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."
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.