frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Oh, What Places to Go (Seriously Tho)

4•thx•1h ago
Hey HN — will start by saying this website is my most fav website — ever.

That said — will get to the point.

If you had written 1001 short stories, how would you go about marketing / getting your work out there?

- literary agent? - build a website? - stream it on social media? (if so, which socials?)

Have written a lot of mostly fun short stories, but I don’t know how to go about “publishing” so to speak.

If you’ve any thoughts on how to potentially navigate, I’d super appreciate it.

Have a nice one

Comments

ItsClo688•1h ago
1001 stories is a serious body of work, respect!

sharing a few thoughts:

- substack is probably the easiest starting point, no algorithm to fight, readers subscribe directly, and short fiction actually does well there if you're consistent. you own the list. - literary agents are mostly for novels, short story collections are a hard sell unless you already have publishing credits. better to build an audience first and use that as leverage. - if you are aiming for larger audience on social, go to tiktok/instagram if you're willing to read them out loud, even lo-fi works. people underestimate how well short fiction does as audio. x/twitter if your stories are punchy enough to tease in a thread.

thx•1h ago
:D Thanks so much / really appreciate it. I’ve video’d like 30 short stories on and off but usually just testing out different social medias and I don’t really know the “PMF” for someone doing 5-10 minute short stories.

Think I will definitely start with substack. Was thinking maybe Patreon but I’m not huge on social medias in general so seeking to find where to go — super appreciate it <333

nwhnwh•1h ago
"this website is my most fav website — ever" sad
thx•1h ago
lol — it’s true tho. Many great websites, but on HN, you never know what you’re going to find
krapp•1h ago
Just remember that if you publish them to the web, you give up "first publication rights" that might prevent you from being able to publish them elsewhere later. The web does count as "publishing" regardless of whether you get paid.

If you don't care about that, just make a website and put them all on it. Maybe avoid a third party platform since you won't have complete ownership of your content. Any static site generator will work. I personally suggest Nikola but it doesn't matter. Anything that can generate a simple blog format should work.

You might also consider setting up a Mastodon account and pushing links to your stories there. I don't know how big the writing community is there but it's probably not nothing.

I wouldn't bother with a literary agent unless you're a professional looking to be signed by a major publisher and self-publishing platforms tend to be scams.

Problem is everything else is getting eaten by AI so I wouldn't even know how to market in this scenario.

The go-to site for finding markets for speculative fiction used to be ralan.com but it looks like it closed in 2023[0].

[0]Alternatives:

https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/

https://duotrope.com/

vunderba•1h ago
This is true. Personally I always try to get my work published with a third-party first, and then I talk with the editors to clarify policies. Most smaller magazines and publishers are pretty flexible, they’ll often have some provisions in place to allow you to re-publish original works on your own website after a certain period of time, if that’s the route you want to take.

It’s the approach I’ve used in the past with places like Paged Out and 2600 Hacker Quarterly.

thx•1h ago
I know the author of the Martian published that story first on his website, but I don’t really know the layout / or what “first publication rights” be or entail. I have to do my research - and yes, I never have used AI writing any of them so I’m kinda scrambling now to find a way to do this before it can. thank you

Tell HN: An app is silently installing itself on my iPhone every day

9•_-x-_•1h ago•5 comments

Ask HN: Oh, What Places to Go (Seriously Tho)

4•thx•1h ago•7 comments

Ask HN: How did the industry settle on weekly limits?

3•saratogacx•4h ago•4 comments

Tell HN: Claude 4.7 is ignoring stop hooks

89•LatencyKills•1d ago•84 comments

Ask HN: Do you read differently now that anything could be AI generated?

7•dwa3592•9h ago•14 comments

Ask HN: Anyone managed to get Google trends API?

7•visox•12h ago•0 comments

Batteries Included CLI Framework

4•maxalbarello•9h ago•5 comments

Ask HN: Do you waste AI assisted time looking for answers?

2•Haeuserschlucht•9h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Is anyone working on Gov Digital IDs or have implementation docs / FOSS

3•lifeisstillgood•9h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Cyberdecks are cool but do they serve a purpose?

6•hamiecod•9h ago•2 comments

How to Attend the Altman vs. Musk Trial

7•major4x•8h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

9•fandorin•14h ago•13 comments

Ask HN: How do solo devs protect their work in the age of vibe coding?

27•langs•2d ago•15 comments

Ask HN: MicroVM setup for VS Code Dev Container-like experience?

3•Erndob•21h ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Scaling a targeted web crawler beyond 500M pages/day

22•honungsburk•1d ago•7 comments

Ask HN: Any recommendataions for exporting data from Amazon?

7•coreyp_1•1d ago•2 comments

Tell HN: YouTube RSS feeds no longer work

39•019•2d ago•14 comments

GPT-5.5 – No ARC-AGI-3 scores

19•AG25•2d ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Chrome, Brave, Firefox or Something Else?

14•wasimsk•1d ago•17 comments

Ask HN: Anyone still using JetBrains products today?

7•zkid18•1d ago•8 comments

How good is Mac Studio M3 Ultra for Trillion param models like DeepSeekv4?

8•namegulf•1d ago•7 comments

Tell HN: Codex macOS app switches to Fast speed after update without asking

10•mfi•1d ago•1 comments

Tell HN: Anthropic won't reset usage limits for those who downgraded

9•vintagedave•1d ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why are companies so distrustful of remote employees?

23•lyfeninja•2d ago•24 comments

Ask HN: How are you using AI code assistants on large messy legacy code bases?

13•thinkingtoilet•1d ago•13 comments

Hey, it's Earth Day today

25•burnt-resistor•3d ago•17 comments

Can non-developer build commercial products with AI

9•rkorlimarla•2d ago•10 comments

Anthropic bans orgs without warning

44•alpinisme•4d ago•20 comments

Is possible a language easy as py, fast as C, more secure than Rust?

10•jerryzhang66•1d ago•10 comments

Ask HN: How are you handling data retention across your stack?

11•preston-kwei•3d ago•6 comments