Renaissance in Short Story Interest Sees Short Fiction from Biff Mitchell Published at Fictionwise

“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.