As a capitalist, the author should know to blame the readers (in his world customers) for his marketing mistake. He chose the wrong platform for his purposes… to make money. Any good capitalist knows that you need to research your market prior to setting up shop. Shareware and open source are not for those looking to get rich off the end user. The money comes from elsewhere.

So let this be a lesson to other capitalists who chose writing as a career… do more research and find the proper method for dissemination of your electronic text. If more of you did this, the electronic publishing market would be far more commercially viable. But for the writers out there who are slaves to the muses, who value the purity of creation and value the freedom of e-publishing… keep up the good work!

By the way… I really did enjoy the book.

Talent, just like time, has a value and those with talent should not be labeled “hacks” because they want to make a living with that talent….As an author and publisher, this is a topic I feel passionately about. Especially when people start talking about how “true” artist “struggle” for their art or should take a vow of poverty to prove they are really an “artist.”

While I think Pond’s use of the term “hack” was a bit over the top, I think he (she?) and I share an opinion with regard to some of Mr. Herley’s comments above.

Without applying any labels, there are writers for whom writing is a passion who write because they have to (and will do so regardless of the income it generates), and there are writers for whom writing is a chosen profession and, if they’re successful, a principle or at least significant source of income.

Based on some of his comments above, I’m not sure in which of these categories Mr. Herley belongs. When he says, “the main point of it lies in the connection with readers,” it sounds like he belongs in the first category. But when he says, “if the overwhelming majority of readers are as the results of my experiment imply, they do not deserve to be written for,” he makes me feel like a commodity to be bought in the marketplace, a customer who is not worthy of a vendor’s product. This definitely makes me want to put him in the second category.

The failure of Mr. Herley’s possibly ill-conceived experiment is certainly not cause to make broad generalizations about the ethical standards of the book-reading public. An author who cops an attitude about his ability (or inability) to generate a desired level of income from his writing certainly doesn’t attract me to reading his work, or purchasing his product, as the case may be.

Choosing to earn one’s living as a creative artist is risky business; to gain any kind of financial security, one must be very, very good at what he does. If the income generated by an artist’s work is “something for [him] to bear in mind when deciding how to spend [his] time in future,” I suggest his time would be better spent on other pursuits. I have little sympathy for him if he fails to earn his living in his chosen profession, and I will definitely take offense if he casts aspersions on his audience as a result of that failure.

Thanks for looking into it.

As an author and publisher, this is a topic I feel passionately about. Especially when people start talking about how “true” artist “struggle” for their art or should take a vow of poverty to prove they are really an “artist.”

Pure hogwash.

I didn’t download any of Richard’s books, and I don’t download any material which is looking for payment later. Mostly because I know me, IF I get around to reading it, who knows if I’ll have it to spare at that time. If it’s really free with no strings, I’ll take it. Otherwise, I leave it alone.

But I do think offering a few free chapters and then charging for the remainder of the book would have been the best way for him to have gone.

Aaron J. Walker http://www.walkbroadpublishing.com

In it I laid out a method that would have him offering the first 2 or 3 chapters as free downloads but have those interested in reading the rest of the story pay for the book. Seemed to be the easiest and best way.

If after reading a few chapters, those interested would either decide to purchase the book and read on or “get around” to getting the rest “one day”. Then Richard would know how many potential readers there are (based on number of initial downloads) and how many really liked the book enough to pay for it.

I shared my personal usage habits of what happens when I hear about a free e-book. I quickly download and it sits until I “get around to reading it”.

But I also purchase e-books. Those DO NOT sit around since I paid my money for them. They get read quickly.

If I liked it enough to pay for it after reading, in many cases, just an excerpt, it is at the top of my reading list.

I can’t tell you how much free “e” material is floating around my computer because it was free that I still haven’t gotten to.

@Pond, can we please stop the fallacy that artist who care about eating, sleeping, feeding their families, etc. are only in it for the money.

Talent, just like time, has a value and those with talent should not be labeled “hacks” because they want to make a living with that talent.

Enough with the starving artist conceit.

Aaron J. Walker http://www.walkbroadpublishing.com

Should artists create art only for the money? We used to have a word for such artists and it was not complimentary. We called them ‘hacks.’ The ‘true artist’ was once thought to create for the joy of creation, the internal urge to create, and the desire to share with his fellow men. Was this only an illusion, or have we all Fallen through living under the curse of Capitalism for these centuries?

Herley writes of his motivation for writing fiction: “The main point of it lies in the connection with readers: and if the overwhelming majority of readers are as the results of my experiment imply, they do not deserve to be written for.”

So, should we then call Herley a sloppy writer and ask that he replace the words ‘connection with’ with the words ‘payment by’? Then his lines make sense.

In this digital age, maybe it makes sense for Herley and others to follow the second paradigm suggested by the career of J K Rowling: handmake your books with many doodles, and sell each individual copy you make.

Honestly, this sort of attitude sickens me. But what is worse is the underlying assumptions, that art is nothing but another widget, produced to be sold at a profit. This approach makes perfect sense for publishers, but not for writers.

I wonder if Herley enjoyed any of that ‘hard and lonely’ time he spent writing these novels. Or was it like standing for long hours in the mills, breaking his back on the assembly line, a chore and a drudgery, hateful, redeemed only for the wages, and not worth it if the wages do not rise to a satisfactory level?

Does Herley think of his readers as though they were mill foremen, who only ‘deserve’ his time if the money is right?

Finally, if Herley is in it only for the money, I would suggest that Herley make an experiment with that completed MS. Self-publish it on the Kindle, set your price, and see if this approach pays enough to be worth it.

Paying is a pain, that is one problem, and it is not parting with the money that makes it so. Payment systems take time and are sometimes mismatched to available means of payment. This is a minor but real impediment.

The real problem is the model itself. “Buyer beware” has a couple of aspects other than being aware of shoddy goods, it is also a means of forcing the buyer to think about what they are buying, and why, before they part with their money or use the product.

Picking things up for free, on impulse, is one thing. Buying something because it is needed or genuinely wanted is another. Cheap prices, easy means of paying and then receiving goods is a model that has stood the test of time. It does not require DRM crippled e-books, but it does mean a good micro-payment system.

The trick is, there has to be an incentive to those who pre-order. Cathe Friedrich, for example, typically has escalating prices e.g. you pre-order in phase 1 and the price is $100 for the set UNTIL such and such date, at which point it goes up a few dollars etc. all the way up to release date at full, actual price. Early buyers can get a substantial discount by taking the leap of faith and buying sight unseen—and as she has many loyal fans now, a lot of people take her up on this.

Not sure a total newbie could apply this model to books, but once you’ve built up a following, it might work.

Doctorow and Scalzi have benefited from the publicity arising from the novelty of CC/shareware publishing. That is unlikely to be a distinguishing factor in the literary marketplace if half the authors today are doing the same thing.

Some things to consider:

1)would a partial giveaway encourage readers to buy the whole thing? (see smashwords).
2)When is the right time for the public to view a work of fiction? When a chapter is done? When the whole novel is done? When everything has been edited? When other eyes have inspected it for errors/inconsistencies?
3)if a free release brings additional fans, won’t that create additional demand for that author’s other websites (whose traffic can be monetized)?
4)If CC fiction can be republished or transformed in other ways, won’t that bring a steady stream of traffic over time?
5) In the past, substantial time was lost while the author passed around manuscripts to publishers waiting for the acceptance letter. Now, DIY publishing eliminates that dead time. Now authors face another stretch of dead time immediately after publication (where there just isn’t the level of publicity to bring the project to the attention of people). Isn’t it folly to expect potential readers to be able to discover a new novel rapidly enough for the author to see immediate gain? By my estimate, it takes at least 10 years. If authors don’t have that kind of time, shouldn’t they be looking into literary forms which can be produced and promoted more rapidly?

This behavoir sorta kills the kind of relatively instant feed back Mr. Herley was hoping for.

A different payment model would probably work.

You could say: Here is some of my older work you can read for free. Now, I have a new book written that I will also put out for free but first I would like to raise “$someamount” as payment for my year of work on the novel. Here are the first three chapters for you to read. If you like them and would like to see the full book released please join the first funding round to be held on “somedate” to “somedate” and “someweb address”.

Folks wanting the new book can go to the site make pledges, and can check the progress of funds raised. Since they probably want the rest of the book released as soon as possible they will probably pester their friends and such to pledge as well.

You’ld probably want to hold 2 or 3 weeklong funding rounds.

maybe even use the Rational Street Performer Protocol:
http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/rspp

I don’t know, it’s worth a shot.
Don’t give up, just keep trying different stuff.

PS.
The books were awesome, Thx.
Lee

Richard Adin — the books are available in many formats at manybooks and Feedbooks, and in MS-Word and ASCII from my site.

ficbot — I didn’t follow up on emails, since the addresses were divulged to me only via PayPal and I feel it would be infra dig to pester people using those. I set up a blog and a blog-feed so that readers could keep in touch. That facility too has been a flop!

Brian Carnell — the major investment in my experiment was the release of The Tide Mill, previously unpublished and the fruit of about 3,000 hours’ work. The other novels are OP.

“As Herley knows, there are thousands of would-be authors writing books. But with limited funds, consumers are more cautious and tend to be reluctant to give money to unheard of authors (i.e., unknown to the consumer). I admit to never having heard of Herley before the announcement of the shareware concept for his books and so would never have considered his books for an e-purchase (I might have considered them if I had seen them on my local bookstore shelf where I could peruse the book) because I want to spend my money on books I will read, not books that I might buy and begin and then set aside forever never having completed.”

I think this really nails it. Look at people who are successful using the “give it away” model…they are folks like Cory Doctorow or John Scalzi who already have a mini/mega community that they are already active participants in/have built up.

Or they are people who give the book away and use the downloads/Internet vibe to land a traditional book deal. David Wellington is a great example there…I actually bought a p-book version of Monster Island at a Borders on a whim when I was visiting my in-laws and ran out of reading material (and I have to say that was one of the best horror books I have ever read).