As I wrote earlier: "A blend of Internet references, hardboiled dialogue, and smart Blook powered organization, Hackoff.com might become the standard for book releases of the future--Internet-distributed, fan-powered, and file-sharing friendly. It's Lightnet compatible fiction."
In celebration of Evslin's brave publishing experiment, I used his interview to christen a brand new Publishing Spot weekly feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I will run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers--delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Here is the conclusion of my interview with Tom Evslin...
Jason Boog:
Your novel applies two innovative web tools: Creative Commons License and the Blook format. How did this affect the creation and distribution of your novel?
Tom Evslin:
Creative Commons is a mechanism for protecting my copyright while doing free distribution of the online book. Other writers like Cory Doctorow have used it and many bloggers do. Probably have to be some court cases to see whether it does protect the rights that authors want to protect... But I think giving electronic content away – both text and audio – is an excellent way for an author to establish readership and create buzz for the eventual offline edition. This is particularly true for a debut author like me.
The traditional publishers are the gatekeepers of fiction. It is very hard to get a self-published book reviewed or even treated with respect. But I believe all of that is due to change. Bloggers are an avenue around gatekeepers in many ways.
And the Blook format (a blog on a book) both gives readers a chance to try before they buy and also appeals to the ever increasing number of blog readers. The blook format also meant that we could use the tools like RSS syndication which had already grown up around blogs as a way to reach readers.
Jason Boog:
How long did the writing process take? How long did the podcasting process take? What is your advice for writers looking to utilize both of these tools for book promotion?
Tom Evslin:
It took almost exactly a year to write the first draft of Hackoff.com. At 650+ pages it’s a big book. I started the serialization online in parallel with editing and, in fact, online readers helped me find many mistakes.
We’ve just begun podcasting and it is time consuming to record the episodes and post them – I spend time on this daily since I do most of the narration and so does my publisher at dotHill press, Kelly Evans. I do it all on my PC using Audacity.
We’ve dramatized some of the episodes with multiple players. We use Voice over IP for this – Skype – which gives us better quality than a regular phone call would although not studio quality. Excitement about the podcast has built quickly so I’m convinced it’ll be worth the time and trouble.
Jason Boog:
You also helm dotHill Press, a publishing outfit that seems to be using these tools to work with other writers. As an editor, what kind of stories are you looking for? What's in store for dotHill Press in the future?
Tom Evslin:
So far, dotHill is publishing only Hackoff.com. It also has a blog for self-publishers. We formed it to give us a platform for hackoff.com the blook and haven’t decided yet whether it will publish other works. So not sure yet what’s in store for it although there has been lots of interest both by authors and publishers.
» Five Easy Questions: Tom Evslin, Part Two from ThePublishingSpot
Yesterday, I spent some time with Tom Evslin, a pioneering figure in the development of the Internet, a "serial CEO," and most recently, novelist. Evslin released his serialized online murder mystery, Hackoff.com, in handy audio and web... [Read More]
Tracked on: January 24, 2006 8:29 AM | Permalink to Trackback