So you say you need a fiction fix?

Today I was approached by San Francisco writer Benjamin Wachs, who handed me a business card. It said:



                                                                                      

Fiction365

A NEW SHORT STORY, EVERY DAY

BENJAMIN WACHS   publisher   BENJAMIN@FICTION365.COM

He explained that it’s a new project that he started at the first of the year. And if you visit the website (http://www.fiction365.com/), you’ll see this:

A SIMPLE PREMISE; A BOLD PROMISE
To present one story per day, every day—providing exceptional
authors with exposure and avid readers with first-rate fiction

Other than that, there’s today’s story, a calendar where you can find previous stories, some basic search tools, and submission info. It’s all pretty basic at this point, but every great idea has to start somewhere.  I asked Benjamin some questions:

ST: “What are you doing to market the site?  How many visitors are you getting?”
BW: “I'm marketing it through word of mouth at this point, but that's all.  I'm expecting to make ad buys and such in a few months.  At that point I'll start tracking metrics like hits."
ST: “Are you getting submissions?”
BW: “Most of the writers who I personally invited to contribute were Bay Area writers, and they make up the vast majority of the stories in my vault—high quality stories I have on hand in case nobody contributes for several weeks. But (much to my surprise) after the first week I've barely had a single day in which I haven't gotten contributions. Most of those submissions are actually from outside the Bay Area, including NYC, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, LA, Chicago, and even points international: England, Canada, Scotland, Romania (!!), and Australia. I've been somewhat blown away by the response to the site, given how little I've done to promote it.  Also, we're serializing a novel; every Sunday is a new chapter from a previously unpublished novel.  Our first one (scheduled to run pretty much through the year) is Chicago writer Darren Callahan's "City of Human Remains." 
ST: “So, you plan to monetize the site eventually?”
BW: “Yeah.”
ST: “Advertising?”
BW: “Yeah.”
ST: “Then you’ll pay the contributors?”
BW: “I’m paying them now. It’s only $10 a story, but that’s a couple of beers.”
ST: “And it’s readership. I know a few writers who might be willing to submit, especially for a bio credit that links to a full-length ebook for sale on Kindle.”
BW: “Exactly. Right now, everything’s coming out of my pocket. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pay more later.”
ST: “Well, this is very cool! Can I blog about it?”

Permission was granted, and here we are. Go check it out and get in on the ground floor as either a reader, a writer, or both!

http://www.fiction365.com/