Edith north of Boston, almost ready for Christmas! And wishing you all a warm, safe, happy, and wicked cozy holiday. 

Some of you have seen over on Facebook that I’ve completed my short story project. Over the years I’ve had nine short stories published in juried anthologies or magazines, seven of them crime stories, three by Level Best Books. I decided to reissue them as self-published ebooks for ninety-nine cents, just in case anyone is looking for other works by the famous author Edith Maxwell.

It’s not that hard. I use my friend Kaye George’s ebook The Road to Self-Publishing, and I commission inexpensive covers from Lyn Stanzione at Stanzalone Design. I publish the stories, one at a time, through Smashwords, which assigns a free ISBN and distributes it to places like Barnes &Noble and iBooks as well as selling the story through Smashwords itself. And I publish for Kindle through Kindle Direct Publishing. As long as you follow the guidelines exactly and have clean formatting, they come through nicely.

To my great surprise, several of these ebooks have shot to nearly the top of a couple of Amazon best-selling lists! “A Fire in Carriagetown,” “Just Desserts for Johnny,” and “An Idea for Murder” have all been in the top twenty in a Kindle Short Reads niche. Here’s where “Just Desserts for Johnny” was on Saturday (and it’s been lurking there for a week or more):

#11 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 15 minutes (1-11 pages) > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
#60 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 15 minutes (1-11 pages) > Literature & Fiction

“The Importance of Blood”  was number twenty on Hot New Releases in the Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense category on Saturday, and “The Stonecutter” was number ninety-eight in Kindle Short Reads in Romance. There are 30 minute read lists, too.

Cool, huh? I’m delighted. And there are much bigger-name authors than me on those pages, including Nevada Barr, Margaret Maron, LL Bartlett, and “Death by Potato Salad,” a short story by my friend Jess Lourey. But what’s surprising is that when I look at the sales for any of my stories, they are not astronomical by any means. Amazon must have one of its mystical algorithms working that likes my story! Believe, me, I’m not complaining. And am standing by for when the sales numbers shoot into the stratosphere.

Short descriptions and buy links for my stories are on the Short Fiction area of my web page. Just in case, you know, you still need to stock up somebody’s new e-reader for Christmas.

Readers: Do you know anything about Amazon algorithms? What’s your favorite e-reader? Do you have experience self-publishing anything?

Filed under: Edith's posts Tagged: A Fire in Carriagetown, Amazon bestseller, An Idea for Murder, Jess Lourey, Just Desserts for Johnny, Kaye George, kindle short reads, Reduction in Force, Stanzalone Design, The Importance of Blood, The Stonecutter, Yatsuhashi for Lance