Short stories are smashing it in the book world, with Tom Hanks the top author in the field

Readers are devouring short stories as Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks pen their own. SEE HOW YOUR CHILD COULD GET THEIR STORY PUBLISHED

Take a bite of the literary pie ... Tom Hanks’ short stories are bestsellers. Picture: Getty Images

They don’t generate the same excited attention as novels and biographies — but short stories are the little engine that can of the book world.

And they are gaining traction, with readers devouring short story collections at four times the average rate for other book categories.

Nielsen book sales figures show compound annual growth rate over five years of 11.3 per cent for short stories, compared to 2.6 per cent for the total Australian book market.

The two best-selling anthologies for the past year were Hollywood star Tom Hanks’ Uncommon Type: Some Stories and Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women.

In third place was Aussie Cate Kennedy’s Like A House On Fire, with four other Australians in the short story top ten — one of them Tim Winton.

While the units moved tend not to be massive compared to Top 10 novels, book industry expert Julie Winters, general manager of Nielsen Book Australia New Zealand, said the area was showing “continuous growth in recent years with everyone getting in on the action”.

Cat of nine tales ... Kristen Roupenian’s short story went viral; now she is a star at writers’ festivals. Picture: Adam Yip

HarperCollins Australia publisher Lisa Berryman said: “In the digital world where we now so often read in a quick and more random way, short stories are the perfect quick escape, and so I think that is why we are seeing a resurgence.

“You can fit them in between tasks, read them on the bus to work, and for kids they make the perfect bedtime story.”

Ms Berryman, a member of the judging panel for the Kids News Short Story Writing Competition, noted that many authors started their careers by writing short stories, from The Great Gatsby creator F. Scott Fitzgerald to Kristen Roupenian, whose story Cat Person went viral in 2017 and has been shared online millions of times.

“Short stories are a fantastic way for new writers to begin — a manageable number of words, and a pleasing sense of achievement in completing a story that can come more quickly than a novel,” she said.

KICKSTART YOUR KIDS’ WRITING

Writing is magic ... eight-year-old Stephen Tsembas gets inspiration for the Kids News Short Story Competition at the State Library of Victoria. Picture: Jason Edwards

Kidsnews.com.au is giving budding authors the chance to have their own story published into book form — plus win other cool prizes such as an iPad.

The Kids News Short Story Writing Competition, supported by HarperCollins, is open to Australian students from Prep to Year 8 with different age-range categories.

For details and tips on how to enter, go to Kidsnews.com.au

Originally published as Short stories are smashing it in the book world, with Tom Hanks the top author in the field