Results of Another Web Publishing Experiment

Dienyddio writes "Shadowmarch, an ambitious web publishing project launched by Tad Williams last year (previously mentioned on slashdot) is to cease the bi-monthly story format after one year. The sad news was broken by Tad on the site. It seems that there were just too few subscribers to make the format pay, this combined with the heavy load placed on Tad by writing two episodes a month and a paper book to pay the bills has proved too much. All is not lost, DAW books has purchased the rights to three books based on the Shadowmarch story. It is hoped that these books will maintain the community side of the site. Tad will also be increasing the number of background stories and details relating to the Shadowmarch world on the site in order to promote fan interaction."

Comments

Free fiction?

[Pembers]

This is probably offtopic (it's certainly shameless self-promotion), but if you're looking for a story to read, you might like the one linked to in my .sig.

It's a shame that Mr Williams has decided not to continue this experiment, but I see from other comments that I'm not the only person who'd never heard of it. Granted, I've never read any of his work in print, either. Maybe if I'd already been interested in him, I'd have discovered Shadowmarch that way.

I think that if authors want to earn a living through web publishing, they need to stop looking at everyone who downloads and doesn't pay as a lost sale. (Insert usual Slashdot rhetoric about uncopyable bits and non-wet water.) The author's promise shouldn't be "I'll release the next installment if 75% of you pay for this one." It should be something like "I'll release the next installment if I make at least $5,000 on this one."

The shareware model could work here. Release the first few installments for free and charge for the rest. Shareware authors don't care that the free versions of their programs are all over the net - in fact, that's just what they want. It builds awareness of the software and saves on their bandwidth bills. Most of them have accepted that the important thing is the number of people who buy the program, not the number of people who don't.

OK, Shadowmarch was a kind of try-before-you-buy, which is one of the main ideas of shareware. It didn't make money. But then, not all shareware makes money. For that matter, not all printed books make money, either.