Case Studies

I wrote a guest post over at Cheap Ass Fiction about weblit as gifting culture,primarily exploring the drive to share as well as some other reasons people want to give their stories away (marketing, monetizing, etc). Thought people might be interested, and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts!

Cross-posted at MeiLinMiranda.com

Update: You can now subscribe to my site on Kindle. I'll keep webserial folks posted on results here and at MeiLinMiranda.com.

A funny thing has happened: I've stopped reading webserials.

I KNOW, RIGHT??

You see, I got a Kindle, and I realize now that I hate reading on the web. Hate. It. But I like serialized fiction. And I'm hearing from readers of my own work that they're in the same position now that they have ereaders; they've stopped reading on the web. I'm thinking that ereaders have the serious potential of taking away our online audiences.

So now I have a dilemma as both a reader and a writer. What to do? I could do what a lot of traditionally published writers, agents, editors and publishers do and rage against those horrible ereaders. Or I could be smart and go with it. I choose smart.

As a writer I'm going to start publishing my feed on Kindle. Or try to; there are hoops I have to jump through.

As a reader, I'm going to start asking writers to do the same--once I test the waters. There's no charge--no downside--and a potential revenue upside. It pushes content to the Kindle, and any advertising eyeballs lost may be balanced by subscriptions.

I'm also going to see if there are other blog-to-ereader apps out there that will work on, say, Nooks. iPhones and Droid devices have Kindle readers already so I'm not worried about them.

So what do you think? Do you have an ereader? Would you prefer to have this site on your ereader than your web browser? Note I'm not asking you whether you'd pay for it, just whether you'd prefer it; I'm thinking that this might be a way of reaching out to readers I don't have yet.

And if you're a fellow serialist, have you tried this? What's been your experience?

Hey guys,

I've been thinking a little about this (and I can't be the only one), so I'm going to share my thoughts and would love to hear what you think too! (Could that have been a vague-er introduction?)

Once upon a time I was writing a story based on a group of undergraduates. It turned out the only interesting thing about their lives was the crazy romances they engaged in. So instead of struggling to fight it, I wrote a piece of erotic fiction and shared it on Literotica.

I guess this is a case study of an entire webmedium, so it seems most appropriate to place it here.

Found this through the blog of @mikecane who think lot's of what these guys implemented could be working for self publishing though. Snce web-fiction is a form of self-publishing, I think this counts for you guys too .

http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=509

I think the three stages the author mentions are spot on, but what do you guys think?

1. Creating awareness
2. Making connections
3. Monetizing

I realize this is mostly for new projects, but I'm a firm believer that there's always something to learn

Seth took his podcasted-for-free novel "Jack Wakes Up" to #1 on Amazon's Mystery and Crime books rankings and #45 overall: How I Sold My Book By Giving It Away.

Discuss.

@AmandaPalmer does music, yes, but that's another big industry that's taking a huge hit from the onset of the digital apocalypse. You may have heard that she's found a lot of ways to make money that doesn't involve making her label (and not herself) millions of dollars. She's done a lot of special promos on Twitter and such and sold tshirts and run auctions and basically found more and more ways to convince her fandom to give her money just because she's Amanda Palmer.