Short Stories: Enter Writing Contests or Self Publish?

Over the weekend I was chatting with Erin Kotecki Vest about my latest short story. I told her I was considering entering it in a writing contest, but I thought the $15 reading fee was steep. I could almost hear her laughing. She said, "You're a blogger. You publish it."

I have published two short stories straight to Kindle, and they haven't been widely read. However, they are better read there than they were on my hard drive. After Erin said I should publish the short story myself, I thought long and hard about my goal for this particular piece. I often have to do this with my writing -- sit down and ask myself how I'm measuring success. Do I just want people to read it, or do I want something else in addition to new readers? It helps me take the "oh, God, they HATE ME" fear of rejection out of the process. It also helps me understand where my ego fits in.

There are many potential goals here:

• Make more short writing available on Kindle with the hopes the literary world goes the way of the music world and suddenly people start downloading my short stories like music singles without me having to try to publish them as a collection (pros: low barrier to entry, makes my Kindle offerings more robust; cons: can't enter that short story in contests once it's been published, even by me)

• Increase fiction street cred by placing in contest and getting published by literary magazine (pros: hello, street cred! also? exposure of my writing to new audiences; cons: someone has to pick my short story out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of quality submissions -- v. big longshot, also -- takes forever)

• Increase exposure to short fiction by publishing the short story on Surrender, Dorothy, where people can read it for free (pros: definitely the easiest way to get more people to read my short fiction; cons: ruins chances of either putting it on Kindle or getting it published in a literary magazine or entering it in a contest, the writing could get scraped or otherwise stolen, trolls)

I ended up entering "Tacit Questions" in the short-story contest. The magazine sponsoring the contest is legit and award-winning. In the end, my desire for third-party endorsement won. I have no idea how many more times I will enter it before I look hard at my other two options. Reasoning: I'm working on a novel, which is also fiction, so if I *could* get some third-party endorsement for my fiction writing, it will make finding an agent and a publisher infinitely easier. Awards do bring your submissions more serious consideration.

How do you decide what to do with your short fiction? Have you ever self-published it to Kindle? Would you? Why or why not?

Rita Arens writes at Surrender Dorothy and BlogHer and is the editor of Sleep is for the Weak. She is BlogHer's assignment and syndication editor.