In order to run a site like that you need it to behave like a social network, giving each reader their own “space” as it were and the ability to upload their own content. The script that runs the backend of fluffy-seme can do all that out of the box.

Joomla can do this only if you install Community Builder along side, a mod that– though effective– I’ve found bulky and hard to customize with the occasional mega-security exploit that scares the crap out of me XD

Drupal probably has some kind of mod that will do this. I’m less familiar with Drupal in general because when I tried it out I was not comfortable with either the look or feel of it.

WordPress is a wonderful script, and highly flexible … but you’d have to rewrite half the code to get it even close.

You also need the ability to run several serials at once, keep them nicely organized and separated so that readers can find them easily without having to sort through other serials they are not interested in and give each a private community area for discussion.

You can separate with Joomla and Drupal (with WordPress not so much) but I’ve never seen anyone provide private community space using these scripts and it’s harder to sort members by what content they are interested in. One of the advantages of the way fluffy-seme is set up is that we can send out update alerts to readers when their favorite serials have updated, but only the ones they want to read. I’ve never tried this with Joomla or Drupal but I imagine it would involve managing multiple mailing lists of some kind? With fluffy-seme we do this all internally with a few clicks.

To run fluffy-seme on WordPress the way other serials are run we would need to run a separate installation for each serial which is kind of …. umm … not scalable if you plan on one day having twenty or so concurrent serial going. Plus, where’s the common community space? How do members add their own content? Probably there’s a computer whiz that could figure out a way to do this with heavy editing of the code of any of these scripts, but why bother when we found one that would do it all out of the box?

What is that? I’m genuinely curious. It’s hard for me to imagine a reason to use a system for webfiction that doesn’t do something as basic as chapter navigation (at least, it’s basic to me).

“The only one I know of that has survived is MeiLin’s Digital Novelists … which as great as it is, technically it’s more a digital vanity press than a digital publishing company.”

It’s neither of those things. It’s a host and a Drupal installation. I guess if by “digital vanity press” you mean “a place for authors to self-publish their work online” that makes some sense, but it’s not a publishing house and was never intended to be.

They are points that have been raised before and because of that I want to make sure everyone understands that we’re not ignoring you on the navigation thing. I think what people do not realize is that fluffy-seme is not a WordPress blog, not a Drupal installation. It runs on a piece of software called Dolphin that is designed for dating sites like eHarmony: we stripped it down, completely repurposed it, and customized it to a level where it is now completely unrecognizable because we wanted a site that did something very specific that we could not do with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.

The consequence of that is that sometimes what people identify as very “simple” modifications are not that at all. Before any such “Previous Chapter – Next Chapter” links can be added we needed to figure out a way to alter the way the system handles the chapter archives, we’ve finally finished that and I’ve put in an order with a programmer to write the script for such links.

(That’s not especially relevant to what you’re saying here … but I wanted to make sure I explained it because this has been brought up before and I don’t want people to think that I’m stubbornly ignoring the feedback. These things take time and do not come free.)

Regardless of f-s current failings and shortcomings, the point of this essay was never to tell the webfiction industry ‘you should publish on f-s!!’ but to tell the webfiction industry that ‘you should support the publishing house model’ or at the very least some kind of group model because go it alone leaves everyone worse off. We’re not the first ones to step into this market, there have been many publishing house style projects that have run into the same or similar problems that did not have the technical issues you describe above. The only one I know of that has survived is MeiLin’s Digital Novelists … which as great as it is, technically it’s more a digital vanity press than a digital publishing company.

No I didn’t write this essay to exalt the virtues of fluffy-seme (as you’ve already noticed there are very few currently) but to point out that we’ve had this conversation on this blog, on weblit.us and on webfiction guide many times now. Everyone agrees some kind of group effort is needed, yet everyone wants to be a free-rider on it, giving up nothing and reaping all the benefits. Everyone is taking a “not in my backyard’ stance on this, looking for others to work hard and make it a success before they get involved. This attitude is neither fair nor particularly practical and will hold the webfiction community back for as long as it continues.

No, we kept trying to explain that that wasn’t what AntholoZine was for. It’s a sampler zine that runs some excerpts of all different kinds of WebLit (from serials to essays to poetry) that would be given out free to expose people to more WebLit. There were no plans to run sequential content or anything like that, and since it’s quarterly that model really wouldn’t work very well IMO. If someone wants to do the web serial equivalent of Shounen Jump, then they need to. There is no current effort that I know of that directly parallels it.

@Isa
I definitely see the allure of a writer going to a digital publishing house instead of working with the headache of a CMS on their own, but what if the writer’s site, which since they’ve set up already they can easily replicate the effort again to do another series, already works exactly the way they want it for their fiction? I’ve scoped out f-s and I’ve got to admit that I’m going to have to wait on sending any submissions to it until the thing’s fixed. There’s definite navigational issues that f-s has that PK’s site doesn’t. I also have complete control over PK’s site and its promotional efforts and, well, everything about it. What are you going to give me in exchange for that kind of control? By running some of the numbers I’ve seen re: f-s’s readership, and comparing how PK’s been doing with Char and I working on our own, I don’t see an advantage you’re presenting.

I know you’re offering pay, but the $2 a month isn’t an incentive for me compared to what I can get just running ads on PK. PK doesn’t even make a lot, and it doesn’t get an exceptional amount of readers yet either. It is obviously still growing. But it’s a representative sample of what Char and I can do if I, say, started writing another serial.

If you had subscriptions up and working then you’d have a lot more incentive. If navigational weirdness weren’t present it’d be a really good thing. Like this recent chapter that was linked from Twitter:

http://www.fluffy-seme.net/articles/entry/Chapter-14-Pivovarsk-Dv-r-Ch-n-part-1-

There’s no links to the table of contents from that page, info on the serial itself, links to previous chapters, or anything like that. If I have a serial up on your site, then how do new readers start at the beginning of my work with ease? It’s the internet, it has to be designed to be simple for it to be accessible to a large amount of people. Especially if you want that large amount of people to be constant readers.

I think that you have a good idea, and good business sense, but you need to build it before authors can put their faith in you. By that I don’t mean “have 10,000 visitors” but “have a site that navigates as well as something I can get at DN.com” (note: we designed/installed our own site, but a Drupal build is a Drupal build).

The cornerstone of the self-publishing movement, which WebLit seems to be a part of, or at least a cousin of, is control. Authors taking control of their own work instead of publishers having control, and using that control to either fulfill their artistic vision or find success. It’s a part of the backlash that’s built up against traditional publishers’ failures and problems. It’s a really, really big issue, and to ask a self-publishing author to give their control to you, you’re going to have to offer a lot more in return than what’s already present. (Subscriptions working would really help.) I think the model that you’re looking for is possible, but right now your problem isn’t a lack of authors taking a dive, it’s that your system is still in beta, from an outside observer’s perspective. I’ll use a beta tool for free, but I’m not going to pay for it – and asking me to give up complete control of my work (even if you’re only taking partial control) is asking me to pay for your service in some way.

I’m hoping that f-s improves in the future, because if it becomes the kind of tool I think you can make it into, then I WILL be willing to subscribe to it with my efforts and work. I have more serials than PK in me and I would love to be a part of something new, experimental, and adventurous. But that boat has to have all the leaks fixed before I’ll risk taking a trip on it.

More on SJ at wikipedia and Isa’s post that made me think of it

There are other equivalents: Young Magazine, despite its name, serialises comics aimed at men (this is where Akira was first serialised), while monthly anthology Nakayoshi deals with girls comics (like Sailor Moon).

Let’s use this here dimension hopping remote control thing to visit ANOTHER WORLD *swirly effects*

Woah, here’s this magazine called FICTION DASH. It’s a bit like a modernised pop-culture evolution of those old pulp magazines from the early 20th century. There’s twenty different serials running in it. Each one has an equal page share of the weekly magazine, so those with shorter chapters get 3-4 chapters each week, and the longer ones only 1 or 2. There’s a “story/character guide” and “previously on…” segment before each story, so new readers can get straight in. Sometimes FD features stand-alone stories, or pilots for new series (every new series gets double the amount of pages on its first week so it gets quickly established). Oh, and each issue one of the regular series gets front cover ‘featured’ status, which also means it gets more pages and some other bonus content. There’s also reader competitions and contests, such as each series having an annual “favourite character” poll. There might be a few additional articles aimed at readers, maybe a letters page for their views, and some reviews of related products they might enjoy. All series have their collected chapters published in volumes, which are released at regular intervals with updated text and revisions.

*returns from alternative universe*

I know the weblit.us lot were talking about some kind of ‘zine, but from what I gathered about it, it wasn’t really anything like a regular thing that would serialise their stories away from their websites and in a way that could easily attract a lot of new readers.

As for MCM’s point, I’ll complete it by linking to his Publishing Blueprint. He probably altered his view on it slightly by now, but I think it fits the current discussion nicely.

http://1889.ca/2009/05/my-book-industry-blueprint-v02a1.html

Also, later, when I’m big, I want to become a web-fiction agent and rule the world :)

Because not everyone is writing a novel (or trilogy of novels, or whatever). A 500+ chapter serial is not going to get picked up by a publishing house, no matter how good it is XD

I’m not saying it can’t work. I’m just saying it is likely to be more expensive to the people involved than a ‘traditional’ model.

@Isa
I think you misunderstood. A collective of writers can form a business by dolling out shares (thereby duplicating all the legal advantages, seeking venture capital as a group of ‘founders’, etc.).

Anyway, I’m mainly opposing for the point of opposing at this point so I’m going to stop. :)

Real-world example: recently, a small press wanted to re-print one of my titles, but as part of the deal they wanted to redesign the cover, and count it as an expense against whatever royalties I might earn. The more monolithic the structure becomes, the less they’re willing to un-bundle these services (because they have staff to support), and the more individual titles suffer at the hands of employees who need to do their daily grind to get their paycheque, and don’t necessarily like or understand the content they’re touching.

Which is not to say this is an absolute truth, but it makes me worry about re-creating the architecture of Random House, especially if we can try something else.

Or to be more precise, practically speaking, you need to be exceptional to succeed with that model. Anyone who is average needs a more efficient system (rather than using the greater value of their superior ability to overcome the natural inefficiencies) to compete.

My theory on publishing is not quite the opposite of this, but definitely different. My ideal is to fragment the functions of the publishing process, so that you have specialists in certain fields, all competing for the best writers out there. I appreciate the economics of scale issue, but for me, it makes less sense to put all your resources under one roof, because it makes the marketplace sluggish.

I’m just starting this experiment, so I can’t say for sure how it’ll work, but the idea is to work with an editor to bring the content up to snuff, and then a marketer to get the word out, and for the next title, maybe you swap around editors and marketers to see what works best. I find the notion of “all or nothing” to be worrisome… if the editor at a publishing house is great but the marketers stink, what do you do?

I’m holding out for professional publishing speclists, like a new breed of agents that hunt rather than being fed. If they don’t start existing soon, I’ll just have to make them myself :)

K. Godwin: As soon as you put incorporation on the table you're talking about a few thousand dollars instead of a few hundred. There is a point where a publishing company can blow author collectives out of the water and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with visitor traffic.

For example, f-s as a business can take on venture capital investment which generally STARTS at $100K of money for the business to spend (a realistic average for the first round of venture cap I would say is closer to $500K but with the right leaders and investors can easily break into the millions). A writer's collective would never be eligible, nor would a single very impressive writer working alone. So I see your point, the benefits of a publishing house could theoretically be reproduced without the publisher but in my opinion at a much greater cost, much less efficiently and with less future potential

@Isa – I think you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely. I think that web fiction will eventually fall into something along the lines of the David Wellington model: prove to publishers that your writing has an audience by attracting one online.

That is, I see the web eventually becoming a ‘go it alone’ platform for authors trying to prove themselves. Then publishers come along and pick up the ones who have shown that they can draw an audience. We are already seeing this model pick up some steam in comics, not to mention the successes of Doctorow and Wong (JDATE).

What I don’t know is exactly what publishing houses will look like in the future. What portion of their publishing will be dead tree and what portion will be online? What form will non-physical books take?

I do know that eBooks won’t really catch on the way they’d like until draconian DRM is done away with.

Will they?

I think a few will. I probably won’t be one of them from the standpoint I’m a hobbyist in this. The quality of my writing isn’t high enough I could reasonably expect to make a living off of and will probably remain that way for years. ;)

There are ways of setting up a separate legal entity (e.g. Corporation) that gives everyone an equal share in such a group. Of course, if that happened it could equally be argued it is a democratically run publisher.