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]
no subject
Date: 2009-05-30 01:17 am (UTC)Sharon,
I made the requested donations for _Fledgling_ and _Saltation_ and would do it again. I'll
probably buy the finished e-books from Baen altho I may not be around to see the hard copy of _Saltation_, depending on the success of my chemo. I like the serial drafts but would pay just as much for an e-book as for a paperback.
I like the Liaden books but would also go for
_Web of the Trident_ or the second half of the book about the little guy who family could create Teleportation portals (sorry, can't remember the title). I have the book somewhere - you sort of left us hanging in the middle of the story!
SF/F please, I couldn't get into your stories about elves. If you just own the electronic rights to some of your stories, maybe Webscriptions would put them up even if Baen can't publish them yet. You might also put one of your shorter stories in their free
library as a loss-leader to get new readers interested in your work.
Good Luck,
Art Parham(ARParhamATaol.com)