Online Edition Soars
In just two months, the online edition of THE HERETIC, published by HappyHacker.org, broke through the half-million page view mark. It's hard to judge readership from server logs, a practice made more difficult by proxy servers and Web cache systems, but our best guess puts it between 500 and 750 full read-throughs.
Thanks to Colin Woodcock, Free Novels Online lists online novels around the Web. Author Ace Starry also maintains a list of online novels available for free reading. |
No, it doesn't come close to Stephen King's 150,000 downloads of a single chapter, but it's a huge response for online fiction. Besides, King spent something like $150,000 on advertising. While THE HERETIC's sponsored online publishing concept has garnered some interest from the ePublishing press, there have yet to be any articles or reviews. It's all been "word-of-e."
Passing the Word
Readers have been drawn by HappyHacker.org's own popularity and by getting the word from other readers. Some fans, like MAX, have posted Guild membership logos on their home pages, while others have posted notices on message boards and in Usenet news groups.
It takes longer to build an audience, but there's something very satisfying about knowing that readers are recommending the book to others.
