About two years ago I had the idea to release a novella I'd written in high school online. Yes, e-books and e-readers existed then, but they certainly weren't as big of a deal as they are now. At the time I thought making a website with a decent layout for the chapters would be beneficial in a marketing standpoint, and so I found the right template and theme and went about making it work. I even had the idea to offer a PDF of the novella for those willing to donate 99 cents. Of course, not too long afterward the whole e-book thing really kicked off, and e-readers started to become as common as cell phones (well, okay, maybe not quite that common ... yet). I made the novella available as an e-book and pretty much left it at that. But you know, the strange thing is the original website still gets traffic. Sometimes a lot of traffic. It's been linked to maybe three or four places that specialize in free online fiction. Every once in a while someone will leave a comment at the site, which then in turns reminds me that the site is still there. I'd since taken off that donate-99-cents-for-a-PDF button but decided to add some links to the e-book. And since then, I've seen that people have been checking out those links. Have they been buying? Not all of them. But at least it's there. Sort of like a billboard, in a way.
That's the trick with self-promotion (something I'll talk more about later in the week): it's never really done. Sure, some authors are lucky and all they have to do is write a book or story and publish it and their readers do the work for them, linking to it on Twitter and Facebook or reviewing it on Amazon or whatever. And then you have others who aren't so fortunate and who have to bust a hump (is that even the right term?) to get people to even acknowledge that their work exists.
Anyway, so I was thinking about my online novella and how it was still attracting readers and I wondered if there were any other stories I could do that with and then I thought that if I did find the right story it would all come down to whether or not I could find the right template and theme and so late one night last week I started playing around and found a template and theme I thought was perfect and spent about two hours creating this.
And that, really, is about it. So if you've always wanted to read Through the Guts of a Beggar but didn't want to a) spend the outrageous price of 99 cents or b) pay with a Tweet or Facebook post for a PDF, then here's your chance to read the original novelette for free. And if you do read it and happen to enjoy it, feel free to pass the link on to someone else you think might enjoy it too. Gracias.