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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
There's a "normal" monthly fee? Who knew?
To be clear, what I was asking about particular reader's preferred method of supporting an author's work: Throw in five bucks (say) every time a chapter's posted or kick in a one time donation so they don't have to bother clicking a PayPal button again.
What we did in the past -- and what we'd undoubtedly do again -- was to leave it open-ended, and tie chapter publication to a cumulative cap (i.e. "we'll release the next chapter when we've collected $300 in donations for the current chapter"). That gave people three choices: (1)read for free (always taking the chance that the cap might not be met by others) (2) donate a little per chapter and not strain the budget (3) donate once and it's done.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2009-04-15 11:04 am (UTC)(link)To give you a more useful answer, I like the way you've gone in the past and prefer to make a single donation.
Trica