The classic image of a writer is of a loner, sitting in an office, pounding away at a keyboard, Alexander Burnsperhaps growling in dissatisfaction at an unappreciative world. There is likely a half-empty bottle of scotch on the desk.

But I think most of us churning out flash fiction on a regular basis can’t be the grumpy hermit writer (as much as we may or may not want to be). There are reasons for this:

Print is, at least for flash, pretty much dead. I’m not sure anthologies in general sell all that well, and flash anthologies full of unknown writers probably sell even less. And, really, flash is a relatively new form of writing, one that seems tailor-made for the internet, as I believe Every Day Fiction and other sites have demonstrated. It must be noted, however, that creates a situation in which the content absolutely has to be excellent – there’s no such thing as a captive online audience. If readers don’t care for the first few paragraphs of a story, they’ll probably wander away. Two ways to mitigate this potential problem:

  • Be really good.
  • Make people like you – not just the story, but you - enough that they’ll want to read the whole story, and seek out other stories you’ve written.

No brainers, right? But I think a lot of writers don’t put as much thought into the second scenario as they should. Building a community of readers is, in my opinion, vital to being successful at any writing an author endeavors to sell online. There’s no publishing company pimping our stories out on an endcap at Borders. Sigourney Weaver isn’t going to read your story on Selected Shorts. Creating a community around yourself can make the difference between someone reading a story you’ve written, liking it, and moving on; or reading it, liking it, and thinking, “Oh, hey, this is by that person I read before, and I should check out more.”

The best way to go about this is going to be a website/blog of your own. Post regularly, and try to be entertaining. Remember that as a writer, it is your job to generate content. You should always have something to say about something. Spread word of your blog everywhere you go. Post on message boards. Interact with other writers. Allow the readers a place to easily interact with you, be it comment fields on the blog or through a message board. Take a lesson from the webcomics industry, which has done a great job with this sort of community building.

Some point after that, you can start selling T-shirts! I kid, I kid. Mostly. (Anyone want to help me with a graphic for my “Aftershocks” shirt? The slogan should read, “I lived through the earthquake and all I got was this stupid knife in my back!”)

Alexander Burns lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He writes because he doesn’t have a basement in which to build robots or time machines. His work has appeared at Every Day Fiction, A Thousand Faces, 10Flash, and is forthcoming from The Future Fire and Big Pulp.