Short Stories Available on Itch.io

There aren’t many places to sell short stories online.

This can be frustrating for both writers and readers, as it means writers have a difficult time building a writing portfolio and amassing readers without giving their work away for free and then creating the expectation that all their work will be free in the future. Readers suffer, too, because they have to wait (and hope) that an anthology of the writing will eventually get published, which is unlikely because anthologies don’t tend to sell well.

This doesn’t mean that short writing doesn’t sell, it does. People will frequently purchase short stories on Amazon and from author sites, but many of these are marketed as being “books”, though quite a few don’t breach five thousand words in length. For some reason actually coming out and saying they’re short stories is frowned upon.

As I try to disentangle myself from Amazon and Meta these days, though, I find that really cuts down on where I can sell and market my stories. Unless there’s a call for submission that directly fits my piece or, miracle of miracles, I’m able to churn out something new within the deadline…plenty of my stories just sit on my computer.

My best friend, Dex, recently put me on to Itch.io. While that site is predominately geared towards games, it does have space on it for short stories and tabletop RPGs. I’ll be posting short stories up there if they’ve never found a home, weren’t written for a call for submissions, or have fallen out of the exclusivity deal with their original publisher. The lowest I can price on Itch.io is $1 per story, so that’s what I’ve done. I expect I’ll occasionally offer them up for free, though, so if your money is tight don’t feel bad about waiting for a sale.

I’ve got five stories up right now, but I expect that number to keep growing. Eventually, at around thirteen short stories, I’ll likely bundle them together for a deal.