If You Help Me Build It

[zhai]

The outpouring of support I've gotten for my very loose open source speculative fiction magazine model has been really staggering. In addition to early pingbacks from Paolo Bacigalupi and Clarkesworld, I was surprised and very pleased to see the commentary from Warren Ellis and Lou Anders. I'd just picked up a copy of an anthology edited by Anders

Comments

[haikujaguar]

This is seriously awesome. I will have to go have a look at it once I'm done with my own project. :)

[zhai]

Glad you're interested in checking it out! If I go ahead with the magazine, it would be very interesting to try out something along the lines of your poll-driven CYOA as a public event. Have you seen the Matter Energy Conversion Experiment on Something Awful? It's a similar principle, with a comic strip -- and because it's SA, just to warn you, also horrifically violent.

It would be cool, if you were interested, if you could post your approach to both the novel project and the chapbook to the open source wiki! If you'd like them to be there but don't have time to put them up yourself, I can summarize them on pages there if you'd like.

[haikujaguar]

Maybe you can summarize them for now? I have a vague notion that once I'm done with the chapbook project I'd like to write an article about it, but at this point I am utterly swamped and probably will remain that way until January.

I think I told you the salient parts of the combination website/chapbook project. The poll-driven novel is basically a Livejournal. All entries are public for people to read. Polls are locked to the Friends-list (consisting of people who have donated at least one dollar at some point through the novel's life). People not on LJ who have donated send their votes in through email.

So: everyone reads, but people who donate can direct the parts of the story I decide are poll-worthy.

(Link to that is Godkin, by the way.)

[zhai]

Definitely, no problem. I'll link the heck out of them. I suspect the thing with the wiki is first penguin syndrome -- a lot of people are hitting it (I can see it in the sidebar) but no one has modified it yet, so if I get a few other projects up there I think it'll help. I appreciate it! I should have enough data between your sites, posts, and comments. It may not go up right away (am similarly swamped), but soon. :) I think what you're doing in terms of innovation and experimentation is terrific, again.

[haikujaguar]

Thank you. :)

I ran into a problem that was unique (to me, at least, because when it started happening there was no one I could find to consult about how to solve it): I was writing with the intention to publish, but I was also drawing and discussing my projects at length and building a massive database of work available online. So what happens? I start growing an audience... but the publishing industry wasn't keeping up with me.

I wind up with people asking me constantly, "Where do I buy your novels?" and me telling them, "I only just got an agent a few years ago, and she hasn't been able to sell what I've given her despite my three near misses."

The frustration factor, both for me as an artist and my fans as people waiting impatiently for a product they can buy has only been mounting. But for the life of me and my agent, I can't get anyone in New York to "take a chance" on me.

I say that in quotes because I don't know how someone with a built-in audience can be as risky as someone with no audience.

[zhai]

That is an interesting problem, and I can see how you would run into it under kind of exemplary circumstances. I have a rough idea how you feel, though, because I first started writing in online communities in 1995. I can only really give you my take on it