by Mike Shea on 4 May 2004
I read an excellent short story called by James Patrick Kelly. It's a short story and available for free from a web-zine called Infinity Plus. Jim Kelly has MP3 audio versions of his fiction, perfect for an MP3 player on the go.
My whole transaction with Jim Kelly was quite interesting. I downloaded the text of his story, printed it out, read it, and sent him $3 using Paypal. There was little overhead - paypal gets a few cents and the bandwidth and storage costs were probably a few cents more - but far less than a traditional publishing outfit. There was no security. Kelly posted the story in ascii.
James Kelly is a professional writer. He makes money doing this. Making money by selling my words is a dream I've been recently cultivating. Publishing hardcopy isn't exactly easy but publishing to the web is. I publish a ton of fiction and a ton of non-fiction to my web site and it runs me about $30 a month. I haven't asked for a payment for these since I tried it out on Liquidtheater, but I'm not sure my words are worth much more (and often less) than the time the reader takes to read them.
It's great to see a web publishing model that works. James Kelly's story, , is excellent and well worth the $3 I sent him for the opportunity to read it.
You can read James Kelly's other fiction, unsolicited advise, and lots of other stuff at his web site. If you like it, send him a buck.