SF/F writers try new marketing idea

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My friend Maya Bohnhoff writes in her blog:

Very late in the evening of November 15th a stalwart band of female writers went live with a website named Book View Café.

The premise is simple. You like to read? Tired of the same old same old in the bookstores? Frustrated at not being able to get back issues of magazines that a dear friend just happens to have a slew of stories in? Want to read fiction that excites the writers who create it? Want to read works where mystery mixes with SF and fantasy or falls through the cracks in some other quirky and wonderful way?

These are just some of the things that might endear Book View Café to you. Here's the spiel...

The newly launched website, bookviewcafe.com offers up free fiction from established authors in a spectrum of genres including fantasy, science fiction, mystery and romance. More than 20 published authors are cooperating in this project with content changing daily. It’s a great way to sample a wide range of fiction and participate in an exciting new publishing paradigm. Project manager, Sarah Zettel, puts it this way: “Book View Cafe will make sure the customer gets the stories they want, when they want, how they want, wherever they want. We are the library in your back pocket.”

Check out the site at: http://www.bookviewcafe.com

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I've already got a bunch of fiction posted -- my whole Rhys Llewellyn series, a couple of off-the-wall stories that were published in INTERZONE in the UK (a sampler for my new print collection I LOVED THY CREATION, and two mystery stories that I wrote that were a bit too odd for the two major mystery mags. One is entitled "Murder, In Quotes" and the other is "Tinkerbell On Walkabout." Go check 'em out.

Who else is in the café? Oh, let's see ... Irene Radford (aka PR Frost), Vonda McIntyre, Ursula LeGuin, Sarah Zettel, Jennifer Stevenson and Amy Sterling to name just a few. Yeah, we've got some star power.

I have to say a word about how this project came about. It was the direct result of a discussion of the fact that writers are expected by major publishers to be their own press agents, publicists, and salespeople. I wondered aloud (wistfully) what would happen if a group of writers got together and pooled their resources with the goal of getting their work -- free and for pay -- out via the Internet. The next thing I knew I was one of the founding members of Book View Café because Sarah and Vonda and Phyl (Radford), and Amy and a bunch of other talented and equally frustrated writers also wanted to find out what would happen.

What did happen was one of the most amazing cooperative efforts I've ever been part of. Everyone pitched in with their other-than-writing talents -- PR, graphics, business acumen, web coding -- and we began moving forward with Sarah Zettel at the helm. It has been exhilarating. We've had our problems -- the site is a work in progress and we're still working out the kinks of our partnerships with TextOnPhone (yes, you may soon read my stories on your iPhone), and our PayPal system, but we take it all in stride.

The site went live on the 16th, really, and we've already got about 180 registered readers.

We have stories, novel chapters (you can download by the chapter free and will soon be able to buy the whole book as a PDF for $4.99), we have a blog (I'm the blogger today with an article on the craft of writing.) And we'll have more good features to come.

Today's big news: We were selected as the Guardian newspaper's "Site of the Week". The Guardian, for those who don't know, is THE London newspaper.

So please, go visit http://www.bookviewcafe.com. Register, read, and keep coming back for more!

Gotta run -- time for me to earn my keep and WRITE!