Feb 06 2010
Stories, and a poll.
Michael Stackpole has been posting recently about what writers should do to best survive the current shake-up in publishing (of which the recent Amazon-Macmillan-Apple fracas is just the latest round). Joe Konrath has been saying many of the same things for a while.
One key point is that writers should be making at least some of their work available as downloads independently of what their publishers are doing. (Contracts permitting, of course. You don’t short out your publisher on something you’ve granted them exclusive e-pub rights to.) As it happens the exclusivity period on a couple of my short stories (“Snowball” from the Footprints anthology for one) is at or near an end, so I’m considering making them available for download here.
That in turn raises all kinds of questions I’ve barely begun to think about. What format(s)? How much (if anything) should I charge, and how? (And a lot of factors go into that decision.) And so on. I’ve set up a poll over there on the right to let you vote on format(s). This is my first use of this plug-in so bear with me if it’s a bit flaky. Even better, go ahead and comment below and tell me what you think.
And hey, if someone wants to nominate “Snowball” for a Hugo, I’ll send them a free copy. 😉
2 Responses to “Stories, and a poll.”
I’ve been wondering if I should adopt a system where, once I have a story placed in a professional market — like Analog — I then write another story in the same universe and put it up electronically. I don’t feel comfortable trying to go off and be a self-pub or “indie” writer because nobody knows who I am yet and my name isn’t worth diddly. But for every story I professionally sell, it would be an interesting experiment to then advertise on my blog that the story has a companion piece that can be bought and downloaded electronically, and see how much traction I get.
Now there’s an interesting idea. One I’m tempted to steal.
Wouldn’t work for my current Analog piece, but I’ve already been thinking about other stories with my “Snowball” aliens, and the characters in “The Gremlin Gambit”, and it’s perfect for T-space stories.