Well, I knew the idea was not new, and it is only a matter of time that more authors will start publishing their own works online. My personal project is American Male Prostitute, a work in 18 chapters of which 9 are published on this website, indicating the current progress.

Author Ray Connolly decided to put his newest work, The Sandman, online. It has been serialized chapter by chapter on his website where, over the next ten weeks, it will build like a part-work. The Sandman‘s progress can be read free-of-charge, but if readers want to find out how The Sandman ends they can download the whole book for less than the costs of a paperback.

Let me quote from the article I found at guardian.co.uk:

With one digital bound, I’ve become an entrepreneur. There’ll be an iPod version later, for those who want to listen to it being read, and of course there will be Facebook and Twitter links. Having begun this new career as an ePublisher, I feel empowered. As a one man band, I have nothing to lose.

Apart from the time spent writing The Sandman, the other costs have been relatively small. And for the first time in my writing career – and I’ve written movies, TV series, radio plays, short stories and several novels – I’m in total control. It’s an experiment, obviously, but I’m enjoying it. And, as it happens, the subject of the novel might be prescient.

When I was writing The Sandman, a thriller that links rock music with cults, and involves a television reporter who investigates a series of deaths she suspects may have occurred because of grooming on social internet sites, I thought it might be slightly ahead of its time. I was wrong. With the furore over the recent events on Facebook, it’s absolutely topical.

And now I’m going to market it, using exactly the same tools that are central to the story – namely those of the computer and social online sites. In other words, a novel about manipulation through the web is being made available for readers in serial form . . . through the web.

Read the whole article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/12/publishing-book-online-ray-connolly