor system...does that ever work?
If it doesn't work and I want to sell these stories to magazines, some won't touch previously pub stories. Even on blogs.
Still thinking about this idea. I have several stories in different genres, some love stories, some mayhem, some paranormal so I'm not sure if I have enough to fit one genre collection.
And I'll probably start sending to the True's again. They pay slow but pretty good. I generally score about $150 a story there depending on word count.
Where do you sell? What do you think of the Story Blog idea? Am I crazy? (or desperate...that's understandable too. :)
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