I have my reasons for opting out of traditional publishing. Sure, I still dream of the Jimmy Fallon interview and the New York Times Bestseller list, and that smoking groupie threesome backstage (before AND after the show), but as pipey as those dreams are, I still believe my strongest act of protest over traditional publishing is to completely work around it. Because the straight dope is that the real dream has always been to pay the bills with writing. Anything beyond that is icing. Or gravy. But not gravy icing because gross.
That leaves me in a quandary. It's not that there isn't any other choice but traditional publishing. It's that there are LOTS of other choices besides traditional publishing. Self publishing. E-publishing. Blogging. Bathroom graffiti.
However, the longer I go on in the world of entertainment and blogging, the more I want to make my work about sharing rather than selling. Yes, that may make it more difficult to make money. But as I've already begun to realize even with a modest audience, it's not impossible. People seem to be ready to donate to arts and entertainment that they care about. It may even be possible to remove ads one day (or at least form partnerships with businesses I believe in).
This novel is an experiment in blogging a very long work as a serial post. I'll be paying close attention to the analytics of each "part" of the story to see if it's really working in the medium of a blog. I picked an older story and a "lower stakes" story because I want to get a sense of whether or not this is going to be viable. If this story does well enough, I'll put all my longer works up here for free, perhaps offering the most successful ones as low cost e-books or as self-published copies (if there's a demand) for those who are willing to pay a little extra to have their own copy.
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