Saturday 5 March 2011

Room and Board-The Kindle Controversy

I'm glad I stirred up some controversy before making any decisions. That gives me time to hear from my readers and my friends.

A reader asked Vickie Tern (to whom I owe immense debts for listening to me over the years, for inspiring me, and more important, for editing for me) what she thought about publishing the last chapter to R&B as a pay story. 

Vickie thinks there is an implicit contract for me to finish and publish the story on fictionmania.tv:
It does seem to me a breach of the social contract, a form of bait and switch, since the story was posted on a free site, no others there have ever required conditional further access of any kind, and that condition wasn't announced at the outset. Pay-per-view sites will often do that, suck em in, then sock em.  But that's what they do.  Readers have a right to expect that an unfinished story on a free site will be finished accordingly, barring the author's death, self-loathing, or wavering attention span.
I take to heart Vickie's thoughts, so I am going to take Vickie's advice. When R&B is done, it will be published on fictionmania.tv from day one. 

I will also publish the complete story as a kindle edition, the entire R&B series as one book. For those of you who buy those kind of things, it will be there. 

A word of caution, the story is not yet done! But when it is done, it will be on fictionmania.tv

Is this okay with everyone?


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