Releasing stories under Creative Commons - Your thoughts? - Writers Forum

Lord Raiden · 06-25-2008, 11:27 PM

I've been doing a bit of an experiment lately after hearing an idea someone else did in order to get noticed. The other guy released his books on the internet, one at a time, and created an html, pdf, and audio book (read by him) version for people to download. He then released one chapter a week. So I started doing the same thing to see if it would help me any, and interestingly enough, I've had a pretty good response to it.

Here's the story so far: The Specimen

I've got 7 chapters posted so far and look to have the rest of the 19 chapters posted before the end of summer.

What makes this most interesting is I'm releasing it for free on the web under the Creative Commons 3.0 license, specifically the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. It allows me to share it on the web, and encourage others to share it as well, but it stops any commercial copying of it for profit without my permission.

Have any of you considered doing something similar to this, or releasing some of your stories under creative commons? Just curious. Or are you considering other ways to get noticed in this ever more difficult and challenging world of publishing?

sdavis2k · 06-26-2008, 05:35 AM

FictionPress.com has it where people can post stories as well as recv comments about them. But yeah I heard an author I like E. E. Knight for his start kind of self publishing as e-books before he was signed/printed.

starStuff · 06-26-2008, 07:48 AM

This sounds interesting, much like spreading your music around the internet just to be heard. (i play drums in a band so i know all about that)

i am curious, and forgive my ignorance i don't know much about the printing industry, but what would this do to your first publishing rights? As I understand it, many publishers will not publish your book if it has already been published.

lin · 06-26-2008, 09:51 AM

Actually, publishers re-issue previously published work every day. Take a look inside the next paperback you pick up and there's a good chance that the "publication history" in the front will list more than one publishing house.

And that's not even getting into discussion of reprints.

Lord Raiden · 06-26-2008, 08:52 PM

Yeah, from what I've heard about, the publishing houses that publish the successful Creative Commons and Self Published writers know that they have an established audience and that audience will gladly buy the books if asked to.

They also know you have an established future audience too. That's the key to self publishing and Creative Commons publishing. Build yourself a sizable listening/reading audience and you're almost guaranteed to get signed. That's kinda what I'm shooting for. I'm trying to put my stuff out there and prove I'm a good writer so a publisher will pick me up.

Oddly though, given the types of authors getting published these days, a disturbing number of which are really bad or boring, I'm pretty sure I've got at least a decent chance of getting published. Especially since my writing is better than some of these big name writers, and those aren't my words. Those come from my readers.

BTW, you guys ought to read my novel when you get a chance and critique it. Your input, heck everyone's input, helps me just get that much better.