Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are serializing their newest Liaden Universe novel in podcast form. The novel is still being written, but the authors are releasing a chapter a week, as long as reader donations continue to pay for it. The system of reader-funded writing without a publisher has already been proven, notably by Lawrence Watt-Evans, whose newest Ethshar novel, The Vondish Ambassador, is currently appearing on his site.
Lee and Miller’s novel, Fledgling, began appearing 22 January. Four chapters are currently available, and the authors note that donations have come in to fund up through chapter 25. To describe the book, they say “For those who have read I Dare, this will be the early story of Theo Waitley, who had a ‘kind of complicated’ problem to lay before the delm of Korval at the end of that book, and will begin some years before the action in I Dare.”
Describing the process, Lee and Miller have said they “post a chapter per week (except when traveling) as long as donations to the story fund keep pace. Since this book is an actual Work In Progress, what online readers will see or hear is a rough draft which may change radically between being written and finally making it into final book form. Those who contribute $25 or more to the story fund will be in line to recieve a trade paper version of the finished novel, if and when it should appear. As yet no publisher has committed to this book.”
Podcaster Sam Chupp of Fireheart Foundry provides a podcast of each chapter from his site fireheartfoundry.com. The podcast is also available as an RSS feed, and can be found in several locations in Second Life as well.
More information about the project is available at www.korval.com/fledgling, and a readers’ community for the book is at community.livejournal.com/theo_waitley.