Amazon Loves…err, Loved Short Shorts

The actual cover of my 1st Amazon short created by Amazon Shorts.

Back right around the time when Amazon.com first bought CreateSpace, and Kindles were still on the drawing board, Amazon came up with a brilliant idea called Amazon Shorts. This program gave authors a chance to upload short stories and sell them for .49 cents each, and gave authors like me the chance to rake in those .28 cent royalty checks like nobody’s business. I fell for it, and submitted two of my hillbilly short stories, but haven’t seen a paycheck in probably 4 years.

The program failed miserably.  Unlike Kindle, with its author-take-charge DTP upload system (which is still in Beta), you had to email your story to the Amazon Shorts Keeper and you got a reply about three months later if you were accepted or not.  (I doubt they turned down anyone!)  And then another three months later your story was live on Amazon with a sassy little graphic they created for you right out of cut and paste or Microsoft Paint!

Well, needless to say the Shorts program was killed about a year later, or the two men in charge died from boredom.  But the short stories have stayed alive and well there on Amazon, along with its message boards filled with banter from authors who supported the program without tongue in cheek.  Then, Amazon sent the following email out to Shorts authors just last week…

Dear Amazon Shorts Author:
We appreciate your participation in Amazon Shorts. As you know, Amazon Shorts launched prior to the release of the Amazon Kindle and our Digital Text Platform (DTP). Due to these technology changes, we are discontinuing the Shorts program effective June 1, 2010.  (I thought the program was already discontinued.  They haven’t accepted submissions in years!) At that time, all Amazon Shorts will be removed from sale and distribution rights will revert back to the authors. We very much want to continue to offer your Shorts to Amazon Kindle customers. Below you will find the steps for transitioning your Shorts to our Kindle platform so that customers can continue to buy and read your work.

To upload your Shorts to the Kindle store, do the following:

1. Go to Amazon.com’s DTP pages and sign in using your Amazon account.
2. Walk through the steps in the tool to upload your book.
3. Click the Publish button. Once you click the Publish button, your Short will be live in the Kindle store within 48 hours.

We’ve created a video that shows you the steps for uploading your book in just a few minutes which you can view here (click to go to YouTube). Using DTP, you have access to multi-launguage support, international author support, and an upcoming 70% royalty model. You’ll also have full access to your sales data at any time.

If you have Word or HTML versions of your Shorts, you can upload those files directly to the Kindle store. If you don’t have those files, we are happy to send you an HTML file of your content that you can use. Just send a request with your name and the title of your book to amazon-shorts@amazon.com, and we’ll return an HTML file to you via email. The cover files used for Shorts do not meet the resolution requirements for the Kindle store, so you’ll need to supply your own cover image when you upload your Shorts.

For more information on DTP and getting started with the platform, please visit the DTP pages. You will find guides to walk you through setting up your account and submitting content, FAQs, community forums, and much more information to help ensure a long and successful future as a publisher on Amazon.com.

We strongly encourage you to join Amazon’s Author Central. This is a free service provided by Amazon to allow authors to reach more readers and promote their books. In Author Central, you can create and manage an Author Page to share the most up-to-date information about yourself and your work. You can view and edit your bibliography, add a photo , biography, and video, upload missing cover images, connect with readers via a blog and an events schedule, and update the Editorial Reviews content for your books.

Please note: The Shorts program officially ends on June 1, 2010. Soon thereafter, the Shorts discussion board and forum will be removed. All outstanding royalties will be paid to you on or before September 1, 2010.

We thank you for your support of Amazon Shorts and we look forward to continuing to offer your work to Amazon.com customers.

Really, Amazon?  Really??

It’s no shock to me they’ve decided to kill the stories like dead bargain books on the back shelf even Goodwill can’t give away, but what I find amusing is that it’s 2010 and they’ve just now decided to do this.  Like I said earlier, they shut the program down and stopped taking submissions about a year after the program started.  It’s like they forgot about us short authors…..and indeed they did.

Will I be publishing my two sad shorts on Kindle?  No!  Someday I’d love to develop them into an anthology, but for now I’ll let them fade into the murky abyss while waiting for my royalty check to finally come!