I just read this article on Tor.com over at SFDiplomat. For those of you not “in the know”, Tor has launched a kind of social networking site for fandom, which features articles and short fiction written by their authors.
I think it’s a wonderful idea. A sci-fi publisher has taken their website from a boring, static webpage and turned it into something dynamic that might draw people to the site. This is something along the lines of what Baen’s been doing for quite some time with their magazine Baen’s Universe and their free fiction archive. It’s Web 2.0, and I think it’ll help to boost Tor’s profile.
Jonathan McCalmont disagrees, and while I won’t rehash his arguments here, basically he comments on “over-exposed” authors like John Scalzi blogging on the site. First off, is John Scalzi under any obligation whatsoever to not try and promote himself like any other author simply because his blog is immensly popular? I mean, seriously, is McCalmont arguing that Scalzi should just say, “hey, look, I’m popular enough, I don’t need to self-promote?” Really, Jonathan? Really?
In any case, read the comments section where Scalzi responds. The man is a bulldog, and a very well spoken bulldog at that. It’s worth the read.