If you liked My story, you might like...
I was talking with ZoeEW, Miladysa, and Inventrix this morning about making weblit more accessible to readers.
I tried to bring this over to the dead-tree-book world, where I'll often say to a friend "Hey, if you liked the Butcher, why don't you try the Bear?" and lend them a book.
Most of us have link exchanges, or pages of links, but I'm wondering if we could work on a list of qualities: "If you like the post-apoc feel of Above Ground, you might like..." so that we can offer readers a more directed linkage.
This, of course, is only step one - it deals with readers already in the pool. How to connect this to readers outside of the current weblit pool, I don't know.
~l
I'd be more than willing to do this. Granted, there's currently only one other western fantasy I know of (and would like to know if there's others). In a situation such as this, would it be wise to post a link to other stories of similar genre or style on, say, the main download page? I say that, because all of the different chapters available for Black Mask & Pale Rider are available through the pdf download page.
I have descriptions of the stories I link to on my links page, myself.
I do, too. The way I see it, the descriptions are like the quick book-jacket blurbs. An "if you like this, you might like..." is more like a friend's recommendation.
Where something like this would be really cool would be on The Web Fiction Guide. I think I (or someone) suggested it in the redesign thread.
Currently, I've been looking for other weblit stories that are similar to my own stuff, but I haven't found much. When I do, or when I find something I dig, I definitely recommend it to my readers.
Good point, Lyn - I need to redesign my links page.
This seems to work well for amazon.com . I think it could work well for us. And it brings readers from outside the pool in the sense that if one wanders onto one of our sites, they'll be drawn by this to others.
The stories that Shirley and I are writing are beyond similar -- they're intertwined -- but we are still an example of how readers will follow links to scratch the same itch. People who find my work invariably find hers, and vice versa, and many go back and forth.
I used to think my writing was horribly perverse, and now I worry that it's not perverse enough for the Internet.
www.chevenga.com