What goes around poll
Friday, April 10th, 2009 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniThere'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]
What goes around... answers
Date: 2009-04-13 01:11 am (UTC)Donate? If it was a favorite author, sure. Prefer to make one donation (as I did with the Theo books & Diane Duane's Big Meow).
Prefer to receive something? Nice, but not vital; though I think it's appropriate when the story is done to at least repackage it in a compact all-at-once form (epub, non-DRM Mobi, zip of HTML, whatever). Nice to get a paper book, but not a requirement; whatever the author is able to do, though of course HC is best.
Re donation, if I'm supporting the author, then it depends on my budget and how desperately I want the story; for the Theo stories I was willing to pay quite a bit! But that's uncommon. I would consider $5-$10 to be a fair price for something picked up blind.
For a serialization, regularity is important; even more so if regularity is promised (then you end up going to the site regularly, disappointed if not there...)
Would like to read more of anything Liaden!
Note: PDF bad! Need format I can read on any reader. DRM double-bad! Need format that can be transformed easily, again because I use a variety of readers, and will have different ones in the future.
--John N.