Hi, folks! This is another non-literary day, which I have singled out as a writer’s day for making better contact with potential readers than I evidently have heretofore. When I first set up my website, I based it somewhat on my former site, which wasn’t through WordPress.com, and which had an obligatory “Buy now” PayPal button on it for the long works of fiction and poetry which I had or planned to have on it. That meant that if people wanted to read something from that site, they had to pay in advance.
On WordPress.com, however, I have a “Donate” PayPal button. While this at first seemed like a disadvantage for financial reasons, and while I did encourage people to pay for what they read, I think the time has come for a bit of clarification. In short, despite everything I said about wanting people to feel fine about reading the long works for free if they felt they couldn’t pay, probably only about 30 or so folks have done so since the week I put the works on my site, and that’s a generous estimate. So here’s a guideline:
In the category section of the PayPal post, I have a category called “Time to pay the piper.” I must confess, I was thinking of this in a sort of traditional cultural way, following the ages-long historical method of the piper who first plays a tune or tunes and at intervals passes around the hat to collect contributions. It didn’t at first occur to me that this would seem like a preemptive strike for money: that’s not what pipers do. It’s after they play for the audience and please them, one hopes, that the hat is passed around. My suggestion of a $5 bottom limit is to eliminate the problem resulting from a donation which is too small (less than $2) to count on PayPal’s system.
So, you see, I’m not a money-grubber, just a person who would like to receive some real-life recognition for work which I hope will amuse and inspire you; but the first step of this is absolutely being read, and if all you feel like contributing is a comment about what you’ve read, know that comments too are very welcome, and will let me know what you like about the fiction or find wanting in it.
Another point a person brough up who viewed my site from my computer was that the cover art page of each book and the size of the pages of the fiction are too large; I don’t know how it looks on your site, but on my site, it’s simply a function of the zoom level needing to be adjusted (when I added the .jpeg cover art to the text and .pdfed it, it automatically increased the size). Just find your zoom level on your computer and adjust it to 100% or 75%, or whatever size is best for your own eyes. The zoom level usually appears on a computer text in .pdf at the top of the Adobe Reader page, and it’s easy to adjust.
That’s all I really wanted to say today. I recently finished (in August) putting the poetry I’ve written to date on this site, and a little later my fourth novel in what I hope to finish as a loosely connected series of 8 novels (but they aren’t connected as to plot and aren’t serials, so you can read them in any order you want. The connection, slight as it is, comes in because I have chosen to try to link them loosely to the 8 family signs of the I Ching, which you will see in the upper right-hand corner of the cover page. These signs are connected to a mother, a father, three daughters and three sons, and each novel is related in a marginal way to some of the symbolism associated with the signs, that’s really the size of it).
I hope that whether you can or want to pay or not, you will find something which you like in the novel(s) you read or the poetry, and that you will feel free to write in and discuss it with me. Even negative criticism can be instructive to both parties because it shows human involvement, and may generate a dialogue, though of course one hopes most people will like one’s work. In any case, I’ve made my argument for you, and I really should sign off on this post. Until I hear from you, then, happy reading, whether you cover the posts or the longer works–I’m always happy to discuss writing and literature, my own or someone else’s.
creativeshadows 