Hi!
I’m changing my plan for the weekly freebies. Why am I doing that? ‘Cause…
- A writer who’s been around quite a bit longer than I have (Hi Dean!) put some time & effort into convincing me I was bein’ dumb (though I doubt he’d approve of the “free” parts of my new plan either),
- Frankly I don’t like making stories/books exclusive to Amazon to begin with,
- Several of you internet denizens have asked that I not make stuff exclusive to a site they prefer not to use,
- One reader in particular (Hi Heather!) keeps bugging me to post stuff on Wattpad, but Amazon’s “exclusive” requirement has been a barrier,
- I think the new idea will work better anyway, and
- Really, in the interest of fairness & equality of opportunity…it just seems like the right thing to do.
So…prior to today the plan was that the freebies would go up on Wednesdays, be taken down each following Tuesday, and also published (exclusively) to Amazon on Tuesday. In return for this, Amazon would “allow” me to make the stories free for five out of every 90 days. I figured that plan would get the stories in front of more readers than would find ’em if they had–you know–a price tag.
Instead? Starting with last week’s entry (“The Gorilla, the Goldfish & Everything”) I’m going to leave the free stories on the blog. I will publish them worldwide, to many ebook retailers. They will be FREE, not for 5/90 days but all the time. Except for one retailer that won’t let me do it. That company is…wait for it…Amazon.
So this sucks, a bit, for those of you who use Amazon. Guess what, though? You can come to the blog, find the story you want, and click the “Send to Kindle” button. You’ll get it, for free. Just as if it was what you and I both wanted to begin with.
Theoretically Amazon will price-match, meaning that if a story is free elsewhere they’ll eventually get around to making it free on their sites too. In my experience? That can take months of daily reporting by lots of people. So…if you take an interest, please feel free to copy the links I’ll be posting on each story’s page on this site and report them to Amazon. Meanwhile, though, I’m not waiting.
It might be a couple of days before I get my web pages arranged to match all this (and also before I get some stories published to non-Amazon sites). Bear with me? The end result should be fairly cool.
Eventually I’ll be publishing story collections. Once those are up, the stories I include will develop a price. Or possibly be taken down altogether to avoid cluttering the internet. {8′>
This isn’t going to be a totally fair arrangement. I wish it could be. It’s the best I can do, though, with the tools available.
One more thing: if you come across a story you particularly like? It would be very helpful to me if you took the time to post a review online. Doesn’t really matter where, as long as people can find it.
Hope this helps, and…have fun out there!
Good on you. You can always crawl back to Amazon later, but I don’t think Dean believes that either. I haven’t been reading too much of HIM yet, just his wife.
Every era (think of Madonna and MTV videos; think of “Dirty Dancing” and videocassettes) has its ‘firsties’. You can be a firstie of this concept.
I’m gonna mention this to a few writers on Wattpad. Especially ones who are ‘workin’ it…
Heather
wordwan
P. S. I’m thinking about setting up a something on Wattpad, and it would be REALLY HELPFUL if there was a way to ‘link’ your dustjackets, rather than upload them. I’m working with what I got, presently, on Wattpad. And did you notice? They did a real cool thing. You can EDIT the posting date on your piece. I now wish youtube had that.
Here’s a good question: A “Send to Kindle” button. Did someone think the only place a Kindled item would live was ON Amazon? Do you have to ‘sign in’ to Amazon, to use this button? How does that button work? Does any information ‘travel’ through Amazon when you use that button?
And color me dumb. Yer gonna take the Wattpad stories DOWN every week? I’m thinking ahead here.
Heh. Crawl back to Amazon…I’m still there, you know? And yeah, I like his wife’s stuff too. Plus I thought she was a great editor at F&SF years ago, or anyway I liked a lot of the stories she picked for the magazine.
Dunno about the techanics of Wattpad. But I’m going to leave the stories up, at least until they’re in an anthology, at which point the freebiness shall dissipate somewhat.
Yep, you have to sign in to Amazon to use their tech to send stuff to your Kindle. Which kinda makes sense…otherwise anybody could do it. As far as what info Amazon gathers? I’m guessing the answer is “everything they can,” same as always with them. As far as how they plan to use it, or will plan to use it in the future? Beats me.
One more thing. There’s a guy on Wattpad who is a kind of bouncer there. He writes short stories. I don’t know him much but he SELLS his stories. Maybe you should see if he’d be into anthologies. Why did that other commenter of yourn not want to collaborate on an anthology? His name is Gav. He likes Neil Gaiman.
http://www.wattpad.com/user/TheOrangutan
What kind of anthology ‘writers’ (subject matter, would you prefer? I’m not looking specifically for genres yet on Wattpad–and, honestly I hate the word genre (much as Ellison does.)
I’m, mostly, looking for people I can interact with, in some way.
Heather
wordwan
I’ve got nothing against doing an anthology with anyone, as long as I like their stuff. It could get a bit complicated though ’cause somebody has to collect the money and pay the other party or parties, though. Probably better to set up an LLC or some such to handle it, which can be a pain.
As for why the guy I suggested an anthology to didn’t wanna? I think it was several things. Probably better if I don’t say what they are, but the short version is he essentially ignored the suggestion.