Some months ago, not too long after I started to blog, I discovered how to post my first novel, Leverage. I set up a separate blog site for each one, loaded a table of contents and each chapter one by one, arranged the security settings and connections to this blog and my website.
In total, not an overwhelming amount of work, but it did take a couple of hours.
At that time, I already had a draft of Incentivize written, so I posted it as well.
Later, came the first draft of Lessons Learned the Hard Way, then Deliverables, and then later drafts of both Incentivize and Deliverables. If you add it up, I've invested a considerable amount of time posting all these versions of the books.
Now I'm finished with the first draft of Heir Apparent, and not sure if I actually want to post it or not. I'm leaning towards "not" at this stage for two reasons -- first, there are very few readers of the books using the blog site. The reason being, I think, that it simply isn't enjoyable to sit in front of a computer screen for hours, reading a novel when convenient paper and eReaders are calling. Second, because I'm a bit hesitant to grant permission for someone to read a first draft. Even second drafts are rough, and while I don't necessarily blanch at the idea of plowing through my own first drafts, I'd have little interest in reading someone else's.
So I'm changing my policy. From now on, I will only post a novel when I think it's ready for prime time. Right now only Leverage, and Incentivize qualify. But I'll grandfather the existing novels and leave their sites out there, I just won't update to a new version until they are done (at least my definition of done).
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