Up until recently, people didn't read stories on screens because people hadn't written stories FOR screens. Weblit is changing that.

One hesitation I had before getting into writing online (shameless plug: http://www.chevenga.com) was that, supposedly, people don't like to read off a screen, especially people with vision difficulties.

Then I learned (on http://www.weblit.us, in fact) that if you need bigger print, you just hit [control] + . This works with Internet Explorer and Firefox, at least.

Try that with a dead-tree book!

This site is very much about fan experience, so if traditionally published authors organize interactive things for their fans, I'd probably go “Squeee” to. The problem is so much of them think so traditional, and I'm no good with that.

It is a somewhat political argument, but I think it is important to note that I really don't want to cut traditionally published writers out of the picture, because they are going to have a hard enough time when the traditional publishers start to fold.

I know one of the things MCM has mentioned is the possibility of rebooting an existing serial by rolling it back to chapter one, even though this is completely artificial, as the full ePub or PDF has already been released… however, it allows a group of people to read in lockstep, and that is really important when you are dealing with random access points and readers who may not be aware of the history behind a specific piece of writing. Any work of fiction is *fiction* – when a group of people come together to read in unison, it becomes literary.

Discovery is important to readers (if you like this, you may also like this); but so is synchronicity (if you are reading this, so are these people).