Slashdot Mirror
Shadowmarch Launched
myrkul writes: "Tad Williams (Author of Otherland and others) has finally launched his Shadowmarch project. It is an episodic fantasy work, release biweekly online. There will be supplementary work such as graphics, audio files, history, and biographies. As of yet, no payment scheme has been worked out, so the first chapter, as well as the prologue, are free, and available on the site already. In the future, a monthly or yearly subscription will be required, most likely under 20 USD per year. See the previous slashdot article for more."
Therefore, for all the extra graphics/audio/extra bits, you're effectively paying an extra A$20 for it.
Frankly, while I would pay a little bit extra .... I think double the price of a normal fiction book is a bit much to ask for a souped-up online version.
But hey, that's just me - I do actually hope the guy succeeds - it's great to see people trying new methods of distribution ... I just think that charging a US$20 subscription is a bit overpriced.
I wish Tad Williams great success in his endeavor. However, it's unlikely it will succeed using the standard subscription model. A better approach would be to use the Street Performer Protocol.
The infrastructure doesn't exist for a subscription model on the Internet that effectively limits distribution to paying subscribers. Williams writes, "people start passing too many free copies of the Shadowmarch story around and we get to the point where it doesn't pay for itself anymore, then I'll have to stop doing it". In that case, Shadowmarch is as good as dead. We'll get a few good stories, then perhaps after getting involved and interested, we'll find out the experiment has been cancelled without completion. Why would I pay $20 for that risk? Perhaps subscribers would receive the remaining stories in print form. That would be less than satisfactory...a consolation prize of sorts.
Admittedly, there isn't much infrastructure for the Street Performer Protocol, either. However, there is PayPal and the Amazon.com Honor System, as well as others. Furthermore, with the Street Performer Protocol, you want people passing out copies...that's free, even "viral" marketing.
The trick is to keep people from altering the story, such as removing your attribution and instructions on how they can make a donation to support the public work. This is considerably less difficult a problem to solve than attempting to prevent "unpaid copies" from leaking out into the public. It's easier on a technical level and the incentive for cooperating with the protocol greater than the incentive to respect the copy protection of the subscription model.
It remains to be seen if the Street Performer Protocol would generate enough revenue to support the project, but that's why it's an experiment. As others have pointed out, we've already had the "limited distribution on the Internet" experiment, i.e. Stephen King's "The Plant". It was a failure.
Sorry to sound like a pessimist here, but online books in my opinion are not that much to look forward to, well at least if I were an author I wouldn't look to creating an online book for simple reasons.
We've grown into reading books not an entire online book so its sort of second nature to pick up a nice soft cover or hard cover to read. When you go to work on the morning for those who commute via say buses, trains, etc., your going to want to read a book, not turn on a laptop to finish up on a chapter you didn't finish or start a new one.
When your going to lunch on a nice sunny day in the park, why would you want to lug around a laptop to read the book, when you could again grab a softcover or hardcover and enjoy the day without the added overhaul. This doesn't include having a network connection to connect to the site unless your going to fetch/wget the entire book beforehand.
Also, how much real money can you make before people start sharing account information (username/passwords) and your thoughts of making money suddenly get shot down the tubes by some moron with a w4r3z page?
What would be nice is a combination book with access to the online version so when you are at work and can't afford to be seen reading a book you could download a chapter, or maybe if your sitting behind your pc bored you could open it up, however an e-book I think will fail.
Also note that recent studies have shown that online magazines and newspapers don't fare as well as `old fashioned' purchases of the original. People want true content some times not just packets. And finally, that shit'd hurt my eyes reading an entire book online. I tried with "The Big Breach" finally ended up printing the darn thing to read it as if it were a real book.
Well good luck to the site, I hope its entertaining but you won't catch me there any time in this life.
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