Comments on: Shareware Story Haul: One Week In

By: Peter C. Hayward

Peter C. Hayward — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:40:13 +0000

Have you done/are you thinking of doing an update to this? In a few months, or a year, tell us how much it ended up making from download sales? I’d be quite interested in that, particularly when compared to the first week’s numbers.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:20:33 +0000

Have you considered using a payment processor like Plimus instead of PayPal of Google? Sure, we charge a little more (it’d probably be ~10% on these transactions), but we can get you up and running in literally minutes. Then you don’t have to worry about wasting time on coding instead of writing/marketing.

Just a thought…

Check us out at http://www.plimus.com

By: sarah

sarah — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:02:42 +0000

i bet downloads were “low” because many people probably visit your site while at work, and are therefore unable or unwilling to download a file to their work desktop. and people have goldfish memories, so by the time they get home they’ve forgotten all about downloading the thing.

i dunno. makes sense to me.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:45:28 +0000

Michael O’Shaughnessy:

“I think your expectation of how quickly the turnaround would be from offering the download, to having it read, to offering compensation is too short a time span.”

I’m not aware of saying I had an expectation of immediate payment, actually. I was merely reporting on how much money came in during the first week.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:33:26 +0000

You might do even better if the story had a link from the Scalzi creative sampler. Otherwise, one has to (I think) be a regular reader of your blog and engage in a little (precious little, but still) searching through old posts to find the link.

I probably won’t download it until I have some extended business travel (because I otherwise don’t read much on my computer), though I would definitely read (and pay for) it sooner if it was available in .html format like Agent (‘cuz then I can read it on my handheld device while walking the dog).

By: Michael O'Shaughnessy

Michael O'Shaughnessy — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:54:23 +0000

I think your expectation of how quickly the turnaround would be from offering the download, to having it read, to offering compensation is too short a time span.

Were you expecting folks, generally, to pay before reading?

I like reading because it isn’t a sprint. My pace of reading is slow, intentionally. Perhaps I am not a lone.

By: steve davidson

steve davidson — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:19:31 +0000

re #26 John: Nope.

Pure fear of authorial retribution. Like I’d NEVER have a chance of getting killed off in one of your stories…

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:28:24 +0000

Re #17

Interesting question. I found the blog before I knew Scalzi was a sci-fi writer, but I have never liked much of his fiction (Sagan’s Diary was the only piece I have really enjoyed, though I haven’t read the story in question). For whatever reason, the blog content is more interesting to me than his fiction output. It would be interesting, to me at least, to see what the breakdown is between fans of the blogger compared to fans of the writer compared to fans of both. I suspect the last category would dominate, though.

Thought he blog did work in an advertising sense — I probably never would have read anything by Scalzi if I hadn’t read the blog first. And, hey, I did enjoy Sagan’s Diary to be on the lookout for pieces by John that are similar to that.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:39:09 +0000

Dru:

It really depends on the market. Some reprint anthologies offer as little as a penny a word, some offer more.

By: Dru

Dru — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:20:46 +0000

Out of curiosity, and since you’re being open about these things… what general percentage do reprints tend to average in comparison to the first sale?

Let’s round the $436.43 to $450 and pretend this was a first sale instead of a reprint. Do reprints run significantly less than the first sale at something like 50%? So you’d only pull in $225 second time around? Or could you possibly command more for a reprint if the piece was really well received? I’ve never really seen a good explanation of how reprints are handled…