Originally Posted by Laird (Post 44800)

Joe & Wilum:You guys are great, and thanks for worrying on my behalf. Speaking only for myself, I have no problem with what amounts to a free sample. Kelly Link has made her very successful collections free to download and Night Shade is supportive of Amelia Beamer's free serialization of her upcoming zombie novel. Certainly other authors disagree with this model and I respect that difference.Several of my fans read Imago in its entirety at B&N or Powells and certainly nothing is stopping a potential buyer from reading Occultation as they sip coffee at the bookstore coffee shop (as I'm sure many will), so a free story on Amazon seems more restrictive in reality than what brick and mortar buyers face.At this point, my problem is anonymity rather than being pirated. If I could airdrop crates of my books over major population centers, I would. As sales and delivery models shift toward the digital I may very well become more conservative -- but at the moment, my feeling is exposure is good and that it leads to being more widely known and thus read.

Originally Posted by Laird (Post 44800)

Joe & Wilum:You guys are great, and thanks for worrying on my behalf. Speaking only for myself, I have no problem with what amounts to a free sample. Kelly Link has made her very successful collections free to download and Night Shade is supportive of Amelia Beamer's free serialization of her upcoming zombie novel. Certainly other authors disagree with this model and I respect that difference.Several of my fans read Imago in its entirety at B&N or Powells and certainly nothing is stopping a potential buyer from reading Occultation as they sip coffee at the bookstore coffee shop (as I'm sure many will), so a free story on Amazon seems more restrictive in reality than what brick and mortar buyers face.At this point, my problem is anonymity rather than being pirated. If I could airdrop crates of my books over major population centers, I would. As sales and delivery models shift toward the digital I may very well become more conservative -- but at the moment, my feeling is exposure is good and that it leads to being more widely known and thus read.

Originally Posted by Sam (Post 44946)

Speaking purely as a reader, downloadable stories can definitely inspire me to purchase a full book. I will be ordering Richard Garvin's "The Darkly Splendid Realm" this month, after having read the sample story posted on the Dark Regions Press website. I downloaded a number of other Dark Regions PDF samples, and will be reading then as time allows too.

I also still like collections for checking out new authors. PDFs are nice, but books are better. The last one I bought was "Lovecraft Unbound", where I had my first exposure to a number of authors mentioned and/or present on this board, including Mr. Barron. "Catch Hell" made me resolve to finally read "The Imago Sequence" - it has been on my Amazon Wish List since before I even knew about TLO, and I now have it on good authority from a certain Joe P. that it is not to be missed. I took the plunge, and ordered both "The Imago Sequence" and "Occultation" today.

I notice that since finding TLO last year, I watch less TV and read more books. That is undoubtedly A Good Thing.

Originally Posted by Sam (Post 44946)

Speaking purely as a reader, downloadable stories can definitely inspire me to purchase a full book. I will be ordering Richard Garvin's "The Darkly Splendid Realm" this month, after having read the sample story posted on the Dark Regions Press website. I downloaded a number of other Dark Regions PDF samples, and will be reading then as time allows too.

I also still like collections for checking out new authors. PDFs are nice, but books are better. The last one I bought was "Lovecraft Unbound", where I had my first exposure to a number of authors mentioned and/or present on this board, including Mr. Barron. "Catch Hell" made me resolve to finally read "The Imago Sequence" - it has been on my Amazon Wish List since before I even knew about TLO, and I now have it on good authority from a certain Joe P. that it is not to be missed. I took the plunge, and ordered both "The Imago Sequence" and "Occultation" today.

I notice that since finding TLO last year, I watch less TV and read more books. That is undoubtedly A Good Thing.

Originally Posted by hopfrog (Post 44982)

Yes, I see this and mostly agree. Certainly, I wouldn't have most of the readers I now have if it weren't for my books being offered through Amazon. I almost always refuse payment and ask to be paid in lots of copies of the book, so that I can give them away to friends (booksellers complain about this but, strangely, not publishers...). And I am always offering bits of unpublished work in places such as this forum and my blog. It just struck me as uncool for Amazon to post one of the original tales in its entirety without the author's permission -- as I assume is the case. But if doing so results in people buying the book -- awesome!

Originally Posted by Joe Pulver (Post 44806)

I certainly understand your view on exposure and applaud you for it. Yes, I want to be read—badly, and no, I’m not seeing any kind of money from my work, but I fear the eBook world, and possibly losing our rights/control to our work. That said, as one who lived in the library as a kid, I’m all for reading for free. If not for my local library, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Hesse, and tons of others, would have come to me much later and that would have been painful.

Anonymity J You should not fear it. You will become a giant, that’s already written. Your work is of the highest caliber (You ARE an unerring master) and readers will hear of it and flock to it, and love it, and always want more. It is guys like me, and Wilum and Cisco, who are almost tiny Ligottis, we will have small(er) readerships, as our work is too far from the mainstream, I think. Your work is brilliant and it’s only a mater of time before you are received w/ open arms by much larger audiences. And I will rejoice to see you read as widely as you deserve to be.

At the end of the day, some money for our work would be nice, but exposure, to be read and have our work enjoyed, that is the heart of it indeed.