Writing Your Own Online Novel

Because I'm throwing myself into the world of serial fiction for the next year or so, I've decided to start a new feature/topic for my non-fiction posts called Writing the Online Novel. Online writing is a different beast than what fiction writers are used to. For the most part, it's closer to journalism than to books. Books, and most fiction magazines, are immersive reading. They're designed to be read without distraction, for the reader to submerge his or her consciousness into the story.

Because of this immersion factor, the audience for a book is very conscious about its choices. They aren't just paying for the book, they're making a major time and attention commitment to it. They shop for books deliberately, looking for something special, which they will consume later, when they are ready to dive in and lose the world. The book must be worth that time and energy commitment. This makes them more attuned to genre and category and other boundaries.

The web, on the other hand, is more like a newspaper, lots of different things on any page, meant to be skimmed, full of everything from sports scores, to comics to commentary, along with the news and features, and ads. People approach newspapers and the web with a more "consume it now" mindset. No commitments involved at all. It's just skimming and browsing and killing time.

Which isn't to say that readers don't dip more deeply into some things, but that's not the point of screwing around on the internet. The point, more often then not, is to see what's going on. Right now. You skim through headlines and feeds and aggregators and social media, to see what catches your interest. You don't know what you're going to find.

And it doesn't always matter if you find much. You may feel completely satisfied with your experience just skimming the first paragraphs and summaries, and catching a few cartoons or LOLcats, or a video of an otter doing a back flip, or seeing the weather or sport scores.

So readers on the internet aren't looking for the same kind of exact experience they look for in a book. After all, we've already filtered out the bad stuff by sticking to things we like and trust: we subscribe to feeds, check out certain sites, follow friends and people we find interesting. And because of that, we can leave ourselves open to a wider range of experience than we do when we're shopping for books. We are less conscious of boundaries.

We have to make the same commitment to everything we write, whether the reader is just skimming or engaged in full-out commitment. It's the same time-consuming work, and burns up the same high level of brain energy. So we writers tend to see online fiction the same way we book fiction. It's just delivered differently.

I think we need to start looking at online fiction -- particularly online novels -- is a medium unto itself. It has its own audience, its own requirements, its own modes and problems. And even though serialized fiction, and newspapers and magazines have been around for centuries, this version of the form is new in a whole lot of different ways.

How E-books Have Changed The Way That College Students Study

E-books were once thought of as a nice way to read books for entertainment purposes, and not much else. In recent years, they have exploded onto the education scene, as many schools are using them almost exclusively. It's interesting to consider how e-books have changed the way that college students study.

In many college courses, students can get the books that they need a in e-book format instead of buying a printed copy. These books are becoming required reading in many classes across the country. In fact, almost 60 percent of students who bought e-books said that some of them were required course material.

With this method, students can simply download the book that they need onto an e-reader like an Amazon Kindle, and start reading it. Many different types of schools are using e-books for their classes. Graphic design schools, trade schools, nursing schools, and regular universities are all jumping on the e-book bandwagon.

One reason that a lot of schools are going to e-books for class is because they save a lot of paper. Without having to physically print up the books, a ton of paper can be saved. This creates a solid eco-friendly brand image for educational facilities.

Another big reason that students are turning to e-books is so that they can save money. When you have to buy a book, it is usually quite a bit cheaper in e-book form. In addition to being able to save money on the purchase of the e-book, you can also rent e-books. For example, Amazon makes it possible to rent textbooks for as little as one day or as long as you need to. This is a lot easier than having to rent the book from a local store or ship it back and forth to a rental company. You just pull up the book you need on an e-reader, and then send it back when you’re done.

Although e-books have started to catch on, they have not completely replaced regular textbooks just yet. Many students don’t yet own e-readers, which is a bit of an obstacle to being able to read e-books. You could always download an e-book and read it on a computer or on a smartphone, but it’s not as easy as reading it on an e-reader. As the prices of electronic readers come down, more students will start to get them, and e-books will become even more common in college.