Sweethearts and Monsters: The novel serialized as a blog
A fascinating item from Trudy W. Schuett, author of the e-book pictured here:
I’ve had several books published in e-book form since late 1999/early 2000, and I thought I’d give the blog form a try for one of the early novels. I’ve been serializing Sweethearts and Monsters, a couple of pages at a time, since November of last year. We’re getting close to the end of it, but as far as I can tell, I’ve got about 15,000 readers.
As you can imagine, this is way more than the number that purchased the original e-book. But I’m one of those writers who is more concerned with getting my work read by people than anything else, not to mention this is fun to do.
Just figured you’d like a heads-up on another kind of e-publishing. As far as I know, nobody else is doing this. The blog is here: http://trudywschuett.tblog.com/.
I may be doing this with other books, since I’ve left my publisher, which renders all my books “out of print.” This way they’d at least be read, rather than just sitting on my hard drive. I’m thinking of this as a way for authors of multiple books to showcase their work without any committment on the part of potential readers–there’s nothing to buy, or even download. Readers can get the book in bits and pieces, which is the way most people read anyway.
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Idea: Maybe Trudy needs to put an order form on her home page for people who’d like to purchase S&M as either an e-book or a print-on-demand book. Might work this time as an e-book, assuming there aren’t any contractual obstacles.
Remember, Dickens and many other famous novelists tried the serialization form, enjoyed immediate attention, and paved the way for the sale of actual books. Her blog just may have provided S&M the exposure it lacked before.
So Trudy really should try the order form before it’s too late. If 15,000 people have read even parts of her work, that suggests that perhaps a few would be game to fork out money for it. Good luck, Trudy!
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