Why Am I Publishing My Novel Online - for Free ?

Queen of Chaos said...     (In the Comment Section on Chapter 43)

Woah! You're posting your book on your blog? I have never seen this before! I must go back to previous posts and find out the answer. ;)

I think you're brave. Aren't you afraid of copyrite laws- even though you wrote Copyrite 2011 at the top of each post?

Guess I'm just a little worried for you.

But, besides me being worried, I'm excited to read your book right here on your blog!

My response:
Thank you for your kind words Autumn. I think that you raise a good question - one that I've thought about a lot. Here is my lengthy answer.

I decided to open-publish my fiction novel, "In Ravenscrag's Shadow", on my blog for a few significant reasons.

My first reason was that I loved writing this novel and didn't want to keep all the fun I had doing it to myself. At the beginning, I wasn't sure if I would ever publish the book (in print), so I thought, "Why not". Truth be told, I only spent about three and a half months creating "In Ravenscrag's Shadow", so if someone did try to 'rip me off', at least the loss wouldn't be unbearable. That said, however, Blogger puts date & time stamps on every post, so proving that this manuscript was mine first would be a no brainer (not to mention my original notes).

My second reason was that I hoped to soon publish my non-fiction book, "Three Seconds On, Three Seconds Off" and felt that with my lifestyle of working all the time, I needed an advertising / promotion tool that didn't involve travelling around to do book signings. I thought that publishing "In Ravenscrag's Shadow" on line would assist me in getting noticed - hopefully in a positive light. Since I have a worldwide readership on my blog, I hope that at least some of my visitors are entertained. I also hope that my readers will tell their friends about a free online novel that their children can read without fear of moral contamination to their young minds.

My third reason was to give a little back to the online writing community. I have personally benefited from the words of many others but have never seen anyone offer to show me their writing-in-progress. As an author, I felt to keep all my unedited words to myself, so I decided to breach my comfort zone and let those who might be interested see a part of my creative process. The novel, you are reading here in this blog, has been edited only by me. It is my raw writing and my very first attempt at fiction writing in excess of 1,000 words as well as well as my very first novel. ("Three Seconds On, Three Seconds Off" is a collection of historical, autobiographical short stories.)

My fourth reason was that I thought that "In Ravenscrag's Shadow" did need a little fine tuning, and what better way to get some helpful feedback than to put it out there for the world to read and respond to. (As awesome as it might be to do it, I'm not naive enough to believe that I could write a fiction best seller on my first attempt - only in my dreams.) Once the book concludes with Chapter 45 (on Feb 26th) I'm going to re-edit the manuscript with consideration given to any comments that you, my readers offer. In November, I printed and hand-bound one copy of "In Ravenscrag's Shadow" which has been read by several friends.

Once the feedback is all in and I've completed my next edit, I plan to submit the manuscript to a publisher or two. If I get no takers, I'll probably self publish and offer the book for sale on Amazon - or, I might just produce hand-bound copies at home. Or perhaps both. It is a lot of fun to transform a bunch of pages into a real book!

So there you have it... It's been a rewarding, fulfilling, exciting, scary, demanding and fun experience to publish "In Ravenscrag's Shadow" online and I figure... what's the point of creating if I don't enjoy it to the max and climb a little way out of my comfort zone! If you enjoy reading this novel half as much as I enjoyed creating it, then I'll smile in gratitude, draw in a big breath, exhale slowly and feel very satisfied!


Thank you all for visiting my blog!!!