Holiday fiction in newspapers

The other day, I wrote in "Chip on Your Shoulder, about author Cory Doctorow's approach to selling his science fiction books by providing free downloads at the same time the printed version is on sale. Newspapers, of course, are doing the same thing, offering online versions of their paper for free, while charging for the ink on dead trees product.

My wife, Kathy Fair, and I are engaged in a similar experiment; we write newspaper serial novels, the first of which is now a hardcover book, but which are available free online. Like Doctorow, we're, in effect, in the freebie business, but banking that print and online newspaper readers will win become an audience eager to buy our story in book form.

We'll get a sense of how that experiment fares this weekend.  Kathy and I are flying to Delaware today to appear Saturday at The Holly Festival in Milton, the town that provided the inspiration for our newspaper serial and book, “The Holly Wreath Man,.” and do three signings at bookstores in the tiniest state. Delaware is said to have three counties, two at high tide; it's dotted with places called Dagsboro and Gumborow, and Little Creek, where the calendars seemed to stop in 1938 and captivated my imagination about forgotten history. It’s also where Kathy’s family lives, and where we met 30 years ago, so we’ll have a nice reunion.

Jenny Maher, a reporter for the The Delaware State News, where I worked in 1975-1977 and wrote the true story behind “The Holly Wreath Man,” published a generous advance,

And as it turns out, we'll have a new story for the freebie experiment. Starting today,  our hometown paper, the St. Petersburg Times,  is running a web-onlyof our newest serial, “Mystery @ Elf Camp,” along with podcast recordings of each chapter..The Times, owned by The Poynter Institute where I teach,  teased to it today on the front page and Floridian front.

This one’s shorter, just 14-parts, and designed for young readers newspapers are desperate to lure and keep.  We've had other sales through Universal Press  Syndicate  for this holiday season, but not sure  where. As we find out, I'l l create a new  quikmap  like the one  I made to  locate the 50  papers which ran "The Holly  Wreath Man" since  2003. (More on the value of  mapping marketing books in a future post.)

Will Delawareans (excluding family and friends) who had the chance to read "The Holly Wreath Man" in print or listen to it in podcast form still want a book?

Will they, as Doctorow says of his sci-fi audience,"treat books as markers of identity and as cultural artifacts of great import?" Or will they, as often happens, stop by a bookstore table where Kathy and I preside over stacks of "The Holly Wreath Man," and say, "Oh, I read this in the paper" and move on.

In the parlance of serial narratives, we've left you with a cliffhanger. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Comments

[Nicholas]

Mr. Scanlan,
It's been a week since your last post, and, well, I'm getting a little anxious. Reading, contemplating and critiquing the contents of this blog have become part of my daily routine, and your trip to Delaware is really throwing a wrench in that system:)

I hope everything is going well.

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