Nameless

I have come to learn that control is the most basic tool in a writer's skill set, but not just control of the prose. It seems to me that, as the gap between writer and readership widens, sensible self-control becomes more and more uncommon. A

Ironically, it's hard to articulate how I feel about what happened with Nameless. People worried sometimes that I was hurt, that the criticism was crushing, but I didn't feel that way at all. I was too overwhelmed by what was happening, by what a unique experience it was for me. I felt like I was watching an extribulum come to life. Nameless was a book published online, destined for print but open to examination and feedback prior to its final incarnation. I was looking at another inching step into the future of publishing, where a real dialogue could go on between a writer and a reader and that dialogue, rather than a writer's monologue, could be what went into the final print.

We beta-tested my book. How weird and wonderful is that?

Regardless of the quality of the narrative, regardless of whether you like me or like this book, Nameless is an extribulum. Twenty-five years ago there was no possibility for it to exist. It is a symbol of a new thing, the incunabula of the internet age. This book was written and typeset by the author and mass-produced by an online self-publishing website, but the text is the result of people from all over the world reading and responding and communicating, with their author and with each other.

I highly doubt Nameless will set the world on fire, but it is one small part of the future: someday an extribulum will change our entire human experience purely because it will be available on a scale "dead-tree" publishers only dream of. I'm not afraid; I hope I'm there to see it happen

Nameless is what you get when one person talks and twenty-five hundred people listen...and then talk back.

I could not be more proud.