Doing the Doctorow

If you want to give it away, do, but remember you've given away first time publication rights.

Cory has contracts with his publishers that allow him to do that. It works in part because of who he is (EFF, BoingBoing, CrapHound, all get traffic) and because he had commercial sales first.

You're not so much "Doing the Doctorow" as you are writing serial fic like a whole bunch of other people.

I'll copy and paste something I've written in another thread:


Getting an audience will depend on how well you're planning on marketing yourself - most of us use Project Wonderful and buy adspace on like-minded storie and/or webcomics that fall under a similar genre.

Serial audiences are by nature a lot smaller than webcomics, and podcasts - because although in various formats, people putting fiction on the net has been around since the early days of the web (original fiction, as well as fanfiction), the format is still trying to carve out a section of the online audience to become something as ubiquitous as webcomics or podcasts.

The advantage we have over those other two mediums, however, is that what we do can be done a lot quicker, and has a lot less cost involved: there's no need to find a regular artist, as webcomics need to do, nor have the proper equipment to have a good-quality podcast (because no one will listen to one that sounds like crap).

Technically, I'm into my third year of doing this, but after my first year, I took down the two books I had completed and spent last year rewriting and releasing them, and I find it a completely rewarding experience.

On my site now, I have two complete novels, most of a third, the beginning of the fourth (there's some crossover between the two, so I started releasing the fourth alongside the third...which made people rather happy), a handful of short stories, and a great (albetit small) community.

I've got a few hundred regular readers (least that's what Google Analytics tells me) - though only a handful of them are regular commenters - and that's something you have to be prepared for, as it's only the tiniest percentage of people who read who will ever comment on something. I have a lot of irregular commentors though, who will pop by and speak up when something really effects them (like the death of a main character), or say something when I have made them laugh heartily. There are also all the people who will go away for months, then come back and archive binge when they see an ad, or remember to click the link in their favourites.

Have I ruined my first rights? Yes. Do I regret it? No.

I've had more fun by having people share this story with me chapter by chapter than I ever would have any other way. I've had so many bleary emails saying that people have stayed up until 3-4am archive binging their way through the entire site.

I've had people scream bloody murder at me for killing a character (s'ok though, she came back) but...oh my, it produced so much anger. Had one guy tell me it was like "someone had knocked on my door and told me that my childhood best friend had died".

I've had crazy shipping conversations with people, trying to work out the crackiest of all crack pairings.

I've made people cry, and as horrible as I am, I love that.

I do realise that this reply has gotten huge, but feel free to PM me and we can speak more, so for the moment, I'll leave you with a couple of links:

Web Fiction Guide - biggest review site, also fairly comprehensive list of all the serials online.

Weblit - fun community and discussion.

Novelr - intelligent blog, I suggest reading back through the archives, there are a ton of good articles.

I have read stuff by writers on Autonomy, Writers Cafe, Myspace, etc. etc. etc. Some was good, most were bad. And in some cases, the stuff I have read really turned me off to that particular writer.

I did an experiment on my blog last month. I put up the first three chapters of a WIP, Lolita's Redemption, in a fairly raw format. I did not actively promote it, but suddenly my blog hits were going from 5-10 a day to 30,40, 50 hits a day and some of my other blogs were also getting read. Unsure how many of those hits a day were repeat readers or new ones passing through. Once I took it down, the hits have slowed to 5-10 a day again. It was a very interesting experiment, even if the work posted was not my best. But perhaps that is also a problem, in that I should not have posted something so raw.

I think posting serial work can be beneficial to writer, but it all depends on their motives and what they expect. Building a readership, yes, but you have to keep building and just can't do it for a little while or they will forget about you. Now, if your a known writer like King, people will follow you. If not, its a crap shoot...

I think it also helps on the tags you use and how someone searching for a particular tag stumbles onto your page, if they have not heard of it before, or followed a link. The right tags are very important.

Smiling Ted said:

I've been toying with the idea of posting my recent fantasy on the Internet under a Creative Commons license, either as a download or chapter by chapter as a blog.

Reactions?

Click to expand...

There's no problem with the idea itself, the only problem is getting readers. Doctorow can get readers for free because he already has a readership... and because he blogs from high-altitude balloons.

I've written a bunch of stories that I've published in various sites (my own), and hit counters just say that I've had n readers. Possibly-maybe. I get next to no unsolicited feedback of any kind; just a few comments over the years. My general gut feeling remains that according to the readers, my stories have been generally passable. I have absolutely no idea of specifics.

Why do I do this? I just want to write. Comments would be awesome, but I just want the stories out there with the least hassle.

I did it. No-one read it. I don't do it anymore.

Those last two aren't related. I stopped because I ran out of ideas. Halfway through an episode!

It's still there, though - look down.

I've toyed with the idea as well, but as an outlet for some stories or concepts that would work better as serials than novels.

It's also not my primary approach to writing, but more of a writing exercise where I work on voice and 1st person.

Since it is for my own benefit, I haven't published any of that stuff to the web.