Or, is it a good idea to give away my ‘art’ for promotional
purposes?
Let me explain. For a while now I’ve been building a
collection of my short stories ready for publication. These are tales that are
either not suited to the lucrative woman’s magazine market or have been rejected
by their intended editors (may these illiterate mongrels die a thousand painful
deaths). Since you’ve never heard of me as a writer you’ll have gathered that I
get lots of rejection letters, so there are quite a few of these stories lying
around the house. These are the tales that nobody adopted, the ones looking for
a good home. They sit on my laptop with their big sad eyes begging to be let
out of their digital cage and longing to be loved.
So what do I do with them?
One idea is to share them freely. In fact that’s just what I’ve
done with some of them at www.shaunfinnie.com/tales.html - I hope that link works, I’m not too
wonderful at this technology malarkey. When I was a lad we only had wood-burning
laptops...I own the copyright to these so there would be no problem with me gathering them together at some later date as a book of short stories and publishing them myself if I have to. But is that defeatist? Every publisher in the country wants new product and generally won’t entertain anything that’s already been published – even if it’s ‘only’ been published online (like on my own website). So by posting them there I pretty much damn them to self-publishing hell.
Is that a bad thing? Is releasing them myself and admitting
that they’ll only ever get a limited readership better than taking the risk on
a publishing house actually taking them up, but knowing that the truth of the
matter is that they’ll never make it past the first editorial glance? Possibly,
but I’m also sacrificing them for the greater good, as they could potentially
drum up interest in my paid work.
So should I be a corporate whore or give away my goodies for
free?
Answers on a postcard please.
© Shaun Finnie 2011
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