what would be the easiest way to have your work published

The best way to get your short stories published is to send it to places that publish short stories! The magazine Poets & Writers - a great resource for writers, by the way - has a good list of respectable literary journals at http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines. Many journals allow you to submit online these days, so the process is pretty easy. It's good to read through any journals you're interested in just to make sure your writing style matches up with what they usually publish.

And don't worry about rejection - it's normal to get rejected by 20 or 30 places before anything gets accepted. Don't get discouraged; just keep applying!

If you're looking to publish a book someday, some magazine publications is a great first step.

The easiest way to get a story published is to self-publish it. Self-publishing is different than traditional publishing in that it doesn't require you to go through a publisher, but in turn have to do all of the legwork. That includes not only writing the story, but also editing, formatting, designing or hiring for any cover artwork, and promoting. It's very easy to go this route, but to get a quality product takes a bit of work. Also, selling becomes a challenge, as you'll have handle all of the marketing and work hard to stand out from the crowd. This is a gratifying process and can be done in a matter of weeks, but it is a lot of work. I've used services such as Smashwords and Createspace, and there are others such as Lulu and many more.

Depending on your goals, this might be a good route for you, or you can look at some of the smaller indie publishers who might be interested in your work. They're probably a little easier to approach than some of the big name publishers, but you won't get as much exposure.

Hope this helps.

Whichever route you choose, keep writing!

I wrote and am illustrating a children's book. I decided to self-publish. The total cost was $1000, but that's because my book requires color pictures. If you are doing short stories then yours would cost significantly less because you are able to print in black and white without pictures. My publisher is Outskirts Press. They have all kinds of publishing packages available for all price ranges. I like them because they are also affiliated with Amazon.com and my book will be available on Amazon once I am done. Also, they assign you one specific person who will guide you through the entire process. Since the cost to publish my book was $1000 I had asked that anyone thinking of giving me money/gifts for graduation to please contribute towards funding my book publishing. I was able to raise $500 just from graduation gifts! Maybe you could do something like that to ask friends and relatives to contribute to publishing instead of birthday, holiday, or graduation gifts.

www.outskirtspress.com