Question Week, Day 5: free reads

(In short, what Paperback Writer is suggesting in the above-referenced blog post is a challenge to writers everywhere to put up an original story in ebook form for free download.)

I think it’s a great idea. Like PBW, I think that writing is the best advertisement for your writing. I know some people who “blog” in character to go along with their books, which is a similar construct. This challenge of PBWs is a marketing suggestion. People will read your free story/novella what have you, and then go buy your book. Her novella, it seems, will be set in the Darkyn vampire series she’s been publishing with NAL. I read the Darkyn books, so I’d like to read another story set in that universe. I don’t see a downside to this challenge at all. Free reading from great authors, and a fun marketing opportunity for the writers!

A few months ago, when I ran the Great Blog Voice Experiment (see right), a lot of the comments showed that people were excited to read the participants’ books. They were providing free content to the blog for the purposes of the experiment, but it helped get some buzz started about how wonderful these writers are (click on the GBVE links on the right to check out some of their stories). I think this will have a similar effect. Perhaps, any GBVE participants who were talking about expanding the snippets they wrote for the GBVE will do so as part of PBW’s challenge.

When I said “keep that stuff off the internet,” I was talking about writers who blog at length about their uncontracted ideas. Call me superstitious, but I don’t do it. I’ve spoken before about the “dark room” where it’s just me and my idea and no one gets their fingers into it until it’s been developed? Well, there’s a period beyond that, that we can think of as “backstage” where my crew can hear all about it (friends, agents, industry necessaries), but I’m not exactly opening the curtain while they are still buildign the set and working out choreography.

I have no problem with saying, “Here I am posting a free story I’ve written for my blog called Aloisius Tumble, the Most Celebrated Muffin Maker in all The Galaxy.” I am more circumspect about posting, “so I’ve got this idea I’m batting around about this guy… a baker, I think. Probably a futuristic. Haven’t been a lot of science fiction set in the world of the culinary arts. Got to put together a proposal though. Probably have him fall in love with some scrappy ship captain. I wonder what my agent will think…”

To me it’s the difference between Aloisius putting out a little tray with muffin crumbles and toothpicks and letting all the customers have a sample of muffin before purchase, and Aloisius letting any alien in the system (even the ones who might be opening their own pastry shop on the next moon over) come on back to his kitchen and watch him peeling Venutian puce berries and creaming butter.