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I think some of the attitudes presented here are rather sad. Free shouldn't mean poor quality but having recently made the work of several years available for free, it may not be appropriate for me to comment.
Just so you know what goes into a typical "Free" story, I'll detail the process. It started with an idea that got embedded into my head around 4 years ago and wouldn't leave me alone. Around 2 years ago, after writing for around a year, I finished the story. Then I put it down for around 3 months.
After another three months, I edited it as well as I could and put it down for another few weeks, then rewrote the ending (minor) in the new version and fixed a few additional problems.
I then sent the story out for criticism and got everything from praise and encouragement to long lists of problems that needed serious attention. Some of both from professional published authors. This included full-story criticisms with other writers who tore each chapter apart piece by piece. It's not a pleasant process, but it's part of making a story work.
I sat on it for a while and began writing another. For me, it's necessary to get some distance between creating a work and the editing process. I'm simply not able to see my own mistakes for some time after I write something. I guess I'm just human. So I joined writing groups, read workshops, traded criticisms with other writers and began to learn how to address the many issues I knew were present.
Then I began the entire editing process once again about 12 months ago after many small chapter-edits and removing a lot of extraneous material. Then I found another writer who was willing to trade full-story crits. I then took the story through a final editing pass until I was happy with it. By this time, the story has had ten complete end-to-end revisions and a final size of around 145,000 words.
Finally, not really sure how to proceed towards finding a publisher ( which honestly terrifies me, despite the support and suggestions otherwise of many writers whose opinions I both respect and value ) after hearing a seminar by Mark Coker on Smashwords, I decided to self publish.
Cover art material cost me approximately $27 in licensing and domains for a website another $15. A final clean-up and so far 8 revisions of "Smashwords Manuscripts" to try and address formatting issues and I have published it myself. I lost my job three months ago and money's tight so that's about all I can afford to spend on it. I know professional editors. Good ones. I just can't afford their time, so it's basically the best I can do with something I've written.
The response, so far, from this forum has been great and welcoming. Really it has. Had this thread not shown up, I would have thought that all E-publications were treated equally. Free, Paid, I assumed no difference.
I chose not to place a price on it, because I'm not confident and because trying to find a publisher only stops me from getting on with other stories. Instead I only asked for donations of whatever the read feels happy to offer on completion. With no obligations. Shareware style. I honestly don't know if I'll ever see a cent for my work. I'm pretty sure I'd probably make at least a little if I set a low price. Perhaps that was a mistake - I don't know. I'm finding my way through the process without a guide.
It's not like I've just thrown the story together despite it being free. There's four years of work behind it, multiple edits, criticisms, rewrites and cleanups. It won't be perfect, but I like to think there's some quality to it. There's certainly an effort. I'm sure some would still rip my mistakes to pieces. I'd probably do it myself given another year and another cleanup.
But the effort is there and most writers I've met feel the same about their own works, even if many are pursuing paid publishing. Sure it would probably be a little better if it went through a publisher who employed a good editor, someone to add that final layer of polish and buff it. But I chose to publish and distribute without cost to the reader.
Please don't go assuming that this means I feel my work is inferior just because it's free. Because I don't feel that way about it. Nor I imagine do any other authors who released their works similarly without charge.
Regardless, you're welcome to judge me either way. I guess in the end it's only fitting that the subjective quality of anyone's work should be determined by others.
As always, this is just my opinion.
Regards
David.
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