Boing Boing co-founder and science fiction novelist Cory Doctorow wrote in Forbes recently about how giving away free e-books has actually helped him get sales. It might seem a contradiction, but read his explanation to understand why it actually works.

It makes a great deal of sense, and I plan to give away my own “speculative fiction” short stories, in hopes of gaining an audience and finding an interested agent or publisher. I used to have time to write up queries, but was too scared. Now I welcome constructive criticism but as a more than full-time paid blogger and e-book writer, I don’t have time to write to agents and publishers. My collection of shorts is nearly 5 years old and collecting dust. They are amongst my best work, and if they don’t spark interest on the Internet, they probably won’t have a market, period.

It won’t cost me much to distribute (other than my currently minimal hosting fees) and could only serve to gain me an audience. Which is what Cory Doctorow says. The only real cost to an aspiring writer, in terms of self-publishing, is criticism. I’ve actually learned over the years, through hard lessons, to be pragmatic. If I release my short story/ novella collection online and every comment left is that it sucks, then I know I’ve got something wrong that I have to improve if I ever intend any positive feedback. I could retreat into a shell, but what good would that do?

On the other hand, if I have a mix of positive and negative comments, then that fires me up even more because I’m doing something right. It might even motivate me to finish the other 50 or so shorts that I started, most of which are based on a near-future alternate “United States of North America” setting where radical right-wingers gain control and scare us into submission. Oh, wait. Maybe not so alternate.

Many of my stories were inspired by my then current reading of classic Philip K. Dick and by contemporaries like Jack Womack and Nalo Hopkinson. In fact, all of my erotic sci-fi shorts were inspired by Hopkinson’s writing, but the style is all my own crazy blend of proto/post cyberpunk produced from 30+ years of writing speculative fiction short stories for my own amusement. (Not to mention from reading many, many other writers classic and contemporary, from all genres, including a very healthy dose of Herman Hesse and Gabriel Garcia Marquez thrown in at the time.)

That said, I have to massage the short story collection into one or more PDF files. At which point I’ll release them on this site and cross my fingers that people will provide honest criticism. Bring it on

Note: If my memory serves me correctly (which it often does not), Cory wrote a few sci-fi/ fantasy/ horror book reviews for my old print mag, Chaos Review, way back in the mid 1990s when he worked in a “sci-fi” bookstore, Bakka, on Queen St. W in Toronto, Canada. I’m so glad to see him doing so well, as he was always so nice to me. At the time, I didn’t know how many great Canadian authors would come out of that store, including Tanya Huff and Michelle Sagara and probably others. And I think I offended Michelle because of my unawareness. So Michelle, this is apology is 10 years overdue, but I am sorry for any offense I may have given.

powered by performancing firefox