1. I'd say 60-75k is a pretty good word count, but that's going on my average of 12-15k words per story.

2. Depending on the length of the stories, 5-7 stories sounds about right for this length/price.

3. If five stories, 2 old and 3 new. If six, 2 and 4. If seven, 3 and 4.


Just my personal two cents. Everybody's different. :3

I'd say 60-75k is a pretty good word count, but that's going on my average of 12-15k words per story.


As I said, 60K is the absolute maximum for $10. 75K would be $20. This is the publisher's decisions.

In fact one publisher says 50K is the cutoff, another says 60K. So it depends on how the dice falls, but I'm looking at 40-50K more likely unless I put even more work into it.

In that case, I guess just take the publisher's max and try to stick around 10k a story? Really hard to tell...but I'd still go for about 65-70% old to new ratio.

Well, here's my two cents on the topic:

You're looking more at an anthology of stories rather than one single novel, so having it run into Robert Jordan-esque size isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the actual stories are not that long. It's designed to be broken up into bite-sized pieces, so you don't have indigestion of plot.

However, you do want to be careful to not make it long enough that you are forced into jacking up the price tag, which will deter sales. While I might consider picking up a novel for $10, $15 would make me think twice. So I think something closer to 60k at $10 might sell better than 75k at $15.

As far as how many stories are acceptable, that is directly tied to the word count. Clearly, if you have a defined word count limit, then the number of stories you can cram into the book is dependent on how many words per story. When you have one, you therefore have the other. I personally care less about number of stories than I do about quality of stories.

As far as new vs older? Well, generally speaking you're going to want at least one if not two new stories. By throwing in some of your more popular short stories already written that has gotten good reviews, you get to draw in people (like myself) who wanted to pick up a copy earlier and never got the chance, and with one or two new stories, you get the people who actually HAD cash and got your previous offerings to go 'Ohhh, shiny! New stories from an author I already like! Score!'. If you make an effort to put in stories from different publications, you'll give your readers a chance to perhaps catch stories they missed previously, as well as something new for the hardcore collectors. It's not really so much a ratio, I find, as having one or two new stories to grab the 'gotta catch 'em all' mindset, and having a wide variety that haven't been printed in a while for those who still have holes in their library.

Again, just my two cents on the topic. While I may be friends with published authors and occasionally act as the 'readers viewpoint' for writer's circles in my area, I am not, myself, a published author, nor am I directly in the publishing industry. YMMV.

Well, I want your two cents because I want to hear the words of people who would be buying it. :) The publishers are flexible and have no preferences, so.

1. 15-30k is really acceptable for $10. You can put a lot of plot and emotions in only 10k.

2. Three or four is alright, but only if each is at least 10kw.

3. Newer stories are usually better, especially with new authors. So if I was making a collection, I'd put 75% of new stories.