Renaissance in Short Story Interest Sees Short Fiction from Biff Mitchell Published at Fictionwise
Released on = June 8, 2006, 7:50 pm
Press Release Author = biffmitchell.com
Industry = Entertainment
Press Release Summary = Ebooks and handheld reading devices such as phones and PDAs
have spurred a new interest in short fiction, but the real force behind the movement
comes from massive online ebook distributors like Fictionwise where readers can buy
and instantly download individual short stories. Author Biff Mitchell has seven of
his stories available at Fictionwise and he believes this is the way readers will be
getting their reading materials almost exclusively in the near future.
Press Release Body = “Interest in short stories is fast approaching the glory days
of the early decades of the 20th Century,” said author Biff Mitchell. “People these
days are rushed and there’s little time for reading, but now it’s possible for
someone on the bus to work to use a cell phone or PDA to connect to the Internet, go
to Fictionwise.com, view a huge selection of short stories with estimated reading
times, pay for the story online and download it instantly, and read it on the
handheld. The whole process takes minutes and the reader doesn’t even have to leave
his or her seat.”
Mitchell has recently had seven of his short stories accepted for publication at
Fictionwise. “The stories were written over a twenty year period and have been
previously published in magazines and collections. They cover a wide range of genres
and display a dramatic change in my writing style. Excerpts on an ordering page for
each story allow readers to decide whether or not they like the writing style. This
is important for my stories since the early ones tend to be written in a traditional
literary style and the later ones tend toward satire and an almost urban fantasy
tone.”
Mitchell contends that the Fictionwise model offers readers more choice and control
over their reading purchases. “Imagine going into a bookstore and asking to buy an
individual story,” said Mitchell. “Ebook technology helps readers to access exactly
the kind of reading content they want, as opposed to having to pay several dollars
for a magazine even though you may be interested in only one of the stories it
contains.”
Mitchell also believes that the online bookstores will all but replace
brick-and-mortar bookstores in the near future. “People – especially young people –
are reading online more often and, unlike the early days of the Internet, they’re
willing to pay for content. But those prices are still much less than what you’d pay
in a traditional bookstore.”
Short story prices at Fictionwise are set according to the length of the story and
usually sell for less than a dollar. “Anyone can afford to pay 37 cents for a short
story,” said Mitchell. “And if you don’t like it, you can order something else to
read and gauge what you buy to the amount of time you have left to read, whether
you’re on a bus, plane, train, or at the beach. You don’t get this kind of
convenience from traditional bookstores.”
“Online bookstores allow you to zero right in on what you want to read and not have
to wait weeks to get it because it’s not in stock. The ebook file is always in
stock,” said Mitchell.
“Fictionwise ensures overall high quality in the short stories it carries through a
stringent submissions process,” said Mitchell. “Plus, readers can rate stories from
Poor right up to Great.”
According to Mitchell, the Fictionwise model also gives authors the opportunity to
market their stories on their own web sites with links directly to the Fictionwise
page where the stories can be purchased. “I have an entire page on my web site
devoted to my short stories at Fictionwise,” said Mitchell. “I have all the cover
art on the page, links to the stories, and some background information on the
stories. Over time, I plan to add more information about the stories. There’s some
interesting stories behind the stories.”
“One of the stories took me over 10 years to write,” said Mitchell. “I finished the
last few pages as I was working on a bar one night. I wrote each page by hand and
passed the finished pages to three of my customers who took turns reading them. I
got right down to the last page before it got too busy to write. I finished the last
page five years later. A few years later, the story (The Nickel) won a short story
contest in Australia.”
You can visit Biff Mitchell’s short story page at
http://www.biffmitchell.com/Short_Stories/short_stories.html.
About Biff Mitchell
Biff Mitchell is the author Heavy Load (Fictionwise), the world’s first laundromance, The War Bug (Double Dragon Publishing), a cyberthrillersatire set on
the Internet 200 years in the future, and Team Player (Double Dragon/lulu.com) a
satire on the IT industry. He has a book of short stories, Surfing in Catal Hyuk
published through lulu.com, and two ebook novellas Smoke Break and The Baton
published by Echelon Press. He is also the author of eMarketing Tools for Writers
(Fictionwise), and has four stories in the J. Richard Jacobs anthology, Twisted
Tails. Mitchell’s website is at www.biffmitchell.com.
2009
