It appears that one of the ways to find readers and get exposure is to upload multiple chapters of your book(s) to various websites geared towards this. I just don’t know. I realize that many authors in ages past serialized their works—Charles Dickens, for example—but keep in mind, they got paid for doing so. We indie writers don’t. The reason others do this is to garner fans, but me? Not so much.
Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe I’m paranoid. But here’s the thing. If you share chapter after chapter, you may get read and receive critiques from what may, perhaps, be a growing audience, but what do you sacrifice in the meantime? I like to tell my stories. I’m bursting with the ending of Lisen of Solsta. I can’t wait to offer it to the world. But uploading chapter after chapter? They say it’s a way to get the attention of agents and publishers, but how well does it really work?
And then there’s plagiarism, a devil who reared its horned head this weekend in a fellow author’s blog. Apparently it’s rife amongst those who frequent these sharing websites. Especially the fanfiction sites. The raptors swoop in, carry off anything they choose, change a word, a name, a this-or-that, and then pass it off as their own. And the actual author of the piece has no idea unless and until someone familiar with their work spots it posing as another’s creation someplace else. Ouch.
So, much as it might help to further Lisen’s progress in the world, for now I think I will avoid such sharing. The positive feedback could certainly prove helpful in my quest for worldwide domination, but I suspect that goal is a bit out of my and Lisen’s range. For now I’ll keep my chapters to myself until after publication of the book. Minds change, and mine could, but in the meantime, look for Tainted, book 2 in Lisen of Solsta, in the early fall.