Writer gambles by giving away novel on net

By PETER GRIFFIN

He is a writer of best-selling thriller novels but Matthew Reilly is committing what on the face of it would appear to be commercial suicide with his latest book - he is giving it away on the internet.

Reilly's publisher, Pan Macmillan, says the Sydney-based writer with five previous novels under his belt, is the first mainstream writer to freely release an entire manuscript online.

After being turned away by every publisher in Sydney, Reilly self-published his first novel, Contest. Now he is taking a calculated punt with the web release of Hover Car Racer, a thriller that is being published in eight online instalments, two of which have so far been released.

The chapters of the book are downloadable in PDF file format, a file viewer for which is free for download at www.adobe.com.

So far, the first two instalments of the book have notched up 27,000 downloads.

The motivation is not purely charitable, Reilly freely admits. He wants to broaden his readership with a view to selling more print books in the future.

"I'm trying to get to those people who don't go into bookstores. People in the office who are online all day. It's really to reach out beyond my existing readers," the 29-year-old writer said.

It's an experiment that has the seeds of a new business model for the release of popular fiction online because Reilly intends to make money out of Hover Car Racer in the long-term. Initially, the revenue is already flowing in the form of sponsorship.

Reilly said printer and camera maker Canon jumped at the chance to sponsor the book because it fits with their agenda of encouraging people to print more web documents.

United International Pictures also bought space at the top of the book's pages to push their upcoming movie Van Helsing.

Hover Car Racer will be released in print before Christmas.

In the meantime, the author is encouraging readers to distribute it - in marked contrast to the current trend of cracking down on the sharing of copyright material.

"I'm encouraging people to forward it on. For every one book I sell, I reckon four people read it. If you show some goodwill the market will come back and buy the books," says Reilly.

That's the gamble, anyway.

Reilly is delving into territory from which a number of top-selling writers have already backed away.

In 2000, blockbuster horror writer Stephen King began publishing instalments of his novel The Plant in "e-serial" form. Payment was optional but King said he would stop writing the instalments if payments dropped off. They did and King abandoned the project.

Reilly says the King experience showed the pay-per-view model wasn't suited to web publishing.

"That was in 2000. Internet use is a lot more sophisticated now. And people don't want to put a dollar on their credit card to download an instalment. It has to be free," says Reilly who followed the model of free-to-air TV and radio in releasing Hover Car Racer - someone pays but not the consumer directly.

The book itself will probably appeal to the young males who lapped up earlier titles such as Ice Station and Scarecrow.

The chapters of Hover Car Racer are short and well-designed, making them easy to read on a computer screen.

"It had to be sharper and crisper and more techy," said Reilly, who spent most of a year planning and writing the book.

"I had to get [readers] quickly with an innovative type of story."

Reilly has continued his tradition of including diagrams and tables in his books - this time in full colour.

The novelist, who appears to fancy himself as a Tom Clancy-Michael Crichton hybrid, will drip-feed the rest of the novel on to the web until the end of July.

The project probably would not have happened had there not been a relatively risk-free deal for Pan MacMillan. After all, Reilly is one of the publisher's commercial stars and his books sell well in Australia, the United States and Europe.

Reilly wrote Hover Car Racer "out of contract" when he was taking a break between books. He gave the publishing rights to his publisher to win their buy-in.

"I don't want to put them out of business. I sold the publishing rights to them in Australia for $1 and in the United Kingdom for £1."

He has also sold the American publishing rights for US$150,000 ($242,000) and the movie rights have been sold to Disney. The studio signed up despite not having read the last three instalments.

In other words, he's doing okay out of the free-to-air model so far.

MacMillan's New Zealand promotions manager, Vanessa Thomas, said the online venture was driven by the author.

"He's a smart thinker and the market is perfect for it. It's fast-paced and appeals to the computer savvy," she said.

In Britain, the book's online release is being used to launch a text messaging campaign promoting it. Some 250,000 text messages are being sent out by mobile marketing agency MindMatics. Readers can enter a competition, the winner of which will actually be written into the last episode of the novel.

Elsewhere on the web, The Gutenberg Project (www.gutenberg.org) has become famous for gathering e-book versions of out-of-copyright classics. From Shakespeare to Dickens, Shelley to Poe, thousands of e-books are available for free download.

Reilly is still cautious about using the internet - particularly in carrying out research for his books.

"I am very careful with the net ... you have to make sure that the site you are visiting is legit.

"After all, what seems to be information could be someone's work of fiction. That's why I prefer published books - it just makes me feel safer about the information in them.

"That said, the net can move far faster than publishing, and so is good for certain things: for example, I did some missile research for Scarecrow on the internet."

The writer will have to wait until the Christmas shopping rush to see if his gamble has paid off, but with his wedding and a honeymoon in Egypt a few weeks away, Reilly is relaxed.

"I don't subscribe to this mortal combat between books and the internet. It can help you get people into bookshops."

Hover Car Racer

Matthew Reilly