Vook: A New Mutant Strain of Web Fiction?
I consider myself fairly involved in web fiction, as people go. I remember coming across Tales of MU when Alexandra Erin was still trying to make enough money to quit her day job. I remember starting my own webnovel and talking with other webnovelists about the emerging medium, how it was gaining readers and coming into it’s own as a viable vehicle for fiction. I remember people saying it wouldn’t last, that no one wanted to read fiction on the internet—we didn’t listen to them, but they were saying it.
Now, with the plethora of mobile web browsers and devices like the Kindle, electronic fiction is one of the fastest growing markets, causing some proponents of traditional publishing to ruffle their feathers and get all huffy. Well, the sad news is that e-books, while closely related to webnovels, are not webnovels. This big boom in things like the Kindle and iPhone book apps does not bode well for web fiction writers such as myself. Then again, it doesn’t bode too badly, either.
