What are y'all's thoughts on self publishing via a blog or website? What I mean is going through, perhaps chapter by chapter, and releasing your novel or short stories on a website with a built in pdf reader. Even a simple blog would do. I've been considering doing that myself as a way for me to get practice and feedback and, most importantly, build confidence in my writing. It wouldn't be something intended for book publishing in the end. I'm talking about maybe a depository for short stories or novellas.
Many people do that. I myself have such a site, but I haven't added to it lately. Nothing I post there is intended for real publication, and the writing I do plan to publish, I keep to myself until I submit it. But it really is an either/or situation. If you post a story, forget about publishing it.
Why not finish the stories and novellas and submit them for publication in a magazine or ezine. The chances of more individuals reading them is higher, the exposure will likely be greater, you'd get to learn a bit about the submission and editing process, and you might earn some money to pay writing expenses (or more) along the way. Once published, you can always reprint them on a blog or website. Just a thought.
Just to be clear, posting stories/novels to your blog only uses first publishing rights. They're important, and what most publishers are interested in, but you can still publish those works later. In fact, there are people who self-published novels that they then later re-published through traditional means when their self-publishing efforts gained attention/momentum. And self-publishing or posting your work on a blog doesn't exclude most anthology or collection publication, either. And, as pointed out, if you do publish via a traditional journal, you often then retain rights afterward and can post those works to your blog or own website (and in collections and anthologies, of course) since the rights usually revert back to you once a story is published. All that said, I wouldn't self-publish to a blog unless you already have a fanbase and it's a means of drumming up support and momentum for an upcoming book release, or something. Posting your work to a blog isn't necessarily going to bring a surge of feedback (there are writing classes, groups and sites for that). And what practice will it give you hitting 'submit' on a blog? And I wouldn't trust it as a way to build confidence; I've seen amazing blogs that have never, ever had a comment, much less a confidence building comment. My advice would be that if you're writing short stories, submit them to short story markets. There are literally thousands of journals publishing short fiction, in all genres, where you can do all the things you mention but actually build a publishing credit while you're at it. A lot of novice/amateur writers are in a rush to get their work 'out there' thinking then things will finally start to happen. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way, and what usually happens is their work is just out there going unnoticed. It's not a race, take your time, work on your fiction, submit it to places that will actually help you build credentials, and in that process you'll probably get what you're looking for, particularly the practice being a professional writer.
