Today is another of my series of questions from readers and writers. Anyone can ask a question for the blog, just post it as a comment in any blog I've written or as a message here at MySpace. I'll answer them in the order I receive them. Today's question is from Lady Lauren:

If I post on my blog scenes from the story I'm working on, do you think that will make it easier or harder to sell when I get to that stage?!....

Any time you are giving wide-spread exposure to your unpublished or unfinished work you do take some risks. First, you’re opening yourself up to a very small risk of plagiarism. Secondly, you open yourself up to feedback, which is not necessarily a good thing. Everyone and anyone, qualified or not, will have something to say. And if the writing isn’t exactly “perfect”, you could potentially lose fans, not gain them, which I assume is why you’re posting your work in the first place. It won’t matter that you’ll revise what you’ve posted or have it professionally edited by your editor or that the story/writing may change significantly… your first impression will be the only one you get with some people.

An then there is the publishing question. If you end up selling to a large, mainstream, New York publisher, I would guess it would make very little difference to them. Unless you’re getting a million hits to your site, your work won’t really have been given away to too many readers. Though they will likely ask you to take down most of what you’ve posted (there are limits to how much you can post for free that are part of most contracts).

However, if you end up selling to a smaller or epublisher, you may run into problems. The medium is similar, their sales numbers will likely be smaller (so the number of people who have seen a large chunk free will make up a bigger percentage for them than for a larger publisher with wider distribution). ....

In the end, it isn’t necessarily something I recommend. I think it opens you up to more disadvantages than advantages to post works in progress. If you want to expose potential readers to your voice, it might be better to do it with one-off short stories. Things you don’t intend to sell, but exclusive content to your website. You’ll get all the advantages and fewer disadvantages that way.

That’s just my opinion though. I’m sure there are other authors who would feel differently.