Summer is in full swing and readers all over are polishing off novels, digging into magazines and bringing their tablets to the beach. Ever wondered about the numbers behind summer reading season? Take a look at our new infographic!
How did your reading stack up this year? Let us know your favorites on Twitter—and don’t forget to share our stats with a friend who loves to read on holiday.
Did you know? Over half of Brits would like to write a book! Luckily for them, and all other aspiring writers, it has never been easier to write, self-publish, and share your literary creations thanks to digital publishing platforms like Calaméo. Today, we will share our quick guide on how to write and publish your first short story with Calaméo.
Often less intimidating than writing a novel, many aspiring authors choose to start by writing short stories. Far from being easy, however, short stories have genre-specific requirements which differentiate them from novels.
To write your short story, you need to follow a few major steps. As you will see, it’s not the writing that will take the most time, but rather the preparation and proofreading that will be the most time-consuming tasks.
The short story is a specific genre with its own constraints. Here are our tips to make writing a short story easier:
Publishing your content on Calaméo requires only a few steps and offers many advantages.
In your word processor, make sure you choose a layout that is comfortable for your readers to read. Think of your design as a real book: the font must be legible. Avoid serif fonts and ensure that the font size is large enough to read on a screen (including mobile!).
💡 TIP: Make sure you export your document in a format accepted by Calameo.
Putting your short story online is quick and easy on Calameo: it’s just one click away! Thanks to our unique technology, your documents are transformed in just a few seconds into superb flipbooks suitable for reading everywhere.
Our Editor tool enables you to enrich your publications with multimedia. Easily add videos, audio tracks, images, and both internal and external links to turn your short story into a unique reading experience!
Once your short story is published on Calaméo, you can share it with the entire world. Embed it in your website or blog, create a digital library, share it on your social media pages, send it via email…you have so many choices!
💡 TIP: Don’t have an idea for a story to tell? Start with the writing exercise we suggested in Calaméo Magazine #8: the Space issue.
Share all your literary creations with the world today by creating your free Calaméo account!
There are numerous advantages to self-publishing on Calaméo. Maybe you have the beginning of a novel lying dormant on your computer that you don’t know what to do with. Or perhaps you’ve just finished a collection of poems that you’d like to share with the world. We will give you 5 great reasons why self-publishing your work on Calaméo is the solution.
Self-publishing means that there is no middleman. You are the one making all the decisions. No matter the subject or the form of your stories, self-publishing allows you to share all your original manuscripts without restriction.
You also decide when your work is ready to be read and shared. There’s no need to reach a certain number of pages, to have an impeccable vocabulary, or to confine yourself to one writing style or genre in particular. You publish what you want, when you want.
Self-publishing presents many advantages for amateur or aspiring authors (who want to gain some popularity before they venture into selling their publications, for example).
Create your Calaméo account in just a few clicks. Then, all you need to do is click on the “Publish” button and choose which file to upload to the platform. Yes, it’s really that easy! There is only one upload step, and your document is published.
No need to start from scratch each time you make a change in your novel: you can simply upload a new version. You can update your publication, and the URL and other enhancements (videos, links, etc.) stay the same.
Digital publishing’s main advantage over paper? The possibility of enriching your writing and turning your publications into real multimedia experiences! Adding internal or external links, images, videos, GIFs…it’s incredibly easy with Calaméo’s Editor tool.
By publishing your manuscripts online, you are making them visible and easy to share. With Calaméo, you can embed your publications directly on your website or blog. In addition, if you share the URL of your publication on social media, people can read it directly on your social media post. A great way to generate some buzz!
Because your writing will be free to read, you probably don’t want to spend anything to put it online. Start your self-publishing adventure by creating a BASIC account on Calaméo; it’s completely free! You can always choose to upgrade your account if you want to take advantage of even more features.
Finally, self-publishing could lead to publishing houses discovering your work. And who knows? You could become a published author after all!
