I want to take a moment to discuss Amazon Singles while we’re talking about self-publishing short stories.
Amazon Singles is a program you can submit your previously self-published or unpublished short stories and novellas (between 5000 and 30000 words). They also accept proposals.
They promise a turnaround time of six weeks. Stories need to be previously unpublished anywhere except Amazon to be accepted. If previously unpublished, accepted stories are published on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform and authors receive normal KDP royalties.
There seems to be no additional monetary compensation to the program, but stories selected for Amazon Singles are then listed on the Amazon Singles page, which could potentially boost a story’s visibility and improve sales.
NOTE: At this time, Amazon Singles does not accept how-to manuals, public domain works, reference books, travel guides, children’s books, or short story collections.
I was going to put this program into the options for self-publishing short stories, but there is some level of gatekeeping to the program as Amazon has to accept the stories for inclusion. But they don’t actually do anything a “traditional” publisher would do in this sense–the author still uploads the manuscript, provides a cover, sets the price–so they’re just putting the book on a page.
What do you think, Squiders? I’d put this as an example of hybrid publishing myself.
(Also, if anyone has any experience with Amazon Singles and would like to share, please do so! I haven’t published anything in the accepted word count range so I have no first hand experience myself.)
