"Free Fiction Online is Insane..."
"Free fiction online is insane..."
Yes, someone wrote that to me about ten minutes ago.
Amazing - I post about a free short story each month in a couple of places, and I get some private email that's taking me to task for giving away free writing on the internet. Okay, just two emails (perhaps they're from the same person, one in disguise?)
"You're not going to have a career very long if you give away what you write," one guy wrote. "Next thing you know, you'll be doing POD books."
(NOTE: I already have a couple of books that are POD. Wildside Press does them. I'll probably have more POD books in the future, along with books from my publishers in Manhattan, and around the world. Any new technology that keeps books alive is something I want to be a part of, depending of course, on the circumstances.)
I've been offering free fiction to read on the internet since I launched the e-serial Naomi back in 1999, and then every year after for awhile, I offered up a free novel to subscribers to my newsletter.
This coincided with a jump in my writing career. In fact, it can easily be shown I've had a better, stronger, more successful career only after I started giving away entire novels for free on the internet, and short stories, too.
But from another side of this: I want my fiction to be read, just like any writer does. I want to both make a living at this and know that new readers are always finding my fiction so that I can keep making a living and do what I love: write.
When you walk into a bookstore, if one of my novels isn't well-displayed, you'll have a rough time finding it. But online, at my website in particular, I want any reader to browse and read to his or her heart's content and find every book I've written in a matter of seconds.
When I go to the local public library, I read all kinds of books for free. If there's an author I particularly enjoy, I go buy that author's books because I know I want to read them -- even if the books are available in the library. The free aspect to the library never stops me from buying books at the bookstore.
Free reading is all over the place. The fact that Project Gutenberg exists has obviously not killed the market for the print versions of hundreds of the public domain books they list online. I can read every Poe story for free online, yet I still choose to buy a print edition because...I want it, I want to read it away from the computer, and I like that it's bound nicely so I can set it on a bookshelf and know that it will stay in reasonably good shape for years to come. I also don't want to waste my toner cartridges (which cost a lot more than a bound book) to print out hundreds of pages from my computer, that I then would have to put in a box or something so they wouldn't overtake my office or library.
My website is one area where a reader can find some fiction to read without paying cash. I hope a lot of readers do come to my site and start reading, and I'd like to give them more stories and novels to read until the day I step off this planet.
More recently, writers like Paulo Coelho have really embraced the 'free fiction on the internet' model, and it has done nothing but create more international readers -- and book buyers -- for his phenomenal work. Cory Doctorow, and others have also done this to good effect. I've been doing it for nine years, and I am always impressed by how this simple thing -- posting free fiction -- actually increases interest in books of mine in the stores.
I write to be read. The internet can deliver what I write to readers, and I look forward to getting more to these readers when I've got the stories that I believe are worth reading. I also have the experience of the past nine years to know that when you offer free fiction to online readers, your book sales go up, the awareness of your name as a writer increases dramatically, and you've built good will with people who might be looking for something to read when they walk into their local bookstore.
Best,
Douglas Clegg
http://www.DouglasClegg.com
Yes, someone wrote that to me about ten minutes ago.
Amazing - I post about a free short story each month in a couple of places, and I get some private email that's taking me to task for giving away free writing on the internet. Okay, just two emails (perhaps they're from the same person, one in disguise?)
"You're not going to have a career very long if you give away what you write," one guy wrote. "Next thing you know, you'll be doing POD books."
(NOTE: I already have a couple of books that are POD. Wildside Press does them. I'll probably have more POD books in the future, along with books from my publishers in Manhattan, and around the world. Any new technology that keeps books alive is something I want to be a part of, depending of course, on the circumstances.)
I've been offering free fiction to read on the internet since I launched the e-serial Naomi back in 1999, and then every year after for awhile, I offered up a free novel to subscribers to my newsletter.
This coincided with a jump in my writing career. In fact, it can easily be shown I've had a better, stronger, more successful career only after I started giving away entire novels for free on the internet, and short stories, too.
But from another side of this: I want my fiction to be read, just like any writer does. I want to both make a living at this and know that new readers are always finding my fiction so that I can keep making a living and do what I love: write.
When you walk into a bookstore, if one of my novels isn't well-displayed, you'll have a rough time finding it. But online, at my website in particular, I want any reader to browse and read to his or her heart's content and find every book I've written in a matter of seconds.
When I go to the local public library, I read all kinds of books for free. If there's an author I particularly enjoy, I go buy that author's books because I know I want to read them -- even if the books are available in the library. The free aspect to the library never stops me from buying books at the bookstore.
Free reading is all over the place. The fact that Project Gutenberg exists has obviously not killed the market for the print versions of hundreds of the public domain books they list online. I can read every Poe story for free online, yet I still choose to buy a print edition because...I want it, I want to read it away from the computer, and I like that it's bound nicely so I can set it on a bookshelf and know that it will stay in reasonably good shape for years to come. I also don't want to waste my toner cartridges (which cost a lot more than a bound book) to print out hundreds of pages from my computer, that I then would have to put in a box or something so they wouldn't overtake my office or library.
My website is one area where a reader can find some fiction to read without paying cash. I hope a lot of readers do come to my site and start reading, and I'd like to give them more stories and novels to read until the day I step off this planet.
More recently, writers like Paulo Coelho have really embraced the 'free fiction on the internet' model, and it has done nothing but create more international readers -- and book buyers -- for his phenomenal work. Cory Doctorow, and others have also done this to good effect. I've been doing it for nine years, and I am always impressed by how this simple thing -- posting free fiction -- actually increases interest in books of mine in the stores.
I write to be read. The internet can deliver what I write to readers, and I look forward to getting more to these readers when I've got the stories that I believe are worth reading. I also have the experience of the past nine years to know that when you offer free fiction to online readers, your book sales go up, the awareness of your name as a writer increases dramatically, and you've built good will with people who might be looking for something to read when they walk into their local bookstore.
Best,
Douglas Clegg
http://www.DouglasClegg.com