There has been a lot of discussion both in the blogsphere and here about giving away book content in pursuit of a book contract and/or publicity. There are a couple successful examples of books published first online, with John Scalzi being one of the most well-known. He posted his first two novels Old Man’s War and Agent to the Stars online, both of which were then re-published in print format. He then sold four more science fiction novels. Part of the reason he succeeded is that he has a hugely successful blog, along with the fact that he self-promoted like crazy, and didn’t just put the story up and then sit back to wait. Author Cory Doctorow gave away his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom online, but simultaneously as the print version came out, not before. Not only that, but he was already successful as a co-editor of Boing Boing, a non-fiction writer, and is a proponent of loosening copyright laws. Scott Sigler published his first two books as serial podcasts and which then were printed. Unfortunately they had a very short print shelf life, although he does have a new print book Infected coming out this year. My point is that these cases are rare, and it takes a lot of work on the author’s part to have a chance of succeeding. Non-fiction and blog-to-print books seem to do slightly transferring to hardcopy, and The New York Times had a great article about web-published work jumping to print. Again even there, the successes are rare.

Now as an alternative, publishing excerpts and extra content to whet readers’ appetites can do very well at drawing new readers. From the NYT article above, the authors of the graphic novel The Shooting War posted just eleven chapters on a webzine Smithmag.net, and then reworked and expanded the material for the print version. The Church of the Customer Blog says that “Try-before-you-buy is tried-and-true. It’s high-value. It’s some of the best marketing available to you,” and that authors should be happy Amazon.com allows readers to get a taste of a books via their site as that gives the reader their “try.” Amazing graphic novelist Eric Drooker offers slideshows of parts of his graphic novels on his site. HarperCollins is offering readers the chance to read certain books for free for a month on their website, however, there are some strict controls that limit what can be done with the book; it can’t be read on a portable reader, it can’t be printed, and it has to be read on the site. With this method, I can see how it would tempt a reader to purchase the book, as sitting at a computer and reading a whole book from a website isn’t that appealing.

On my own site as far as publishing book content, I plan on offering extra information and short stories about my characters, places, and events as well as resources I used for background research. I link to my short stories that have been published, and might possibly reprint pieces that have been published in print but are not available online. I am also considering creating podcasts of my published work. Will I publish the whole book? No. First chapters? Probably. Everything is a juggling game, but just like going into a bookstore and reading parts of a book to “test-drive” it, catching a reader’s eye and then their interest can be the deciding factor as to whether a book will succeed.