Long Tale Press

It's a fine question for a forum!

Strictly speaking, our submission guidelines say we only take novels and novellas. However, your question is a good one. We (the managers of Long Tale Press) discussed it and decided that there's no particular reason why we shouldn't amend the guidelines to allow story collections that still meet a minimum length requirement.

I will amend the guidelines ASAP, but here for the record let me state the new policy:

We'll accept submissions of short story collections as long as the total length of the collection is at least 35,000 words (that's two novellas worth) of short stories.

The point here is that in the event you do get published, we want to give readers enough material to leave them feeling satisfied, and a publication with (for example) two 5000 word short stories is probably not going to do it.

Bear in mind, too, that reviewers are inherently going to be more skeptical about a short story collection than a novel; reading the first 5000 words of a novel gives you a good sense of what you're in for, while reading the first short story in a collection tells you very little about whether you'll probably enjoy the rest of the short stories.

But, as far as we're concerned, that's between you and the community. If they like it, we'll publish it. So yeah, go for it. I would encourage you, however, to include an author's note in your submission that gives readers some sense for what the other stories are about.