The wee story that could.
I've sold a lot of short stories over the years, over a hundred of them at professional rates, but ABOMINABLE has all of of those beaten into a cocked hat.
Back when I was just starting out in the early '90s, story submission was a matter of laying in enormous supplies of printer paper, ink ribbons, brown envelopes, stamps, International Reply Coupons, and spending many hours queuing in cold North of Scotland Post Offices, sending out subs for which I might, or might not get a reply.
I was mostly subbing to small press mags back then that only paid in copies of their side-stapled, photocopied productions.
Towards the end of the 90's things were improving. Email came along, and my expenses were cut accordingly. The quality of markets was improving fast too, fuelled by the desktop publishing movement. And, wonder of wonders, I actually started making money from my stories.
I didn't get my first full pro-rate sale until 2005, but that seemed to open a floodgate and my career, and my payments from it, grew in leaps and bounds.
But still, a good payday for a short story, even in the pro markets, was a couple of hundred quid, maybe four hundred if I got lucky.
ABOMINABLE changed all that. It was published as a chapbook right at the start of the Kindle boom, and piggy-backed on my early work there that was selling like hotcakes. ABOMINABLE sold over 8000 e-copies at 0.99c each back in the day, earning me three thousand bucks in the process.
It's still on sale today as part of my Chapbook Collection, still selling although at vastly reduced numbers.
I've sold another sixty of so pro rate stories to the genre markets since then, but nothing over six hundred bucks for any one of them.
Be nice to hit that sweet spot again.
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