Have a look, we’ve learnt a lot from your blog! 🙂
xxx

Step 1: Be Radiohead…

That’s what I was thinking.

The Monty Python story reminds me of the lessons bands learned after watching Radiohead make a mint with In Rainbows:

Step 1: Be Radiohead…..

At any rate, why not ads in ebooks?

I have a tickle of a memory of reading something lately where that was being tried and it wasn’t going over well. Feedbooks, perhaps? I thought I saw it on Teleread, but I can’t find it right now.

2. Thanks for the Extreme recommendation I’ll check it out.

3. Regarding authors and the 1k true fans — I don’t think it can work for most authors who want to write full time. They’ll still need agents and publishers and advances. Most authors will still need to work at least part time (and hopefully that part time work includes medical benefits).

But here’s the thing:

Your only really hope as an author — if you want to make a more than a semi-livable wage — is to break it big. How many authors are going to break it big?

It seems to me that along your way to breaking it big (or not breaking it), it’d be nice to get *something* out of it — both in terms of income but also in the value that comes with connecting with fans. Time and energy is an issue, of course. But that’s an issue no matter what path you take. Whether it’s working full time and trying to write here and there. Or working part time and writing 7 novels over several years like Brandon Sandersen did. Or even if you have a trust fund and have all the time in the world, it seems to me that it’s better to work a few angles than to just write and cross your finger and hope.

I’m also worried that the dominance of the novel as the major form of print narrative is going to erode so it makes sense now to get experience in and build a track record of some of these other forms of writing (short stories = singles, novellas/screenplays = EPs, novels = albums) as well as learning to write serially.

And hey — at least authors don’t have expensive equipment needs and have to tour relentlessly in a broken down Ford econline and crash in squats and eat out of dumpsters like many of the punk/hardcore/post-punk bands did/do.

Twitter feeds for main characters

Done.

And then there’s this.

Also, did you listen to that Extreme album, III Sides to Every Story? A comment you made made me think this might be comparable to what you envision with LDS music.

Last, my brother sent me a link to the “1,000 true fans” concept you talk about and then there’s a followup about the reality of 1,000 true fans.

For example, Sujata Massey (mentioned above) writes murder mysteries that take place in Japan. So she sells primarily into the large mystery genre market, but also to people like me who are primarily interested in the Japanese aspects.

At any rate, why not ads in ebooks? High-brow publications like The New Yorker and National Geographic have ads. PBS and NPR have ads (they just don’t call them that). I see an opening for Google to pioneer context-based ads for the literary-minded.