I’ve been doing a simple sword and sorcery story that’s kind of sprawling beyond its original intent. Which I don’t have time to finish soon-ish.
I am thinking about selling it in pieces—installments, before it’s finished. That way…once it is finished, it goes up as a New Book. But until then, I might sell it sort of 10,000 words at a go. With a special area on my blog where people can speculate about where it’s going, what they want to see happen—I thought it might be fun. Nothing too heavy, not great literature, but a bit of collective fun. Whatcha think?
Sounds like fun – and another time sink of discussion to get involved with. There were some great idea a while back when we all looked at fantasy concepts.
I’m curious how the turning it all into a final novel would work? – from your previous blog entries it seems there’s some degree of going back and rewriting areas making them consistent with how the plot turns out to be. What happens to those early purchases of now re-written chapters?
On the downside – Brandon Sanderson’s collaberative novel Warbreaker, was written with huge imput from his forumites. It’s by far the weakest book he’s written, lacking botht he spark of originallity and the depth that he’s put into previous novels.
I wish you and every reader lots of fun with this scheme – even if I personally dislike installments, usually. I like and need complete stories … at least partially complete stories (like in the foreigner series).
(My friend is reading and collecting “wheel of time” – I’ll start that, if and when it is finished with book 15 or whatever.)
A collection of connected anecdotes with a likable main character and a binding story arc might be a different animal … for such thing the idea of “subscription fee for a period” might be rather interesting.
In every case I’m interested in the finished book – if you are finished with the preparations, lure us with a sample chapter 🙂
As counter-examples to the storytellers bowl successes there is LWEs current non-elthsar serial, which doesn’t seem to have attracted much interest or many donations, and Diane Duane started a similar project which seems to have stoped after 5 chapters sometime ago.
sweetbro’s subscription option seems very intriguing.
Oh, cool! (jumps up and down) I personally have no problem at all with temporarily-incomplete stories. And, on a more marketing-related note, it’s another way to get traffic into your store. Paypal fees are indeed, as you say, pretty steep at the low end. No dummies, them. If you do decide to set it up as a voluntary payment, you might consider explaining how that works for newcomers – we want to put new tires on your car, not Paypal’s! And if you need guilt…just think of all us out here, pining away for the next bit…
I’m game! I love your books! I was one of the subscribers for the Miller/Lee books. I enjoyed reading my weekly installment. I found it easier to donate my $25 up front. However, I don’t need paper copies any more. If you were to reward me with the eBook option at the end, I would be thrilled.
Yes, please!
I am always more satisfied by epics. Unfortunately they take a lot of time to write and much less time to read. My own interest in the project would be pretty small, but I don’t see why you don’t approach and at least try it if it’s something that tickles your (the Author’s) fancy.
The other thing that comes to mind is if you have a project you are neglecting (“but guilt! but guilt!”) and want to see finished, is it actually necessary for you to publish it yourself? Might you find another author with whom you want to collaborate or offer the idea to in entirety?
Imagine trying to come up with some scheme to make sure that people got the right amount of words or parts out of the deal, with you having some sort of cash register that understood. Paypal comes to mind, but I think it would be a logistic pain in the behind.
Not just the San Diego Zoo, sekishi. They have to go to Wild Animal Park in Escondido. That was a really nice place to go to see the animals walking around semi-free, with all the predators behind bars/fences.
As for the idea of installments, etc., hey, whatever you decide is fine with me. I’ve got my shielded hat on so you can’t steal any of MY ideas by telepathy. Now, if I could just keep the dust bunnies from spying on me, I’d be a little less paranoid……bwahahahah.
Hah, you should be more worried about what our cats report about us to the mothership on the far side of the moon. You DO know that cats are alien scouts, right?
I grew up in California and we managed to get to San Diego a couple of times a year when I was a kid [up near Bakersfield]. If I didn’t get to the zoo on these trips, I was a miserable beast to live with. But I always felt sorry for the cheetahs at the Wild Animal Park — on an island affair overlooking the ‘savannah’ with all the beasties they would normal munch on. But getting close to chimps, bonoboos and gorilllas at the zoo is astounding — not to mention the pandas!!
And do the Seaside Village in the afternoon/early evening. Every little store just has unique things — one is nothing but chili and hot sauces, one is just kites, another is just refrigerator magnets, one for our furry friends. The have a great little Greek restaurant in their version of a food court and there is [or was last I knew] a Ben and Jerry’s.
Love the idea. I’m in.
We need to keep the Momentum going, so I’m just reminding people that I would be happy to pay upfront in advance for the full artwork, though preferably not one which explodes even if it is very gratifying to the stsho.
On a more personal note, I should add that before I retired I was a regulator specialising in financial institutions and financial instruments.
I really, really dislike the way in which Paypal extracts such vast amounts of money from small transactions.
The word usury springs to mind, perfectly accurately, and we should do our best to ensure that the writers get the money, not somebody else.
I freely admit to donating to LWE (determined that he is just not to my taste) and Lee&Miller (some of my favorites along with CJ). And i took the easy route of just plunking down whatever amount was required to get the final finished version (if it ever materialized). It was just the easiest way to do it for me. Lee & Miler set their prices to cover the earn-out, since what they wanted to do was write a side story in the Liaden universe that their publisher wasn’t willing to give them an advance for. They figured that that way they wouldn’t take an economic hit while writing the story, and if there was enough interest they could use that as leverage to get the book published. I don’t know if that would impact your decision any on pricing.
Oh, and I am more than willing to donate to the project. I do wonder, though, if it might not distract you from writing books that you have contracts on? It’s not like you have a lot of free time on your hands, from what you say in the blog.
Somehow I am not worried about the speed of her writing. She’s one of the fastest on my list at least. Last year I had one release almost get away from me since I hadn’t figured a long enough interval had happened since the last one. I wish more writers had that pace. 🙂 For Jasper Fforde’s latest I had at least four dates scratched off before it actually materialized and I am expecting similar for the next. Everyone is different.
sounds awesome!
I felt obliged to post this:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/02/how_to_be_a_skating_score_nerd.html
There’s always the way Lawrence Watt-Evans does his: he waits ’til he’s had enough people give him some money, then writes the next chapter, with people who’ve given $25 or more entitled to a copy of the hard-copy work. Otherwise, it all goes up on the internet except for the final few chapters. 🙂
I love this idea, especially the idea of seeing where other readers think the book is going and how correct or wrong we are. I’d be good with any of the payment options I saw listed in the posts above.
Thot: perhaps Real Authors never have to remove scenes from their writings as they finish editing their books.
However, if such a thing should happen, maybe the removed pieces could be changed into a saleable bit quicker than a whole new sword and sorcery story? Thus saving valuable authorial time when the author is particularly pressed, and letting enthusiastic fans see a bit more of Pyanfar/Jic/tc’a/whoever?
Wouldn’t even have to be a story, maybe just something that “happened” and was left out. Or a bit of character development. (CJ Trading Cards? Hmmm.) We could even agree that these would not be part of the “canon” so there wouldn’t be worries about conflicts with the major stories.
I don’t mean that this would be in place of CJ’s s&s story, just an alternative for once in a while.
I hope CJ & Jane have been made aware of a major earthquake off the coast of Clile & that a Sunami warning is in effect for all of the Pacific coast . I Hope all is well with tem .
At last, I get a chance to put in my enthusiastic two cents! I saw this CJ’s teaser of a post on, maybe, Wed. evening but had to go prep my Thursday evening linguistics class and didn’t get to read through the comments until now. Yes, Yes, Yes! What fun to read a serial. I’m not doing a whole lot of fiction reading right now due to a relatively heavy teaching load on top of a day job but the teaser of knowing another 10,000 words (or a chapter, better) has just arrived is a great way to devote some pleasurable time to reading while still knowing that I am not getting sucked down the hole of hours spent pursuing a plot and characters in one fell swoop (I have a hard time shutting a good, new fiction book until I have finished it: rough when recent authors go for the 400+ page novels). And then the exquisite agony, shared on a blog of comments, of wondering what will happen next….
I like His Royal Highness Spence’s pay suggestion best: pay an unfront fee that gets you all the installments written to date and the rest as they appear. Much easier on the mental pocket book: I’m also New England cheap and feeling that I have to fork over another $2.00 or whatever when I’m not certain I will have the time at that moment to read the offering could well just have me passing on purchase for that day (and the next due to being busy, and the next…). Much better to simply bite the bullet and pay the $12.00 or $20 or whatever. Also: perhaps having bought the “serials” could let the reader/purchaser into the comments page where folks bat about thoughts on plot, etc. — sort of an extension of this blog site but maybe posted on the Closed Circle site. That is, if it would be an easy thing to set up.
I’m intrigued with the idea of seeing rough drafts… as an aspiring dreamer of being a writer Ii.e. several steps away from being considered an actual writer but only a dabbler).