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What goes around poll
There's been a sort of movable discussion wandering through a couple writer communities I'm part of, brought on in part by writers who are trying to figure out how best to grow their audience, make a living, and maybe even get a bigger piece of the action.
Not surprisingly, many of these conversations come 'round to web serialization for fun and profit, what works, what doesn't. Some folks are of the opinion that giving one's work away "for free" is always a bad deal for the writer, some folks think that giving work away "for free" is the wave of the future, whereupon we're all gonna starve, some folks think that asking readers to kick in a buck for downloading a novel direct from the author is tacky, some think it's OK, but that no one will pay.
In other words, it's a complicated subject and lots of bright people are struggling to make sense of it, and to figure out how to work current realities to their benefit while simultaneously trying to figure out where current realities are going to take us in one, three, six years.
Now, Steve and I did well with our web serializations. I honestly don't know if that's because of a Paradigm Shift, or because we have Incredibly Cool Fans(TM), or because we were writing a Liaden story -- or a combination of all those factors and a bunch that I haven't thought of.
In the spirit of trying to figure some stuff out myself, I offer the following poll, going from the general to the specific.
[Poll #1381306]
Not surprisingly, many of these conversations come 'round to web serialization for fun and profit, what works, what doesn't. Some folks are of the opinion that giving one's work away "for free" is always a bad deal for the writer, some folks think that giving work away "for free" is the wave of the future, whereupon we're all gonna starve, some folks think that asking readers to kick in a buck for downloading a novel direct from the author is tacky, some think it's OK, but that no one will pay.
In other words, it's a complicated subject and lots of bright people are struggling to make sense of it, and to figure out how to work current realities to their benefit while simultaneously trying to figure out where current realities are going to take us in one, three, six years.
Now, Steve and I did well with our web serializations. I honestly don't know if that's because of a Paradigm Shift, or because we have Incredibly Cool Fans(TM), or because we were writing a Liaden story -- or a combination of all those factors and a bunch that I haven't thought of.
In the spirit of trying to figure some stuff out myself, I offer the following poll, going from the general to the specific.
[Poll #1381306]
no subject
I would really appreciate it if the website was formatted so that it reads better on portable devices, or maybe an RSS feed that just has the text and no menu bar.
no subject
Ah, you remind me of the other reason I'm reluctant to do another web serialization. (The first being the record-keeping, which takes up far, far more time than the actual writing.)
We have apparently slipped so far behind the curve on web stuff that we'd have to take a year off of doing anything else to catch up. I can do basic html, which is why the Fledgling and Saltation pages look like they do.
Now, as far as I know (which isn't very), there is/was an RSS feed available for both Theo books, but formatting the feed for portable devices is right out of my range. It sounds like we'd have to do two pages -- one in html and one in...something else. Having to take the manuscript file and html it by hand was a pain, but doable; having to recode twice just sounds like 'way too much work.
no subject
In fact HTML is fine for a portable device, as long as you don't put hard values for width or use a side menu.
On the other hand, having to write the HTML version by hand sounds like a pain, depending on what software you use to write your manuscript in the first place it may not be necessary to do so though : an automated translation should be fine.
On those issues, as well as others technical problems, you shouldn't hesitate asking us, your readers. I'm pretty certain there are a number of web wizards among us that would be happy to donate some days of their time to fine tune an environment for your next serialization. I would do it myself if you can't find any better.
--Jedaï
rss and other formats
something like docbook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook) markup, for which many tools and editors exist - and which has an abundance of stylesheets to convert to other formats. Docbook is in most respects *simpler* than html, short and easy learning curve - at least for the part's you'd use in a fiction book ;o) and by applying the appropriate xslt stylesheet it can output rss, html, pdf, etc.
I'm a software engineer, with many years of web development under my belt, and I'd be happy to discuss it and help set things up if it's something you're interested in. I'll even tweak the xslt stylesheets for free ;o)
you can contact me at robbhammack@gmail.com