Today I’ve gone and done up a simple definition site for web fiction. My hope is this: if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to explain your work – repeatedly, say – fear not the ignorant man. Point him to the site, instead. I hope that this would save you the bit of time needed to explain your work; the same way it should prevent publishers from rejecting you as ‘fan-fiction’ material.

Two more things.

First, I’ve asked a number of people about the definition, and most of them think that it’s fair. If it isn’t, or if there’s something that you think it lacks – feel free to start a discussion in the comments below. (Note: you may want to read Jan Oda’s excellent primer on web fiction definitions before you do so). My position, however, is simple. I believe that if a work is published to the web, it should be considered web fiction. There are two additional clauses in the definition:

1. The work must be original. This clause was added to differentiate the field from fan-fiction, something that I think most of us would agree with. Web fiction is not derivative; it should be always original (in the copyright sense of the term, that is).
2. The work must be written for the web. A tad puzzling, but we must remember that not all fiction found online may be considered ‘web fiction’. Take Google Books, for example. Google will soon upload a large number of books – some of them novels – formerly published under copyright law. These books cannot be properly considered web fiction, simply because they were not meant for the web. However, if an author takes a previously published work and takes pain to put it online, make it presentable for long periods of on-screen reading, etc; then the work may be considered web fiction (though, I have to admit – this is a loose interpretation of the above clause). I realize that I’m quickly approaching a thin grey line here – when is web fiction … web fiction? When is it an everyday novel? I do not know; and I do not presume to know at all times. I’m not sure if this definition will ever be all-comprehensive. I do know, however, that I recognize web fiction when I see it, and I expect that with enough time a reasonably bright reader would, too.

The second thing I would like to mention is how odd it may seem, to a reader several years down the road, that someone had actually taken the time to create this site. I certainly hope that this would soon be true: that in the near future, people won’t need a definition site like this one – that they’d know what web fiction is the same way you and I know what a movie is, or an EP, or a picture book.

Till then, pass this link to people who don’t yet know what Web Fiction’s all about. I hope this helps, and – lest I forget – Merry Christmas, everyone! Consider this Novelr’s gift to the community. Now off you go, and have yourself a very happy new year.

At first glance it appears that promoting fiction is a terribly complicated affair. You’re writing on the Internet, and so you’re forced to compete with videos and comics and email, and cool little flash games. Which begs the question: is it possible to make people read fiction, online? Can you advertise your work on a random web page, say, and expect readers to hop on to read? Are Facebook and Twitter good platforms on which you should promote your work? In essence: what do you do and where do you go if you’re looking to find new readers? The possible answers to this are endless. But do they make sense?

Many of us have not stopped to consider this last question, even as we’ve gone on to find the right promotional strategy for our fiction. Much of the advice I’ve seen in recent months has largely been rooted in the idea that you should advertise in whatever medium there is: so long as there are eyeballs, by gum, be there! But this is a rather silly idea. Mediums are not created equal. You are not going to get the same responses on Youtube, the same way you are not targeting the same audiences if you’re promoting on Facebook, and Twitter. Because here is one truth: what platforms you advertise on will determine the kind of audiences you reach out to, and here’s another one: your time is limited. You cannot advertise your work on everything just for the sake of it, and so it only stands to reason that you should pick the platforms you choose to do so.

And here we get to the tricky part: which platforms do you pick, then, that is best for online fiction? This is a good question, and I’ll get to it in a bit. But before that: is self promotion really that complicated? I don’t think so. I’ve found that when you think about it long enough, there are really only two problems with self-promotion in online fiction. These two problems can best be expressed in the following questions:

• Why should I read web fiction?
• Why should I read your web fiction?

Everything I’m going to talk about leads on from these two questions.

The Proof

So is this true? Are there only two questions worth talking about?

A simple way of testing this is to ask yourself these very questions. I am quite certain that all of us here have our own reasons for reading web fiction, and like all good fiction readers, we all have our own particular reasons for reading some works over others. The second question is really arbitrary; what I’m interested in is your answer to the first one. My contention is that if you’re reading this, you probably began reading online fiction for a particular set of reasons. And then, for whatever reason, you continued reading. This probably happened in two parts: you were open, firstly, to the idea of reading fiction on the Internet. Then, after you found some stuff to read, you began looking for other good things to add to your growing collection of online fiction. And so you became a reader. You became one of us.

When turned on its head, then, these questions become particular challenges for the web fiction community. The myth about people not reading on the Internet is just that – a myth. We know this. People read emails, they read news on websites, a large number of them gather daily at fanfiction.net to read what I profess to see no value in (note: hehehe). But anyway. The challenges are as such: firstly, how do we convert web readers – that is – non-web-fiction-reading readers – into web-fiction-reading ones? And secondly, how do you get these converted readers to read your work?

The Two Pools

Several things become clear to us the instant we look at web fiction through the lenses of these two challenges. The first and most obvious thing we’ll notice is how wrong we’ve been doing things the past few years. When we first began to talk of self promotion, the kind of ideas we tossed around were usually answers to the second challenge, instead of the first. We were concerned with getting readers; we did not pause to consider the fact that these readers were of limited supply – that there really weren’t many places where we could go to with a high density of potential readers in the first place. That conversion had to happen before we could get them to read our works. And so after a while it began to feel as if there were more writers than there were readers. After a while it began to feel as if we were marketing to each other.

And then, even more curiously, there were writers who understood this difference, and worked hard to find readers that were not existing web fiction ones. The best examples I can think of are Alexandra Erin and MeiLin Miranda. Both are responsible for some of the earliest members of the web fiction community: Sarah Suleski, Gavin Williams, and Jim Zoetewey (and later Jan Oda, to name a few) all came from reading Tales of MU, and they went on to become contributors to the web fiction sphere in their own right. And how did they discover web fiction? They found a Tales of MU ad on a webcomic site, which led them to Tales, which led them to start their own sites, and later on, to an early Novelr.

It is this point – this point on webcomics – which I must now point to as the answer to the earlier question of ‘which platforms do you pick, then, that is best for online fiction?’ Webcomic advertising is the platform. This is in itself some cause for sadness. Advertising on webcomics is the only kind of self promotion that has been proven to work in the history of web fiction, because webcomics are places with unusually high densities of potential readers. These are places where you won’t need to do much in order to get readers to convert, and it’s probably one reason both MeiLin and Alexandra have had such large audiences over the past few years.

There are two points that I’m trying to make here. The first is that there are two pools of readers out there. The first pool consists of all the web readers in the world. The second pool, significantly smaller than the first, contains the readers that have converted and are already reading fiction online. The first pool trickles down to the second one, and some of the readers in the first pool – like curious fish – are easier to convert, to push out and over and into the second pool: webcomic readers are some of these, they are certainly closer to the brim than others.

The second thing I’d like to point out is how, when you target the first pool over the second, you get a hell lot more readers than you would otherwise. This is part mathematics (larger pool = better fishing), and part common sense – apart from the examples of MeiLin and Alexandria above – web writer MCM got a huge boost of traffic from io9, when they linked to his web novel The Vector. Whether these were one-time web fiction readers or repeat consumers remains to be seen, but it makes sense to have the majority of your promotion work on the first pool, and not the second.

And this is where the real difficulty in self promotion lies. Because while the above sentence was easy to say, the problem with the first pool is that a vast majority of these readers aren’t open to the idea of reading web fiction. They’re not potentials, as one might say. The trick is to find places (or even create places) where there is a high density of potential web readers, and to promote there … and this is in itself a seemingly impossible thing to do.

Creating New Funnels

The real answer to these problems are solutions that I can’t tell you, because I don’t know what they are yet. I have a couple of ideas, though, and some suggestions that I think may be useful in dealing with this problem.

The first idea is that of delegation. It seems to me that this community is large enough to come together to create ‘funnel sites’ for online fiction – conversion channels for new readers that we would like see become regulars to the scene. Some of these sites are already primed for launch: Jan Oda’s ErgoFiction is one example, as is the new WFG, and eFiction Book Club’s relaunch (there’s also another project, to be launched under the Novelr banner, but this would take a bit of time). These can all be places where – if things go well – there would be a consistently high density of new readers, newly converted, that are possible sources for self-promotion for the community at large. The idea is to build these ‘funnels’ – these places that deal with the first challenge (i.e.: why should I read web fiction?) so that you can concentrate on the second challenge (i.e.: why should I read your web fiction?), and in reparation for this, the sites that serve as funnels can demand  some form of exchange with the writers – like money perhaps (i.e.: ads), or short fiction, or occasional guest contributions.

The second idea that may be of some help is that of locating existing sites with high densities of potential readers. WebLit.us seems well suited to this task – if they got together to organize little think-tanks, it shouldn’t be too long before they identify certain sites – such as io9 or some forum/blog, say, that are sympathetic to the web fiction cause. They would certainly be doing the community a great service if they were to compile one such list, along with the best angles (and, yes, I sound like a pirate here) in which to approach these sites.

The fact remains, however, that the actual ways we should use to find and convert readers are still largely unknown, even with all these new conversion sites coming into being. I only ask two things: that, first of all, these site moderators recognize that they are conversion points, and that they may demand certain things of the writers that depend on them. And, that secondly, we should – all of us – begin to think when we do our self-promotion, and not indulge ourselves with such sloppy method as ‘Get on all platforms! Be everywhere!’ I believe we’ll all be much better off for it.

Note: special thanks to MCM, Jan, Anna and the ever thoughtful Becky for help with the ideas presented in this article. Also, to everyone who responded to my Why Do You Read Online Fiction? post: I am grateful, and blessed.

When Novelr first started the main problem we had was on how to publish/write online fiction – the best methods of presentation, the best platforms, the nuts and bolts of the medium, if you will. That problem has largely been solved. Today, most of us know how to publish and write online fiction, and that is a good thing (it has been 4 years, after all). What we haven’t solved, however, is the old problem of the writer/reader divide: most of our readers are other writers. Most of our marketing efforts are centered into getting other writers to read our work. This is a little silly, and a little sad. There should be better, more efficient methods of finding new readers, that aren’t based on randomly yelling on ‘any and all’ social platforms.

I’m fairly certain that we’ll all have a lot to say on the topic. To that end, I’ve created a new category on Novelr – Marketing – to help reflect this focus. But before we do all that thinking and wrangling, there’s a video that I’d like to share (don’t worry – it’s short and it’s rather cute):

Tell me what you think of it, when you’re done watching. See you in two weeks.

Do you read it because you write it? Do you read because you’re part of the community now, and you’ve gotten to know the other writers around you, and you’re reading their work the same way you might read the blog of a loved one? Do you even read at all?

If you don’t, not as many as you would like: why? Is it because of the medium?

(I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I have found that I do less long-form reading when I’m online, and to be able to read through a masterpiece like The Grapes of Wrath – a copy of which is sitting on my table at this very moment – requires the unplugging of my computer and the physical removal of my web browser. This isn’t good, for obvious reasons: I have probably read less in the past 6 months than I have in the last three years combined.)

There has been much talk lately of self-promotion in online fiction. Many of us seem enamored with the idea that web fiction writers; indie writers – these new, fringe groups (of which I am a part) deserve to be treated professionally: at the same level as traditionally-published authors. But perhaps these are answers to the wrong questions. Most online experiences today are made to be simple, easy, and addictive. Web fiction is unique in that it has little of the three. And so here we must ask ourselves a series of questions about our work: do we attempt to emulate the rest of the web? (Much of Novelr has attempted to do just that). Or should we attempt to find other possible methods for online expression? What are our answers to the following questions:

• Can it make someone gasp, or cry?
• Does it feel as special as a love letter?
• Does it compare to masterpieces of other mediums?
• Could it have gone further?

And: why should you read online fiction? Because when you have found the answer to that, one that is not couched in defensive or capitalist terminology, then you would have found the answer to the self-promotion problem. Till then, I’d like to know this: why do you read online fiction? It’s a good place to start.

(Image at top taken from Johnathan Harris’s presentation on digital storytelling.)

[Update] A clarification:

I believe I should respond as well: I read online fiction because I started writing it. This is a cop-out (and is certainly not the answer anyone wants to hear), but it is the truth. I would not have considered reading in this medium if it wasn’t for the fact that I considered writing in it.

Now this is in itself a compelling reason. The reason for me asking is this: are there any other compelling reasons? One of the oldest problems we have in online fiction is that there are too many readers who are other writers, and marketing often feels like cross-promotion: writers selling to other writers. This is simply ridiculous. So I am asking you in the hopes of finding someone who was compelled into reading without first considering writing. If there are none, then I’ll have confirmed a suspicion I’ve had for sometime now. (I’ll explain in a latter post.)

I’ve been using Twitter for a bit now, and while I’m by no means an expert, Eli has asked me to write an article on the usefulness of the network for web fiction writers, and so here I am.

A rough idea of what I use Twitter for: in the past couple of days I’ve discovered a great poem, found out about a Webfiction Podcast, voted for my favorite contestant in a literary reality show and almost became MCM’s marketing agent for The Vector.

On a more personal note I learned that one of the authors of the Peacock King just found her first grey hair at the age of 28, that Lord Likely is getting married (no matter how much I protest) and I’ve organized a sleepover party, pillow-fight included, with The Dispatch crew. And these things are only the tip of the iceberg.

For me Twitter has been a revelation. I have made contacts with web-fiction authors I would never have found otherwise, I have discovered great short-stories, poems and other digital art, and I got to take part in #3D1D, which really deserves it’s own article on the technologies MCM used.

These are my personal benefits, but I believe Twitter could be a real asset to all web-fiction authors, and I’ll try to explain how and why in this post. There really is no limit to the possibilities of the use of the medium, but I’ll try to cover the basics at least. If you don’t know what Twitter is and how it works, I’d suggest reading the TwiTip Starters Guide and Inkygirl’s Writer’s Guide to Twitter.

How it Works

Twitter defines itself as a microblogging system in which people can post short updates (there is a max. of 140 characters per update), and other people can subscribe to their feeds. 140 characters sounds very limiting, but you can say more than you think you can, and there is a subtle art in being brief and to the point. As far as I can see it there are 3 kinds of authors on Twitter.

1. The Personal Account
2. The RSS Author
3. The Balanced One

Until recently Eli himself was a good example of the first type. He didn’t use Twitter frequently, but when he did he tweeted personal thoughts. There weren’t any references to Novelr, and not many references to anything web-fiction related in general. He also didn’t really connect with people (because he didn’t know how to reply to them), so his Twitter feed resembled a stream of consciousness. Other variants of this are authors using Twitter as a chatbox with their personal friends, taking the “What Are You Doing Question?” to an extreme and posting everything they eat and do. There is nothing wrong with that, but in my opinion this isn’t using Twitter to its full potential.

The RSS Author is on the other extreme of the spectrum; there is nothing personal in these accounts. RSS Authors simply attach their RSS feeds to their Twitter account, and let it run on auto-pilot from there on. No interaction whatsoever. A variant of this, and probably more annoying, are the marketeering authors, who only use Twitter to promote themselves and their books. Both types aren’t using Twitter to connect, which is a big loss, because, since their streams aren’t very interesting, they probably won’t gain many followers.

The Balanced One is the ideal Twitter-using author. He varies personal updates with updates on his writing, publishing and other professional updates, promotes (through the art of retweeting) interesting content of fellow authors and contacts and interacts with his followers. The really cool authors take this interaction to a new level and come up with stuff like #3D1D. Off course there isn’t such a thing as a perfect twitterer, but aiming for a mix between personal, professional and peers should get you close.

Useful Features

Twitter has implemented a couple of nice features to make connecting with interesting people and content easier. The most important one is probably the hashtag. Each term that starts with a # is converted into a hashtag. These hashtags are searchable, which means you can easily find all tweets mentioning the topic. A lot of web-fiction authors are adding #weblit to their tweets concerning their web-fiction, or web-fiction in general. Some of them also use a hashtag for their stories, so people can easily find updates. MCM even named his project after the hashtag he used for it, #3D1D.

Some people organize chats around these hashtags, using a twitterclient like tweetchat, or the Twitter search function (search.twitter.com) on a set day of the week. The most interesting ones for web-fiction authors are #writechat, #dnchat and #wnchat, but there are a lot of others as well.

Another great side effect of the hashtags are the hashtags projects. A prime example of this is #fridayflash, where every Friday authors publish a Flash Fiction Piece, and tweet about it using the #fridayflash hashtag. J.M. Strother posts a weekly roundup on his blog of all stories published each week, and an Anthology is in the making.

On your profile you can easily save searches, so you can check your favorite topics with one easy click. My personal saved searches include ‘Online Novel’, ‘Online Fiction’, Web-Fiction and others, and by checking them daily I found authors publishing online that weren’t on the WFG, Muse’s Success or other Web-Fiction Directories.

Some authors have been creating characters accounts, and are tweeting in character. I find this a great way of connecting with fans and readers, and that it greatly adds to the web-fiction experience. Reading the adventures of Lord Likely is twice as fun since I’ve been following his twitter account and I’m sure other readers feel the same.

A final great feature are Twitter Lists. These lists are used to organize the people you follow into categories, so people can easily find people with similar interests. I have made one for web-fiction authors, which currently lists 124 tweeting authors of web-fiction. Once you’ve subscribed to a list, it only takes one click to subscribe, and the tweets of all those listed are within reach from your Twitter sidebar. Nancy Brauer of Strange Little Band has also made a Twitter list of fictional characters tweeting.

Last but not least I’d like to mention @onlinefiction, a Twitter account created by Naomi of Nomesque Fiction, which tweets and promotes various web-fiction on hourly intervals.

I have by no means mentioned everything there is to do on and with Twitter, so please do comment with your favorite accounts, hashtags or anecdotes.

Jan Oda tweets at @janoda, and presents her followers with a LOT of good links. (Image at top sourced from Flickr)