The other day I read about the Creative Commons licensing scheme. At least one author has put up entire novels under this license and still managed to sell physical books. This got me to thinking, and that is always a dangerous thing.
I have been writing stories for a while now and have created several short stories and have several novel sized projects in the works. Now, I have no illusions that I will get rich writing fiction. Yet, when you get right down to it, what’s the point of writing fiction if nobody ever reads it? I mean, I may go my entire life without being published in a physical medium. While I might end up getting published after my own death, I won’t be around to see what people think of my work.
Fortunately, I don’t have to be published on dead trees for my work to be published. I mean, the very same medium that lets you read this collection of ramblings loosely called a blog gives me a cheap method of publishing any other works I choose. In fact, it costs me pretty much nothing since I already have the web site up and running.
The creative commons license provides the final piece of the puzzle. Simply putting something up on the web is trivial. However, I want everyone to be able to print out copies of the stories, give them to friends, and so on. But I wanted to make it clear that I did not want anyone to change the content or make money off it. This ruled out the public domain but without tagging it somehow, there is no legal way for people to copy the document. Enter the creative commons license.
I have chosen to make selected works of my fiction available under the creative commons on my web site. You can find the page here. I have put up the first story as of this writing. I hope you all enjoy. Even if you don’t, pass it on to your friends; maybe they will.
Well, I’m off to bask in the glow of knowing that I have contributed to the creative output of the human race.