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Tor will serialize John Scalzi’s next Old Man’s War novel online
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Sounds interesting.Maybe we should read Old Man's War before this comes out.
You should suggest it for the next Laser pick ;-)
I like serialised books. Stephen King released The Green Mile as a 6 part serialised novel. I have them sitting on my bookshelf.
I am currently reading Yesterday's Gone It is up to Episode 15 of a projected 24 part series.
Serialised books are great unless the author stops half way through, which Stephen King did with The Plant. He got bored with it and just quit.
I haven't read the article yet but it will be interesting to see the cost model. It's always challenging with that type of book, especially since its already published in a complete form. If you read the first bits and like it, would you want to wait for the rest of the serials? Or just pony up for the full book? And will the cumulative cost be on par with the complete book? It's weird to think of this on an already-published book. Would be different for an unpublished work.
I was excited to hear about the concept.I thought that was a good series.
Of course reading a book slowly one chapter
at a time would be a bit hassle but everything has its price.
I assumed that the chapters would be free.
I guessed that TOR was offering the chapters as a way to drive
traffic to their web site.
Then I read that you have to pay for each chapter.
There's no saving to buying them one at a time.
You can't read a few chapters and then buy the whole book.
So my reaction is "Why bother?"
I don't think this approach will go over real well.
Hah I misread it, I thought they were RE-publishing Old Man's War serially...and I couldn't see the benefit. I too would probably wait until a complete version was available, so I could read it straight through. I like the idea but think I'd end up doing a lot of re-reading when each chapter came out to remember where I left off...
terpkristin wrote: "I like the idea but think I'd end up doing a lot of re-reading when each chapter came out to remember where I left off..."The good serialised books usually have a short catch up section at the start of the book.
I too will wait for the complete book. All of the 'Old Man's War' books are quick read page turners. Waiting for the next installment would drive me nuts.
I think this is great. I remember the best part about reading comics was waiting weeks to find out what happens next. The anticipation adds to the excitement. I will definately buy them as they are available. The only down side is the extra content factor... like seeing a movie in the theater only to see their is an alternate ending on the DVD. You should get a discount for your ticket stub or sumthing.
If it's the same cost as the final product, I will likely wait for the final product (which also gives me more time to get to 'Old Man's War'). I think a better way to work this would be a premium subscription model - "Sign up for our premimum Tor.com website subscription and receive monthly serials of John Scalzi's new book!", that kind of thing. Heck, you could even set it up so that the chapters are only readable at Tor.com and then offer subscribers a discount on the final package. Even if I ended up printing the chapters to PDF to read them on my Kindle (which I do with Tor.com short stories), I would still end up buying the full book. Dozens of singular chapters on my Kindle would drive me crazy enough to warrant buying the full book.
That starts next month.Still no idea as to the price.
Each story is supposed to be stand alone.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/06...
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Books mentioned in this topic
Old Man's War (other topics)The Green Mile (other topics)
Cool! Always up for new Scalzi and this should be interesting.
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Anybody who loves serialized stories and episodic dramas will be excited to learn that Tor is experimenting with publishing the next John Scalzi book first in serialized form, as a set of e-books, and then later in collected print and e-book editions — similar to the way that comics come out in single issues and are collected in trades.