I'm thinking of unparking the domain I currently use for my email address and having it host my fiction. I currently have at least 30 short stories I could make available, as well as a few novel summaries that read like stories. I'd like to release them under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Unported Licence, which permits all noncommercial uses but strictly prohibits anything commercial. If I do that, then I'd set up a donations facility where people who wished to support my writing could do so. Alternatively, I could maintain full rights over the stories and sell them on a pay-what-you-can basis. I know it wouldn't make me rich or even make me much money, but it's better than the oppressive and abusive terms of service of Kindle Direct Publishing and much less crowded than the Amazon self-publishing zoo, as well as giving me much better control of things such as conversion errors and release schedule. Has anyone you know of done this, and what have been the results?
What is your purpose for doing so? To get you name out there? To get donations? If it's part of a well thought out marketing plan, I'd say go for it. However, keep in mind, once you put a CC license on it, you've lost these works. That might not bother you if this is your loss leader. How will people find your writing? Daily, more information is created than the entire sum of human civilization created prior to 1998. How do you plan to compete with that? People publish with Amazon because it has the traffic and an army of affiliates willing to sell for them. Even if you give the stories away for free, you're going to need to market this HARD. You're talking about doing the Kindle select thing, which is optional. It's not oppressive if you just publish without it. Either way, the copyright is still yours. Without doing the kindle select thing, you can publish on as many sites as you want. You can also change parts of your book at any time.
