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Results of Another Web Publishing Experiment

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pulp-fiction dept.

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."

2 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Re:subscriptions by AdamJ · · Score: 4, Insightful
    btw, book people are generally not that computer literate. i mean sure they can use email and sht but they generally dont spend the time to read of of a website when they can go and buy a book to cozy up to. especially since the book they can put on their shelf and display when their finnished. but this is a whole other can of worms.

    I think you're completely confusing two things here. Computer literacy has nothing to do with why many people prefer a proper book to reading on a computer. I'm extremely computer literate, but I don't exact relish curling up in my bed with the Athlon, nor do I want to be reading e-books during a RPG session.

    Lose the "btw, book people are generally not that computer literate. i mean sure they can use email and sht" and you have an interesting point, but claiming that computer illiteracy is one reason that e-books haven't caught on dilutes it.

  2. Re:Books vs. serials by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know, Eric Flint and David Drake seem to be making decent money in royalties off electronic forms of their older books. Not great money, maybe 2 grand a year, but then these are older backlist titles that normally only sell 5-600 copies a year so royalties aren't that great for the paper forms either. And the copy-protected electronic forms of Drake's books barely make enough in royalties every year to pay for a decent pizza. I think it boils down to:

    1. People won't pay per chapter for serialized works, they'd rather get it all at once.
    2. People won't pay to deal with copy-protection hassles, but they will pay to have it readily available electronically.
    3. People won't pay as much for the electronic form as for paper.
    I think authors can live with this. See Eric Flint's essays over on the Baen Free Library.