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io9 asks "Can Jesus Become Your New SF Hero?" Readers of this blog already know the answer: YES !
If any of you are allowed to post comments on io9 I would appreciate a plug. io9 will not even respond to my requests to be given permission to add comments.
The io9 post is about a SciFi session at the Independent Christian Film Festival.
Gordon Van Gelder wrote a post describing F&SF's foray into free science fiction. He describes their policies then offers a survey to determine views towards online free science fiction. Most of the comments are from customers, not authors. So I'll offer my 2 cents. The reason I publish my time travel stories online is that I will end up making a lot more money here than I would ever see from print. Simple advertising such as Adsense, Amazon Associates, and Clickbank offer me more revenue than I will ever make from published work of science fiction short stories. Note that I am not referring to a novel. When my novel is complete I plan to aggressively market it to brick and mortar publishers because there is more money there (and possible movie rights !)
If I submit a short story to F&SF I might make $1000. That's it, that's the sum total of all money I'll ever make on that story. If however that story is available on my blog then advertising revenue can stream in for decades. The amount of money attributed to each story may be difficult to count, but that doesn't mean it's zero. Far from it.
Let's assume an author writes 10 stories per year. After 10 years that's 100 stories. It's highly unlikely that all or even most of those stories would be published. So let's assume that 10 of them would generate $1000 each. That's $10,000. The rest will never see ink on paper.
A well run blog with a reasonable amount of advertising could easily generate 2-5 times that amount. It's reasonable that over a period of 30 years those 100 stories might generate as much as $300,000.
Internet marketing has permanently changed the short story publishing industry. The change is irrevocable, dramatic, and liberating. More people will read my stories here than would ever read them on paper, as many as 1000 times more people. That audience has a monetary value to an author which cannot be matched by ink on paper. As a science fiction author I doubt I will ever submit a short story for publication. It's simple economics.
I found a couple of blogs which discuss free science fiction. One of the reasons I plan to write science fiction short stories here on my blog is that I see little value in trying to get them published. The financial incentive is not worth the wait, and would not enough to allow me to quit my day job. Basically my goal is to build a fan base, people who are familiar with my work and might buy my novel when it is ready later this year. The first blog I found is BestScienceFictionStories. Their post on The 10 Best Web Sites for Free Online Science Fiction Short Stories is very useful. Hopefully my site will be on the list soon.
The other is Auxiliary Memory where I found a post on Free Science Fiction. Free audio scifi books is a great idea.
Tor Books offers free science fiction downloads every week just for signing up. Not sure if they ever have science fiction short stories. This week's book is In the Midnight Hour by Patti O'Shea. The next book will be Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey Carver.
They don't appear to have a science fiction blog.