"Out Of Ambit": Diane Duane's weblog#114069083471800451

"Out Of Ambit": Diane Duane's weblog:

A lot of people offered to send money up front, which was nice, but per se was a suggestion I preferred to resist: I'd rather there be something concrete on the barrelhead for people to put their cash down on, as it were. A lot of the people who mailed me knew about, and mentioned, Lawrence Watt-Evans' celebrated approach to his own version of this problem, in which he 'serially' self-published his Ethshar novel The Spriggan Mirror, posting a chapter every time the PayPal donations from interested readers reached a certain point. (And afterwards, his book found a publisher, too.)

Diane Duane is the author of the popular Young Wizards series of books. My wife is a fan of her work. Diane has just announced on her blog that she's going to publish the next volume in her current trilogy serially on her blog. This is exciting to me too since as you can tell, I'm interested in serial online publishing.

The evidence is that the publishing industry has been broken for a while. If you're a new writer of speculative fiction just starting out, you've probably experienced how unrewarding it can be to try to get your stuff published. Even if you do get published, the pressure to produce a blockbuster every time is intense. A moderate success isn't enough to guarantee you'll be able to get your next one published. We need alternate channels for distribution, like what Diane is doing.

On the other hand, sometimes I feel like I'm a cop-out for publishing my beta version online. Maybe I should be out there grinding away at getting more of my stuff published into paper.