Thread: Online writing: The short story, the publicity, the simplicity

I log into the forums, and to my great surprise, I see a new forum section. New Media. I'm intrigued, is this something I have somehow missed during all my time here on WF? A quick looks says no, it is something new. 0 posts for three sub-sections. Now I'm excited, we have something here to keep up with the ever changing role of technology, mainly the internet, in writing and publishing. So now I'm tapping at my keyboard, and now since my little anecdote is over, I should start writing something productive. So I'll focus on the topic of blogs for this post.

Getting your book published can be a daunting, confusing task. I know, I looked around online for some time and only got more perplexed. Register for an ISBN number? Whats this, how do I do that??? Well, I decided that since all I really had were several short stories, I wasn't going to be published in paper for some time. So I turned to a form of media that, even though I had very limited experience in, it was quite easy and simple. The blog. So, I decided to register at Blogger. All it took was having an email address at gmail, and I managed to get my short story posted online, for everyone to see in under five minutes. A couple clicks of the mouse, copy&paste, and bam. My work was out there for all to see. Ok, this is sounding like I'm advertising for Blogger right now. Sorry, I just wanted to give an example here. I'll wind down to the simple, cut and polished message.

If you want to be published, but you don't have the time or material suitable for paper print, you can very easily use a blog to get your short story out there. Share the link on your facebook or myspace, or whatever you may have, forums ect. And later on when you finally finished your dream work, and celebrated with a bottle of bubbly, the person you send the draft into, they just might have read your short story online. A far stretch, but hey, stranger things have happened when the internet gets involved.

Now, there are other ways to get your story out there like an EBook format and others. I know those are successful ways to get your story out there, and admittedly, I don't know much about those ways, so I will let people who do know about those media streams to post about them here, and offer your advice and experiences. Though ebook talk does belong in the ebook section.

Well, it's true. Far stranger things have happened. I've sold short stories from both my website and blog.
Blogging is a form of publishing, and can conceivably get as many sets of eyes on your material as print publication, but nobody pays you to do it (at least not directly-google adsense or whatever can pay off some with a lot of clickthroughs).
Still...with the proper amount of advertising, and an eye toward self-promotion, as you say, an enterprising sort may be able to turn a blog story into cash returns.

There are certainly ways of monetizing blogs.
One thing you should be thinking about is not ISBN, but RSS. A main way to build readership for your online writing is to make wise, prominent use of your feed subscription.
And... the feed itself can be monetized.


As an example of what I mean, your feed is down at the bottom (the Atom link)


You could use that link ( http://sundancerstory.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default ) in posts, emails, signature etc.

Indeed. RSS syndication is good business. Not only posts, emails, signatures, but feeds to other sites. Mine goes to last.fm, facebook, and myspace. It used to go to the61, which was a terrific outlet, but that place went weird.
Kang, you might want to create some linkage as well. Find some blogs you like, make friends, trade links. This site, for example, has a link to your blog

Something to add to this is the literally amazing variety of Wordpress plugins (mentioned in the main thread) that are available, to do everything from add a search function to a blog to adding actual forums to individual blogposts, rather than relying on the seldom-used "comments" feature.
That doesn't help the "content question", which is a common complaint. Bloggers who work in specific categories look down their noses at those who write "general" or "personal" blogs, as if such specialization somehow makes them superior. Non-bloggers often look down their noses at "bloggers". I used to be one of the latter, became one of the former, and settled down into comfortable uncaringness. Blogging is blogging, no matter what the subject. It's the ego-driven need to put forth one's own opinions in the often forlorn hope that someone else gives a hang.
It would be better if the quality of writing were higher, as blogs in general are not very literate, and it would probably be better if there were some sort of self-editing facility apparent in many bloggers, but those complaints have been leveled at virtually every form of written and/or verbal communication since Ogg first applied a stone adze to the face of a rock.

So would you reccomend wordpress over blogspot? I mean in options and such. Ease of use too?

I have a blogspot blog that I started when we started traveling as a way for friends and family to keep up with us. I have a little bit of my writing posted there but not a whole lot. It's is more for friends and family not as a way to market my writing.

Does it make a difference what service you use?

As far as the proprietary service, I can't say. I have a wordpress.com blog but I've never used blogspot's service. The plugins are mostly for people who use wordpress on a domain (or use wp's paid services). I've been using that version since 2007, and am quite happy with it, and with 75% of the plugins. Some of them don't work well with each other, and some of them are just plain silly to me.

I've used Blogger and Wordpress (and still have blogs with both), and I really think it's about what you want to get out of it. Wordpress (free) looks more professional in templates and general arrangement, but you have to pay to get into your template (or if you want a template other than the ones they offer). Blogger lets you get into and modify your template for free, but Blogger blogs (in my experience and the experiences of my friends) don't get as many hits as Wordpress ones do.

I use Wordpress with my domains because I prefer working with it rather than Blogger. The stored images, more reliable scheduling of posts and - as Moderan mentioned - the amazing amount of plugins. (And templates as well, that are two clicks to install, if you're hosting your own site.)

Long story short, I use Blogger for my personal ramblings and Wordpress for my writing, book reviews, work, etc.

I prefer wordpress. Blogger is a pain, and I often have trouble with openID on it. While the template thing is an issue, it's not something that really bother a lot of people. As long as you have a clean fresh template, most readers are happy.

I've never used the paid version of WP, but John Scalzi at Whatever does, and it looks very nice.

Once I contracted a domain name and hosting (a very confusing thing to search for and evaluate) I decided to install everything available to me in the "Fantastico" package and see what appealed to me. I immediately abandoned Joomla, Drupal and another "CMS" as being too complicated for my simple needs.
I installed WordPress, Nucleus, and b2evolution.
Of the three WordPress was the clearcut advantage for simplicity and utility. I un-installed everything but that. I was attracted to Nucleus somewhat, but a look at the support forums was discouraging. I don't speak fluent Techonix, I'm afraid.

That's a start. Have you chosen a template yet or are you still setting up the database?