Short stories

A story in the Bookseller, unfortunately behind the paywall, has provided encouragement for short story writers this week. Short story collections have sold 692,087 units or £5.88m in value in the UK during 2017. This is up 32% by volume and 45% by value over 2016.  Read more

K J Orr, winner of the just-announced 2016 BBC National Short Story Competition, is a debut writer and that makes it surprising that she has won this hotly-contested prize. Her winning story Disappearances was up against a heavyweight shortlist including Man Booker winner Hilary Mantel and Costa Poetry Award shortlisted Lavinia Greenlaw.  Read more

At the London Short Story Festival a month ago writers lamented the lack of a publishing market for short stories. With one or two notable exceptions, such as Comma Press, which is publicly funded, publishers do not find it economic to publish short story collections.  Read more

A new site for short story writers and readers has recently launched. Yaktale is a place where writers can post their stories, after they have emailed with the request and sent a brief account of past work. Already existing writers on Yaktale have the ability to invite other writers onboard, but they only have a limited number of invites so they are encouraged to distribute them wisely.  Read more