McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Books in a digital world, and when will books be obsolete?

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Antimatter Girl:
Tad, unfortunately, was only selling one story on his site: Shadowmarch, which can now be found at your local bookstore. I think it was $15 for a year's subscription, and he'd post a new chapter every two weeks. Problem is, he was doing this project at the same time he was writing War of the Flowers, and 1) he had a hard time meeting both deadlines and 2) the revenue wasn't enough to justify the time he was spending on the project. Ergo, the subscription chapters were removed and Tad put S'march on hold until he could dedicate all his time to it and publish it in hard copy.

I'm pretty sure Stephen King had his own project that worked like this, but I have no idea on the details. I think he was slightly more successful than Tad.

It is rather surprising that one doesn't find as many sites out there like your fanfiction archive, except with original stories. Perhaps it is because most people who have original stories are more interested in getting compensation for their work in addition to sharing with the world? Fanfic, after all, has no hope for ever being published for-profit (unless you're a Trekkie), so it is distributed pro bono. But you'd think that there are other writers of original fiction who would want to share with the world for the love of the word and not bother with that whole publishing thing. Or am I just completely out of the hobbyist writer loop, and these sites do exist?

Dom:

--- Quote ---But you'd think that there are other writers of original fiction who would want to share with the world for the love of the word and not bother with that whole publishing thing. Or am I just completely out of the hobbyist writer loop, and these sites do exist?
--- End quote ---

There are some...the two I know offhand are Wyvern's Library at Elfwood, and the one that was split off from fanfiction.net (I forgot the name).  Neither have quality controls, so while they are viable online archives of original fiction, it's pretty much a slog to find the gems.  I think there are rating systems, but they're not easy to use to find the good stuff, so you have to be a determined reader to find the quality work.  I think Deviantart might have some writing too.  In any case, a reader has to work to find the good stuff, and I think that makes the sites less valuable then they couldl be.

I guess what I'm thinking is of more of a writing version of Epilogue.  Epilogue is a SFF art website, and the art is hand-approved by a group of moderators, who are recognized talent in the field themselves.  This makes sure that only the things some moderator/editor thinks are good enough gets in.  (of course, angry young artists who were rejected like to call the site Elitist.)  I don't think they have a subscription model, but their motivation is to get exposure for artists so the artists can get more gigs.  They do have a store; I don't know what sort of revenue the store gets, but since they have a patron thing for upgrades to the site, not enough to do hardware upgrades.

In the fanfic world, The Sugar Quill is a fanfiction archive that is moderated like this.  It archives Harry Potter fiction.  (The site seems to be down at the moment though, at least for me).

novium:
If I remember, he posted a new chapter of a story every week or month or something, and continued to do so as long as the majority of  people reading the book mailed him a dollar. It was a test of honesty or something.


--- Quote from: Antimatter Girl on October 08, 2006, 11:18:43 PM ---Tad, unfortunately, was only selling one story on his site: Shadowmarch, which can now be found at your local bookstore. I think it was $15 for a year's subscription, and he'd post a new chapter every two weeks. Problem is, he was doing this project at the same time he was writing War of the Flowers, and 1) he had a hard time meeting both deadlines and 2) the revenue wasn't enough to justify the time he was spending on the project. Ergo, the subscription chapters were removed and Tad put S'march on hold until he could dedicate all his time to it and publish it in hard copy.

I'm pretty sure Stephen King had his own project that worked like this, but I have no idea on the details. I think he was slightly more successful than Tad.

It is rather surprising that one doesn't find as many sites out there like your fanfiction archive, except with original stories. Perhaps it is because most people who have original stories are more interested in getting compensation for their work in addition to sharing with the world? Fanfic, after all, has no hope for ever being published for-profit (unless you're a Trekkie), so it is distributed pro bono. But you'd think that there are other writers of original fiction who would want to share with the world for the love of the word and not bother with that whole publishing thing. Or am I just completely out of the hobbyist writer loop, and these sites do exist?

--- End quote ---

Mickey Finn:
My first published story was on a website called "Mind's Eye Fiction," developed by a rocket scientist at NASA.  The concept was simple...read the first half of the story for free, and pay for the second half (in a variety of way, including banner ads) if you wanted to see the rest of it. If you felt ripped off by the second half, you could get a refund (he only had 2 or so refunds the entire time). Authors got paid per hit of the second half of their story.
As an unknown, I didn't get a whole lot...unless you count the free ticket to World Con for letting him crash on my couch...but I got published next to visionaries who thought he had a good idea: Harlan Ellison, Spider Robinson, Fred Saberhagen, and Stephen King, to name a few.
Damn straight, I'm proud of that ;)

Unfortunately, the editor got to the point where he couldn't maintain the site any more (time issues) and sold it to another company...who promptly screwed it up.

"One of the strangest things, for me, is how SLOW the SFF genre is at adopting to the digital world.  It doesn't make sense...you'd think the genre that predicted this stuff in the first place would be the ones on the bleeding edge of technology.  And yet we're not.  Why is that?"

For a lot of people, the toys aren't ready, yet. They're either too expensive to afford, or aren't what we want.

"(Note to web designers, this is also true of text and background colors; a dark background with light text is harder to read than a light background with dark text.)"

This depends on the person and their sensitivity to light. I have excellent night vision (which is funny, because my vision is way past legally bling w/o corrective lenses), so for me, staring at a white screen hurts. I actually reset my colors in Word so I have a black screen with pale blue letters.

"The main problems I would see with this are one: I would imagine that this technology would be awfully expensive (I could be wrong), and thus make it impractical. And Two: It sounds like it might be fairly easy to damage, in which case the repair costs just wouldn't be worth it."

One: Now, yes....later, no.  Two: It's tougher than the paper it emmulates ;) The 'electronic paper' concept will, in the end, be able to mimic newspaper and books to a tee, but the pages will be rewritten at will. Oh, and it won't have the wonderful musty smell.

BigMama:
Again, I think you can't discount the emotional attachment folks have to the traditional written word. How many of you have books that you have kept from childhood? Musty, mildewed, beloved friends that your heirs will probably burn when you finally go to your reward (or maybe sell for a fortune). :)

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