I was talking with Rish about whether I should publish standalone versions of all the short stories that are in my two collections that I've published so far. I've always been a big believer in providing the customer with whatever it is that they might want. Dean Wesley Smith talked a lot about that on his blog. When you write something, you should publish it in as many versions as possible: paperback, hardcover, audio, eBook, foreign language, large collection, small collection, and yes, standalone.
I've been helping Rish put together covers for a lot of his short stories so that he can publish them...or republish them with non-repellent cover art, and he said that at the very least, I should give it a shot and see how easy it is. So, I figured, why not? It seems like that was one of the mottos of some podcast I used to listen to...or talk for...
Anyway, I started with the Christmas stories from Christmas Creatures. My daughter had done fun little pictures for most of the stories, so I had art ready at hand. This is the first cover, the one for "The Christmas Creature."
I used the same fonts and everything, and just changed the background to white. It was really simple to put together the file and throw together the cover, so I published it right away and started on another.
I just went down the table of contents, making standalone versions and covers to go along with them. Next was "The Spirit of Christmas".
I made sure to keep the covers similar. I wanted people to be able to just look at the cover and know that it was a B.D. Anklevich Christmas story.
Next was "Dear Santa." Way back in 2014, I actually did publish a few stories on Smashwords, and this was one of them, so it had a cover from those days.
It's actually a much better cover than the new one I made, but I wanted the covers all to match, so I used the clipart of a candy cane instead of Santa swinging a crowbar.
Next was "A Christmas Wish" which had a fun picture of a yeti for the cover.
I quickly moved on to "Taking a Left Turn," a story I put on the Anklecast and nobody listened to.
After that were the two stories in the book that nobody, not even the ten people who listened to the episode with "Taking a Left Turn," had ever heard. These are also the big ones. Each of them are around 20,000 words in length. First there is "Klaus Kringle."
And, lastly, there was "Crossing the Globe," which may be my favorite story of the whole collection.
Those last two stories are available on their own now, so if you don't want to buy the whole book because it has stories you've already heard on the Dunesteef, but you would like to hear some new stories, then definitely pick those up. That's the reason these versions exist at all, because I want to do as Dean Wesley Smith and Rish Outfield say and give the customer every chance possible to buy a copy of something from me.
Oh, speaking of wanting to read a new story, I did publish one more story. This one isn't even in the Christmas Collection. Instead, it's the first story in my next Christmas Collection which will come out someday in the future when I've written enough new stories to fill a book. This one is called "Postdated" and is available nowhere else but in this standalone version available on Amazon.
"Why not?" Rish had asked, and he'd been right. It wasn't too hard. I'd put all those stories together and published them in one weekend. Mind you, I did little else the whole weekend, but still, that's a lot of publishing for a two day period.
It wasn't that hard, and I figured I'd get going getting the rest of my stories published as well. I'll do the ones in my other collection, Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies next. Then maybe, once I've finished that, I can keep going on the ones that will be in the Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. This is pretty fun.
I should have done this so many years ago, considering how easy it is. I can't believe that I sat here on my hands while Rish Outfield did this for years and years. I am so ashamed for letting him best me. I have to turn the tables somehow. Excuse me, while I go plot for a while.
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