How many short stories should I include in a manuscript for a book?
I have several sci-fi short stories and I was wondering how many is too many to include in a book for publication? How many pages is too many?
- tjcsonofallnations
Tags: Manuscript Book, Sci Fi, Short Stories
June 10th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
At least 8…at the most 15.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Most books stop short of much over 400 pages, it seems to me.
It also seems odd that you’re gathering short stories into a book for what appears to be your first publication. Short stories are individual manuscripts. Are the stories linked in some way?
I suggest you first go to a public library, where there are many magazines plus their back-issues, and find magazines you might be able to place a (as in singular) story in first. Once you’ve read a few, and some back-issues of each, study how to publish them in The Writer’s Market, current edition.
If that book costs too much, use the library’s copy since you’re there anyway. Use their copier to keep pages of most interest. Take notes.
Be sure you study the first section very well before going on to find out if your magazines are still in business, if they take either a query or a story without it being solicited, and to whom, where and in what form to send out a short story or query. Don’t forget the possibilities of anthologies, either.
It just seems to me that once you’ve published at least one short story (hopefully a few), you can then study how to get an agent or how to act as your own; how to approach publishers of books, so you’ll then have a better chance at convincing them to print all your own short stories in one book.
Make sense?
ADD: If you want to know how many stories are ‘too many’ for a book, that depends entirely on the length of your stories. Suggest you look at anthologies (best source for this) of short stories and judge what you have by what they average.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Hm, at least 6 or 7. Aim for a total of at least 70,000-100,000 words in total. Don’t go above 100,000 for a short story compilation.