Fade’s Fiction Vision Statement
By Fade
Thanks for stopping by Fade’s Fiction, a site that started out as a way for me to share my writing with others. Of course like so many other things, what I would like to accomplish with this site has evolved as time has passed. If you have a minute or two, I’d like to share with you the vision I have for this web site.
There has been quite a bit of hoopla as of late regarding the whole file sharing issue. Regardless of my personal beliefs as to the right or wrong of some of the applications to which people are putting file sharing, it highlights a very important fact.
It is now essentially
free to distribute information.
That is right folks; you can now put up your very own website, and distribute whatever you would like to the masses. For free.
With regards to the publishing industry, the folks at Baen publishing are ahead of everyone else, and have already started offering their new books online. I’d like to follow their business model, but do it on a smaller scale. New writers can send their books to me, I’ll help do some editing, and then we can put them online where people can purchase them. Will these books be as high of quality as what you buy from the regular publishers? In all honesty, they probably won’t be. I’m just starting out both as an editor and writer, and I assume most of these writers will be in about the same boat.
However, we will have a few very important things going for us.
First, after investing the time and money to edit and format these books, we can ‘print’ and distribute them for free. I don’t have any hard figures on how much off the shelf price of a novel goes to the publisher, but I happen to know that authors typically get about 10%. If we assume that the publishers get another 20%, that means that on a six-dollar book, $.60 goes to the author, and $1.20 goes to the publisher. The other $4.20 gets split among the printer, the shipper, the wholesaler, and the retailer. Fade’s Fiction doesn’t have any of those costs, so we can offer books to people for a fraction of the cost. Right now, not having run any hard numbers, I’m guessing that we can bring books to you for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.50-$3.50 each.
Second, although initially these books won’t have professional editors going over them, they will still be very good. The authors and editors who will be working on the stuff you’ll see at Fade’s Fiction will be talented beginners who are in the process of putting that last bit of polish on their skills that would allow them to be published by one of those larger, better known publishing houses. For a significantly lower price, people should get a product that is very enjoyable to read even if it does have a few rough corners.
Third, every book sold by Fade’s Fiction will have the first third of the story available online for free. Customers will have a chance to read a significant portion of the stories they are interested in before ever making a purchase. If the novel in question captures your fancy, you’ll be more than welcome to spend a nominal amount to purchase a full copy of it that you can printout, read on your computer, or on a PDA, or other mobile device.
Fourth, Fade’s Fiction has plenty of room to grow. As more and more people, both authors and readers hear about this site, we’ll be able to provide new material more often. As our volume starts to grow, we’ll be able to increase the margin we can offer our authors on each new sale, thus keeping the authors you will grow to know and love here at Fade’s Fiction rather than having them move to more traditional publishing houses where you’ll have to pay more for their work.
Obviously, Fade’s Fiction has a very long way to go before we arrive at our destination. In order to get there, we’ll need your help. Word of mouth will be a key factor in getting our name out. Please tell your friends and family about Fade’s. Chances are if they like to read, within the next year or so that we’ll have something here that they’ll enjoy. If you know any aspiring authors send them our way as well, we’re very much on the lookout for new talent.
Finally, check back every couple of weeks to see what has changed here at Fade’s Fiction, and if you’ve enjoyed the free fiction that we’ve posted and would like to give something in return, while supporting our dream, feel free to contribute money to the site.
Copyright 2003, Fade’s Fiction. All Rights Reserved