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By Chris Meadows

image106[1] As I mentioned back in July, I’ve posted a couple of stories to Scribd just by way of trying out the service to see how well it worked. I’ve since ended up with a number of Scribd subscribers (including Slate writer Farhad Manjoo; I’m not sure entirely why), and my stories have been read a little over 70 times each.

Now I’m wondering whether I should try writing another story—the idea for which came to me in a dream the night before last—and posting it there, for sale for $1. Would anybody buy it? How effective would promotion of it be through social networking and blogging? Would anybody care enough to check it out?

It would be an interesting experiment. And to be honest, the idea of making money from it is probably the only way the story would actually end up getting written. At the moment, I have so many demands on my time it is hard to find any excuse for leisure—and certainly writing a story would feel like a leisure activity otherwise.

And if Greg Stolze was able to get away with charging $1 for a 3,000 word story, perhaps I could get away with charging that much for one that will almost certainly be longer. (Perhaps I could get fancy and do a Storyteller’s Bowl/Ransom Model sort of thing, and say that if I sold 100 copies I’d make it free to everyone. If only 70-some people read my free stories, it doesn’t seem likely I would make that many sales.)

Maybe this weekend I’ll write it down and give it a shot.

 
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