We hear from Catherine Horlick, the editor of a new and exciting platform designed to showcase the work of new and established short story writers.
Launching in April 2015, pennyshorts.com will sell short stories of all genres at 50p per click, or an annual subscription of £20. 50% of the proceeds will go to the contributing authors. The rest will be spent on maintaining and marketing the site. pennyshorts is dedicated to the neglected short story; the twist in the tale, the transformational moment, the glimpse into a different psyche. All contributions are welcome, from published and unpublished authors, but only the very best stories will make it onto the site, and all stories will be professionally edited and proofread.
pennyshorts has been created to be a natural home for the short story and to give readers the opportunity to access new voices in fiction. There is a lot of free content on the internet, but no quality screening, and much of it is riddled with errors.
Writers, please submit your stories of all genres to [email protected]. Showcase your writing AND get paid for it. If your story is accepted, you will be welcome to submit a short bio, a photo and links to other work. You retain copyright and may withdraw your work at any time.
Agents and publishers: members of the Association of Authors' Agents, or of Publishers' Association/Publishing Scotland/Irish Book Publishers' Association and members of any bona fide international equivalent will get free and unfettered access to all stories and author’s details if supplied.
Readers/Subscribers: please register your interest to [email protected]. For £20 per year, you will be able to read funny, entertaining, thought-provoking, tragic, tear-jerking, philosophical, horrifying, gruesome and plain wonderful shorts. You may rate stories and leave comments, although these will be checked for insulting language and spoilers. Browsers will be able to see the genre, author’s details, first paragraph and the word count before downloading a story.
Subscribers who join pre-launch will have a chance to take part in the beta launch at a 10% discount.
From whichever angle you approach pennyshorts, I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Catherine Horlick, editor of pennyshorts.
This sounds really awesome. What must the word count of the short story be?