Why Give Away Free Short Stories?

At this point I've written far more short stories for Relic Worlds than I have books, and probably have more words invested in them as well.  But the books are what people pay for, and they're the meat of the story.  So why have short stories I give away for free?

The reason is simply because people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into something new, especially today.  Any more, if it wasn't a popular movie in the '80s that will feed someone's nerd cred, they won't give it a chance.  Ironically, these iconic movies became popular because we in the '80s gave them a chance; but that's another blog post that I've already written.

Asking someone to pay for something they're already not sure they want is all the more difficult.  So the best way to get them involved is to give them something for free.  The first book is of course a good way to do that, and most series do, including Relic Worlds.  However, once that's released, sending it out there into social media without being labeled as a spammer is difficult.  It's better to have something new to send out on a fairly regular basis.

It's also easier to get people to read something smaller that leads them into the broader scope; again, especially today.  I can send a short story to a group on Facebook and have a better chance of them looking at it.  I can even post the story in the message itself.  Additionally, social media works on quantity.  With one book you have a single list of tags and hashtags.  With multiple short stories, each one can have its own list of labels.

Ultimately, having the large list of short stories has built out the world and created an entire new view of the universe of Relic Worlds.