The Works of I. C. Talbot Exclusive on Amazon

There are hundreds of short stories by I. C. Talbot in my files. So getting them published has been a large project. Including the fact that I needed to take care of my parent's estate, The Hoard that occupied their property, my farm, my animals and my family, I didn't get very far. In addition, there weren't any sales on any of our  published e-books, even though I had them distributed as widely as possible.

So last year I started moving the stories out of different vendor sites and I enrolled them a few at at time into Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program. I did some free days here and there, but never got any pages read, which is where the money currently is - each page read is worth about 1/2 of 1 cent.

That's how 2016 proceeded - a handful of freebies, no read pages until December when Digging Out got some attention as a free e-book and we got a pulse on pages read to the tune of 293 pages or $1.46.

January we got 542 pages read, for $2.71 and a couple of sales. But most of all, the short stories started climbing the charts and we got halo reads as people discovered the other stories. February was a disappointment, dropping down to fewer than 300 pages read and a couple of sales.

But this month we are already more than 1k pages read and there are quite a few sales of the newest short story "The Hide Out" which is enjoying a bump in ranking: 

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,503 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#57 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Literature & Fiction
#161 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Short Stories
#230 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories > Women's Fiction

So I've started publishing more short stories. I think I can get two or more new ones out a month, and if Kindle Unlimited continues to be successful, I'm going to leave them in Unlimited and publish paperbacks with the earnings.

This isn't the first time I've tried this, but this is the first time it's worked this well. I do have to keep in mind that this is reading season, and sales will fall as the weather gets better. But if I can continue to provide fresh stories, I think I can keep the collection visible.