Comments on: Announcement: An Anthology Of Online Fiction

By: Scott McKenzie

Scott McKenzie — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:54:06 +0000

@Windvein: It’ll be an experiment. Yes, it will be down to the contributors to market it, the same way they market their own work. I’m not sggesting that it is guaranteed be an overwhelming success from day one but since there is little or no cost to get it out there, why not give it a go? After all, no one is being forced to contribute. Online fiction occupies a niche and is naturally experimental so it can only help us to try out new ways to reach potential readers.

By: Windvein

Windvein — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:37:31 +0000

My question is where will this book be promoted? If it is simply on submitters’ blogs then I’m not sure how much benefit this will be for anyone.

If an author has a POD edition of their work, why should they promote this anthology alongside it? If they were in it I’m sure they would, but their primary interest will be in their book not the anthology.

You say this is to build awareness of the medium and the community. Anyone who is already reading web fiction is aware of the medium, and the community can be found through links. Buying a paper copy online from a link on a web serial of a sampler of online fiction feels like a very hard sell.

By: Stormy

Stormy — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:17:59 +0000

There is an initial set up fee (comes to about $100 I believe), but the point is that the actual copies of the book will be much cheaper, and therefore encourage people to buy.

A big limitation of this medium, as it relies on self-publishing to get the books out is that it carries some of the POD stigma with it. The #1 concern with those books…price.

By: Scott McKenzie

Scott McKenzie — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:05:55 +0000

@Stormy: I’ll have a look at Lightning Source but from as far as I can tell, there is an initial setup fee. The point of this (certainly volume 1) is to set it up for as little as possible. I don’t want to ask any contributor for money – this is very important to me.

I have a UK Puublished By You account with Lulu so additional ISBNs now cost just £15 (which will come out of my own pocket). This will allow us to get a printed book in our hands for very little money. Obviously depending on the success on volume 1 then we can look at different strategies for re-printing it or printing volume 2.

By: Stormy

Stormy — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:02:06 +0000

Createspace.

And I’m fairly sure that Swarm (publisher of Matt Selznick’s book) and Permuted are done through LSI, as their FAQ preamble for distribution sounds the same (available online/through Ingrams/no guarantee, but should be no problem).

By: MeiLin Miranda

MeiLin Miranda — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:47:04 +0000

Are LSI books still listed at Amazon? I thought they had pushed all self-published books off their site in favor of their own self-publisher, whose name escapes me. I got a quote from them, btw, and they wanted to sell my book for $18.95 at Amazon while it sells for $14.95 at Lulu.com.

By: Stormy

Stormy — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:05:12 +0000

(Forgive the formatting, I didn’t think it would crap out like that >_<)

By: Stormy

Stormy — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:04:39 +0000

(Copy and pasted from WFG)

Ok, I’ll put this out here.

Going through Lulu is a bad idea, not only are the production costs
higher than LSI, but no one will pay attention to it. Instead, I think
we go through LSI – I’m happy to help with this, I don’t want to take
over the project, just to help – we’re about a week away from getting
out ISBN block anyway. It does cost money upfront – most people know
this, but then your price per unit is cheaper.

When you go through LSI and get in BiP you’re automatically listed on
Amazon. When you do that, you can actually make a day of it and try
and get your rank up and up – this is what makes people pay attention.
A rank on a POD site means nothing, getting into the top 200, 100, 50
on Amazon (as much as of industry standard as the NYT bestseller list
to a certain degree).

Scott Sigler (podcast author) got his book up to #7 as one of these
pushes (though his fanbase is huge), Matt Selznick got up to #53
during his marathon, and there are two more planned (a double-header
on 8-8-08 and Mur Lafferty’s Playing For Keeps on August 25). If you
can pull the community behind a project, it garners more attention,
even if it’s just a few more mentions on blogs – and using the LSI
price scheme (and keeping the royalty low), we can get away for about
$12-15 – assuming we all wait to that day to buy author copies and get
our family and friends to do the same we could the same.

By: Scott McKenzie

Scott McKenzie — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:21:43 +0000

@MeiLin: I’m after anything really, whether it’s stand-alone pieces or a sample fo an ongoing story. I want the anthology to give the reader an impression of what type of fiction is available on the internet so I’m open to anything. The priority for any contributor should just be to make the reader want to read more of your work!

By: MeiLin Miranda

MeiLin Miranda — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:41:57 +0000

What exactly are you looking for–fragments of ongoing stories, stand-alone pieces…?

By: Scott McKenzie

Scott McKenzie — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:14:03 +0000

In addition to my comments above, I’d like to aim for a total page count of 192 for the anthology. For publication via Lulu this will allow us to hit a price point of £5/$10, which I think would be good value for the content we’re squeezing into the book.

Please add your comments or email me directly if you have any questions.