Should WriteNow! Publish?

[Chuck Stromme]

This is a website for writers. Some of us have been published, some of us want to be published again or at last and some of us don't care at all about being published. It's all good.

If this site works out even modestly well we're going to have a bunch of posts of your original writing. It'll be fun to see it published here, share it with people and see what others think of it. Is there anything else we can do with it?

Here's an idea. What if we publish a "Best Of" volume some time in late 2009? For example, we set a cutoff date of Nov. 1. Then we select (I'm not sure of the method but voting has some merit) some of the best submissions in each category and we put them together in a "Best Of 2009" book. We send it to a publisher and we make the books available for you to purchase by, say Dec. 1 or so. I don't yet know the actual publishing parameters so just go along with me for now. I do know that companies like Lulu make it pretty easy to publish.

In the interest of full disclosure, WriteNow would conceivably make a buck on this deal, in the amount of the book purchase price minus to cost to publish and ship. What you would get is a book wherein you are published alongside your colleagues of 2009. Seeing your own words in print is a heady experience and a book like this would be fun as well as a great keepsake and gift.

One detail. You own your work. You would have to grant permission for us to include something you wrote in the book. If you don't, fine, it won't be included. We're not out to rip off our members. We hope you'll agree.

Please, let me know what you think about this idea. Are you up for it? If we get enough submissions and a consensus we'll do it.

Chuck