When I was a wee lad, there existed these temples to entertainment. For a mere quarter you could be transported to another world. You took your change and turned it into electronic dreams. I speak, of course, about video game arcades. Now there’s something like that for short fiction fans. Writer and hoopy frood Kris Neidecker clued me in on this new and interesting venue for short stories. It’s called QuarterReads.

Writer and software developer, Ian Rose, saw a gap in the short story market. I’ll let him tell you:

On one side, there were the traditional magazines, online and off. Tightly edited and designed, difficult to break into and subject, for better and worse, to the tastes and preferences of the editorial staff. On the other, there was self-publishing, a free-for-all with no barrier to entry, no gatekeeper, and no quality assurance. The space between began to seem to me less like a niche and more like a gaping hole, and both my writer and developer brains got excited about the idea of building something to nestle right into it. A few months later, QuarterReads was born. We launched on October 14, 2014. There are a few reviewers and various helpers that work on the site, but it remains my baby and if there are any problems with it, I take full responsibility for them.

So how does it work?

The other thing that sets QuarterReads apart is our royalty structure. As the name suggests, each story on QuarterReads costs one quarter, 25 U.S. cents. Readers who sign up with QuarterReads pay $5.00 (USD) for 20 reads. Every time they decide to read a story, the reader spends one of their reads. Of that 25 cents, 22 are paid into the writer’s account. That’s 88%. Also, if the reader loves a story, they can “tip” the author either 1, 2 or 4 reads (equivalent to $0.25, $0.50 or $1.00) and 100% of those tips go straight to the writer.

If you’re interested, have a look. I put a story up there. It’s “The Good Doctor”, an alt-western fantasy piece, with werewolves and a doctor that’s not so good. And maybe not a doctor. All the stories on the site are under 2,000 words. I’ve got some flash pieces that clock in under a single k that I can beef up to the site limit. Is that something you as a reader would be interested in?

Leave me a comment and let me know.