Fiction on a blog on fiction
A question for all you writers with blogs: is it worth the effort to post a story to your personal blog? Not a story you plan to sell, obviously, but one you already sold or one you can’t quite find the market for.
I can see the both sides of things. On the pro side, it gives your blog reade a taste of your writing, turns lurkers into potential fans. You have control of how long it’s available and can track how many people read it. As for cons, who really goes to blogs looking for fiction? It says something about a story’s quality to have the author pimping it him/herself for free. And of coure, it uses up some rights for the story (even second electronic rights could be worth something).
As I mentioned in my last post, I have a few stories that have vanished from the net that I’d like to get back out there, notably my first sale. Not to mention my military vampire story, my story for young readers. I even have a short comedy that can’t quite find a market. I’m thinking about putting one up here,adding more if it goes over well.
I haven’t decided yet. We’ll see.
-Oso
Scott W. Baker: Chaos out of Chaos 
I’ve posted a couple of unpublished poems, some non-fiction pieces, and I think I’ve posted snippets of works-in-progress. I think that if you do decide to post pieces, you have to realize that you won’t be able to submit them to places that ask for previously unpublished work. On the other hand, there are a lot of journals that don’t mind if you’ve published the work previously on your blog. It all depends on how strongly you feel about it and what you hope to achieve.
I’m just looking for exposure, to let some of the people stumbling across my blog get an idea of my writing. I agree, posting a story with publishing potential is a poor idea (unless it has already been published).
I decided to submit my humor story to The Rejected Quarterly, a market that requires five rejection slips to accompany any submission. I don’t always keep rejections, but I found five for it. Failing that, I’ll try some small press, then toss it here.
As for my formerly-published work, we’ll see.
-Oso
I don’t think so.
Save your work for when you’re famous enough that anything you write will sell. If you don’t think it will be good enough at that future date, then why publish it here?