Sarah Zettel writes that she “just helped launch a new website that I thought SFScope might find interesting. Book View Cafe serves up fiction for free from published authors in a number of genres such as romance, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”
The 20 authors cooperating in the project are: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Brenda Clough, Kate Daniel, Laura Anne Gilman, Christie Golden, Anne Harris, Sylvia Kelso, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Sue Lange, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rebecca Lickiss, Vonda N. McIntyre, Nancy Jane Moore, Pati Nagle, Darcy Pattison, Phyllis Irene Radford, Madeleine Robins, Amy Sterling, Jennifer Stevenson, Susan Wright, and Sarah Zettel.
She continues, “I’m very excited about it, not only because I’m working with a dynamic group of people, but because we’re using a new model of Internet distribution for our work. The site will feature new free fiction every day, and before long we will be offering a premium content subscription service.”
The first offerings on the site are chapter 1 of Darcy Pattison’s young adult novel The Wayfinder, chapter 1 of Brenda Clough’s Revise the World, and chapter 1 of Zettel’s Fool’s War.
Explaining the site, Zettel says that they’ll be offering “expanded work, additional content, print versions, and perhaps subscriptions for a fee.” They’re taking advantage of the Internet to “make our out-of-print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable work [available] to you.” And she adds, “although there is mateiral for sale, the site itself is not a profit-making organization. This is a cooperative efffort between the authors.” They welcome donations to help pay for the site, site management, and upgrade efforts.