It seems to me that if categorization or naming is important, it best be done with the biggest axe and the fewest chops. So my money is on webfic. Agree also with the point that weblit sounds elitist, and suspect on some level that that’s the point: to emphasize the ‘literature’ aspect. As MCM says, best to leave that to others to brand you with….

However, the use of hashtags is to reach people who know what they are looking for and want that sort of information.

So changing a hashtag after it has been established for a while seems stupid to mee, since you are probably loosing viewers since they don’t know what you changed the hashtag to.

I am not referring vs #weblit and #webfic, both have been used almost equally long it seems. In fact I personally use #webfiction most of the time.

However, changing #WebFicWed to #WebLitWed after it has been used for quite a while seems redundant to me, because people won’t find it, and the articles, interviews and reviews that are written around it aren’t tagged that way.

So please, feel free to use #weblit as much as you want, but don’t be too Nazi about it, and don’t change things that are already established, because I believe that won’t gain you anything.

(On a complete sidenote, I do prefer WebFic, but that’s probably because I never have been in FanFic middens. I understand where both sides are coming from, I just like the sound of Web-fiction better)

I like that WebLit can be a catch-all term for works that also include memoirs, poetry, and nonfiction. Web fiction narrows the scope a bit if you’re trying to talk about, say, a large group of people who publish their writing on the web. I tend to use #WebLit on twitter to be included in the greater whole, and also invite the others in. I love meeting poets!

I am not using webfic in my branding at all because I think it is a very bad idea to have your original work confused with fanfic. It’s already screwed MeiLin over when getting considered for doing a reading at a con, and honestly the first thing I thought when I saw the term “webfic” was “haha no thanks, I’m not getting my work confused with fanfic”. That’s a credibility loss risk that I do not want to take. “Web fiction” is a lot less easily confused and so it doesn’t ring nearly so many warning bells in my head. (For the record, I don’t consider someone sticking a #webfic tag on a PK RT as some dire alarming situation, since I don’t think one not-by-me tweet is likely to be construed as officially representing me and my work. In that, I don’t find the #webfic tag to be harmful in the way that calling something “webfic” in the story’s description on its website, or on an ad is.)

I don’t think one blanket term is really going to serve all the different purposes that people have for what they need. For instance, google optimization has almost nothing to do with what my ad graphics call my work – someone’s not going to pull up my project wonderful ads in a search for anything, and whatever words are in those ads are not going to affect Google’s algorithms. If I plug in some data in PK’s site’s meta tags, I’m going to put everything from free novels to online fiction to western to epic fantasy. If I talk to my parent’s friend’s boyfriend about this newfangled internet book I’ve got, I will likely not use the term “weblit”. But if I’m going to encourage people to join a community of writers who are trying to promote their work online, I will likely use WebLit because that sums up everyone’s work more than webfic. That’s most of the reason behind the WebLit.us name. It would be nice to have a genre name to tuck everything under but it nobody wants to use it, it still works as a name for a community.

(If you don’t want to be in a community that is named “WebLit” because you don’t consider your work “literature” then… why? I like dragging down the name of Academia into the mud along with my depraved works, it makes for a fun time.)

In any case, in marketing you need to use the words that best serve your purpose. WebLit serves my purpose some of the time. Web fiction actually serves my purpose less, because most times I will be saying “web novel” or “web serial” instead. We are all writers (right?) so we are all often found trying to pick the words that best fit the situation. If you don’t need WebLit, don’t use it. If you need web fiction, use it.

For the record, when I first looked into publishing PK on the internet, I googled “web novel” “free novel” “free original fiction” and the like. I’d never found WFG before, I didn’t know serials were popular on the internet, and all I knew was that there has been a LOT of fanfiction on the internet for years and for once I was trying NOT to find it. I think I ended up at Novelr first because of the “novel” bit in its name. When you’re thinking about google, you have to think about what people are trying to find and what they’re going to type to find it. When you’re thinking about ad text, you have to think about what will catch people’s attention and entice them to click to find more. The first is helping someone find you, the second is trying to bring someone to you – they are different games.

This reminds me of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

In the end, it is the mainstream media and the public at large that defined which term was the ‘right one’ for SEO, not the group of people who debated the issue.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=GNU%2FLinux%2C+Linux&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1

Which one is better from a SEO perspective?

Probably Linux.

This is the purpose that I hope will not be destroyed by this tempest in a teapot.

I’m SO glad we are not calling them blooks anymore. Eew.

“Web fiction” or “weblit” is as good as “web comics” in that respect and give the concept an identity.

Personally, I’ve been using web fiction and web serial for the last two years since becoming aware of the idea…

Whichever term you prefer, I don’t care. Just keep working on your stuff, and make it the best it can be, for all our sakes.

Over time, this should and would change. And I think Jim’s got the most pragmatic approach to this – whatever we use, it’s more likely than not what the public deems it to be that’ll be the lasting term.

@Clare: I think I talked about how I wouldn’t be using blook any longer, in a LinkedList post … but I can’t remember which. But I’m glad to finally leave it behind. It was a rather clunky word to be stuck with.

@Dary: You can go out and start webserial.us if you wish. I wish you luck. You’ll need it.

Yeah, I’m trying to re-brand the History as a series of novels, not as a serial. Scryer’s Gulch is definitely a serial; I have no plans to ever novel-ify it, and it’s plenty soapy. :)

As well as Wikipedia, TV Tropes also lists everything as web serials.

Though I’d personally rather “web serial” be used for stuff that’s actually, you know, a *serial*. There’s too much confusion between novels and series at present. It’s like mixing up films with soap operas…

Thus this is all about an umbrella term…

WHICH THEN BEGS THE QUESTION… what’s all this bollocks about in the first place?

REMOVE THE WEB.

“I’m publishing a story on the web, what shall I market myself under? Web Fiction or Web Literature?”
“I’m publishing a story, what shall I market myself under? Fiction or Literature?”

Thus proving that ultimately this argument makes ZERO SENSE.

@Dary and JZ: Doesn’t “web serial” specifically refer to web TV shows? I know I read that somewhere, and everywhere I can recall seeing the term, that’s what it meant… unless I’m mixing it up with some other term, which I may be.

You know what’s funny though? For all the discussion about this, we’ve no control over how it comes to the public’s attention. Whatever phrase is being used by the thing that gets attention first will probably stick. It could be weblit, web fiction, web literature, web novel, web serial, blog fiction, or even e-fiction…

So yeah… Semantics.

Sometimes they even matter.

At the risk of being pedantic, I’d like to point out that Wikipedia does have a web fiction entry…

I’m not saying that it particularly matters though…