Ben, I read J A Konrath's post and he makes it clear that he owes his success to having started in print. He also says he can write four books a year, which does make me wonder about the quality (I've never read him).
Smashwords is a brilliant idea and all kudos to them for making it work. Now if they could just find a way to speed the site up ...
ficbot, I agree completely. Just as mp3s have made bands concentrate on live performances, etc., to make ends meet, so will other artists whose work can be digitized and duplicated. Watching an author type at a computer is unlikely to attract much interest, but I have a nascent idea in this respect which I was going to develop further before going public. However, given the nature of the project, I may as well say something now.
Here is an extract from an email to a friend, asking advice:
Quote:
I have two novels on the go, one a thriller and the other a black comedy. Both appeal to me at different moments. The thriller will probably be easier to write and more exciting, but entails a lot of research into all these conspiracy theories about the New World Order (the kind of stuff your bro-in-law eats for breakfast). The comedy will be more fun. It's about a young guy who has dumped his Albanian girlfriend (did I tell you this?) and to escape her vengeful brothers he takes a summer job at a nudist colony. I have not worked out the plot yet, which is a concern. The thriller is more conventional fare -- the hero (a political blogger and geek) goes on the run when the baddies trace him -- meets sympathetic lady -- they team up -- narrow scrapes -- the conspiracy is revealed in all its horror -- the information-bomb prepared by our leading couple sees daylight and the world is saved.
I need encouragement to go on with either project, because publishing is in such a dire strait. I also need some sort of shameless self-promotion that will sell my ebooks. The idea is this. I invite people to sign up for a writing project ("get inside an author's mind"). Subscribers pay a sum of money to get access to a private blog where I post the work in progress, together with sundry musings, complaints, technical explanations, etc. The ideal mix of subscribers would include wannabe writers and more successful ones, all outnumbered by keen readers who are tired of ever taking a passive role in the reading experience.
Subscribers get to discuss the work with me and among themselves. They can suggest changes or point out absurdities. I can ask them to go off and do research on my behalf (entirely voluntary on their part), freeing up some of the time that I spend updating the blog. If bullied sufficiently, I will set up polls so they can vote on plot details ("Should Edward try to seduce Mandy at their first meeting? Yes/No/Maybe"), but not on overall direction. I can be persuaded, but my judgement there is final, even though I risk the ire of the community, since a novel by its nature cannot be a true collaboration.
As a way of working it flies in the face of received wisdom about the author's craft (lonely penitent sits at desk, battling with his muse and keeping all this thoughts about the work sacrosanct lest they're sullied by exposure to unsympathetic minds). That is the main thing that gives me pause. On the other hand, it might be refreshing to be unconventional for once. It's a very Web 2.0 idea.
|
In order to write either of these books I would want a guaranteed sum which would collectively be provided upfront by the subscribers. If I don't finish the book all the subscribers get their money back. If I do finish it and we (i.e. the subscribers and I) cannot sell it after one year, I keep the subscription money and release the work as a free ebook at Smashwords. If we sell it to a mainstream publisher, the payments received and the subscription money go into a pot to be divvied up according to some shareholding scheme yet to be devised, where I keep a fair percentage and the subscribers get the rest.
The first thing to do would be to gauge the amount of interest in this. How keen would readers and writers be to get involved? The readers could watch and guide the raw process of creating a novel, rewrites, blocks, inspirations and all. The writers could learn quite a bit (I have been doing this for 40 years now.) Perhaps the best thing would be the interaction, the persuasion and voting: and the first question to be settled is the choice of book. The nudist colony will be more amusing, but the conspiracy theory might sell to Hollywood and make us all rich.
If and when people start to indicate an interest, we would have to decide what the subscription would be, together with other financial stuff. That settled, we'd get the exact terms and the legal side sorted; with any luck one of us would be a lawyer. I would need some help in the geek department, too. Squarespace.com offers some cool blogging services and might be just the thing.
I have more thoughts about this, but that's quite enough for now.
So, the thing is, am I nuts or does anyone out there think this could provide a new way for writers to work?