Float Street Press has been experimenting with things, trying to figure out how to reach readers. We'd like our books to be read (seeing as that is the point of publishing them) and especially find readers who like a particular author. Javaid Qazi writes strange and wonderful short stories, but his two collections (UNLIKELY STORIES and THE JEWELED WEB) have not sent tremors through the publishing world. Still, when UNLIKELY STORIES came out, it got good reviews. Someone giving it a five star review wrote:
Excellent stories from Pakistan to Silicon Valley
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Javaid Qazi's first collection of short stories is notable both for
their insightful nature and amazing variety. A country-western barfly,
Silicon Valley office workers, a doctor and his family in Pakistan, a
lustful maid in Portugal, and a German 'stripteuse' populate these
tales. Throughout the world Qazi finds interesting people in
interesting dilemmas. His language is as original as it too is varied.
A highly recommended first book by an upcoming writer who measures up
internationally.
That was lovely, but it doesn't seem that it encouraged shoppers to avail themselves of the book.
Okay, I get it that short story collections, especially when they lurk in a strange limbo between experimental and mainstream fiction, sometimes encroaching on one, sometimes the other, isn't the easiest sell. How do you tell people what it is? Our thought was to publish some stories individually and let people know they were from a large collection of such stories.
So we published two stories and made them available at 99cents and used the Kindle free days to let the world know.
Both received an encouraging number of downloads, both free and paid. And one reviewer (the only reviewer) of President Sahib's Blue Period gave it:
By Scrabble Fan
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This short story contains many allegories and metaphors for our age,
at the same time containing irony and humor. The writing style reminds
me of Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
We've seen no reviews for Berlin Danse Macabre yet, but it is a challenging story.
Understanding what this anecdotal evidence means is difficult. I don't know what inspires people to write reviews, or how other people relate to reviews. I take them along with salt tablets myself, as single grains are usually inadequate, but the reviews of Javaid's books suggest that they struck a lovely chord with some readers.Now we are hoping that the interest this generated is enough to get readers to go for the collections. We could publish all of the stories individually and we will if that is what readers prefer. Given that the least we can charge for a story is 99 cents and the collection of 11 stories in UNLIKELY STORIES is $3.99 and THE JEWELED WEB has 18 for $4,99, I am not sure why readers would prefer single stories, but I know that I am not a typical reader. (We have both in paperback as well, for those who are not addicted to ereaders and like the touch and feel of books.)
It's a fun experiment and the results are sketchy. If you have any thoughts on the idea or value of individual stories versus collections, or how to let people taste a collection in another way, I'd love to hear them.
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