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Short stories
Nov. 6th, 2007 10:56 pmI think I am totally shallow when it comes to a lot of stuff, but you know what I think is fabulous? Amazon shorts. I know, I know... *cringes*... I worked for a major independent bookseller when Amazon first started making big big waves in the 1990s. They were the enemy. But... I got to get a new short story by R. A. MacAvoy! I love her writing with a ridiculous level of love... Tea with the Black Dragon is an absolutely perfect book, and Lens of the World, and... ok. So with the fangirl squee. But my point is I randomly Google authors I like periodically when bored, and there I saw she had a new story in I think her fantasticfiction entry (I love that website for series order and stuff) and I see it's on Amazon for 50 cents and I'm off as fast as anything to, like Miss Mary Mack, watch the elephants elephants elephants jump the fence fence fence.
I don't know if I would have cared enough to follow it up with, say, a visit to a bookstore somewhere a 45 minute trip away to get a zine that had the story. Would I have loved the idea enough to pay $7.00 to read the story? I dunno. But there it was, all online and stuff, for the price of not-even-as-much as a can of soda.
Yay!
Also, maybe sf/f writers need to have t-shirts like web comics artists do. There could be a whole "like the comics artist? buy the t-shirt! like the t-shirt? read the story!" thing going.
Or we could cheapen that story that someone wrote as tattoos on a whole bunch of people - we could sell temporary tattoos of single lines from poems and short stories - "today I'm feeling all existential but in a joking, post-modern way, which I'm expressing by wearing this temporary tattoo of Modern Poet X-Squared" or something like that.
But then, I'm someone who would totally want a Choo-Choo Bear Pink Corset, so you have to wonder whether any idea I ever have is totally rational.
I don't know if I would have cared enough to follow it up with, say, a visit to a bookstore somewhere a 45 minute trip away to get a zine that had the story. Would I have loved the idea enough to pay $7.00 to read the story? I dunno. But there it was, all online and stuff, for the price of not-even-as-much as a can of soda.
Yay!
Also, maybe sf/f writers need to have t-shirts like web comics artists do. There could be a whole "like the comics artist? buy the t-shirt! like the t-shirt? read the story!" thing going.
Or we could cheapen that story that someone wrote as tattoos on a whole bunch of people - we could sell temporary tattoos of single lines from poems and short stories - "today I'm feeling all existential but in a joking, post-modern way, which I'm expressing by wearing this temporary tattoo of Modern Poet X-Squared" or something like that.
But then, I'm someone who would totally want a Choo-Choo Bear Pink Corset, so you have to wonder whether any idea I ever have is totally rational.
