Publishing on Amazon

Hi, everyone.

I have been thinking of publishing a short story exclusively for Amazon. There are several problems with that.

For one, Smashwords where I have posted my other short stories has yet to reach a deal with Amazon in regards to publishing literature on their site. That is not the case with Barnes and Noble and other online bookstores. I have no problem publishing on Smashwords who then sends it to most online bookstores. The issue is...Amazon doesn't publish them.

Another issue is that Amazon will not allow me to publish it for free. I would have to charge at least $0.99. I don't feel right doing this, because my stories were always meant to be free teasers that would help readers decide if they liked my brand of storytelling. I currently sell one of my full-length novels for that price so it seems odd to publish a story which is a quarter the size for the same price. However, I would like Kindle users to also try my stories.

Amazon does offer a way to place the work on sale once it has been published exclusively through them, making it free. That would mean that this particular story wouldn't be published on any other site. It would be exclusive to Amazon.com. That is not such a huge problem except that I don't know how long I can keep it for free and my audience largely uses other sites to download or purchase my work. However, the objective is to try to gain Kindle readers.

So, I have been thinking of publishing my short story entitled Scattered. I just haven't figured out if I will publish it in the coming week with Amazon. Or wait and make it my yearly novella. I am going to research more about it before I come to a finally conclusion. If I do decide to release it, I will make an announcement within a few days.

Any thoughts, readers?