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What is The alt end Project?
In November 2013, I wrote a hi-tech military thriller, Recode T.G.C.A. - The Grayson Cole Affair, a 22,000-word sci-fi novella that explored a number of timely themes, including the possibility of digitizing our memories and experiences, the potential for immortality through cybernetics, human cloning, the meaning of self, and the metaphysical nature of the soul. That's a lot to deal with in such a short work.
As a consequence, I found myself repeatedly coming back to the story with new perspectives, each one exploring a different path and yielding a vastly different outcome for the protagonist, Staff Sergeant Grayson Cole. In a break from literary convention, I decided to publish the 28,000-word expanded work with three of those alternative endings. You'll find a fourth ending here on my website.
Over the years, Recode has spawned a fair amount of discussion. Some readers strongly favor one ending over another. Others relayed to me yet more possibilities for Sergeant Cole's fate I had not considered, forcing me to wonder: How much else is there? Of course, the possibilities are limitless, leading me to conceive The alt end Project, an experimental literary format inviting other writers to collaborate by exploring these potential outcomes in a way that mutually benefits both writers and readers. My wish is to see these alternate endings published by my writing partners as part of their catalog.
If you are a writer interested in participating, I will:
In return, you will:
Who benefits?
We both do, of course. You get the bulk of a finished story; all you have to do is conceive your own conclusion. You publish and profit from the finished work. I benefit by an increase in visibility and access to your readership. In return, I'll also promote your story to my readers, so you also get increased exposure. It's no secret that multi-author collaborations help discovery and promote ranking, so let's work together to expand our audiences!
If this sounds interesting to you, please contact me to get the ball rolling.
Over time, I will consider activating new titles (for example, Leviathan, They Dreamed of Poppies, etc), depending on interest, so if there is a particular story you'd like to alt end, let's talk.
In November 2013, I wrote a hi-tech military thriller, Recode T.G.C.A. - The Grayson Cole Affair, a 22,000-word sci-fi novella that explored a number of timely themes, including the possibility of digitizing our memories and experiences, the potential for immortality through cybernetics, human cloning, the meaning of self, and the metaphysical nature of the soul. That's a lot to deal with in such a short work.
As a consequence, I found myself repeatedly coming back to the story with new perspectives, each one exploring a different path and yielding a vastly different outcome for the protagonist, Staff Sergeant Grayson Cole. In a break from literary convention, I decided to publish the 28,000-word expanded work with three of those alternative endings. You'll find a fourth ending here on my website.
Over the years, Recode has spawned a fair amount of discussion. Some readers strongly favor one ending over another. Others relayed to me yet more possibilities for Sergeant Cole's fate I had not considered, forcing me to wonder: How much else is there? Of course, the possibilities are limitless, leading me to conceive The alt end Project, an experimental literary format inviting other writers to collaborate by exploring these potential outcomes in a way that mutually benefits both writers and readers. My wish is to see these alternate endings published by my writing partners as part of their catalog.
If you are a writer interested in participating, I will:
- Grant to you a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free license for the bulk of the text of the story (up to a convenient jumping off point for your alternate ending). In the case of Recode: T.G.C.A., it's about 18,000 words (roughly 80 pages of printed text).
- Provide you a very brief written description of the project (a couple sentences) explaining the project, which you will add to your published book's front matter. This will include a link to the project page on my website.
- Feature your published book on the appropriate project page here (additional pages to be added as the project is expanded to other stories) and push your book to my readers in my social media and in my newsletters.
In return, you will:
- Write your own unique conclusion(s) to the story. You are even welcome to expand on it, if you desire. There are no restrictions for adhering to any "canon." Make this your own story. In fact, you are free to use the story as a launch point for your own multi-book series.
- Be free to publish the resulting finished work (inclusive of the text I provide) to the ebook vendors of your choice at whatever price you choose. If you want to publish exclusively to Kindle Unlimited, you must guarantee that the original text I provide comprises less than 10% of the finished work (per Amazon's terms of service).
- Keep all of your earnings. Every cent. I ask for no monetary compensation. None. What I do ask, however, is that you:
- Attribute me as co-author on your book's cover/interior and on the product page(s) where you publish. (NB: Any follow-on books you write based on this work do not require further attribution unless they include my text.)
- Agree to subtitle the work "An alt end Story." This is to facilitate customer searches and for series building.
- Add a small badge to your book's cover denoting it is "an alt end story." I'll provide this.
Who benefits?
We both do, of course. You get the bulk of a finished story; all you have to do is conceive your own conclusion. You publish and profit from the finished work. I benefit by an increase in visibility and access to your readership. In return, I'll also promote your story to my readers, so you also get increased exposure. It's no secret that multi-author collaborations help discovery and promote ranking, so let's work together to expand our audiences!
If this sounds interesting to you, please contact me to get the ball rolling.
Over time, I will consider activating new titles (for example, Leviathan, They Dreamed of Poppies, etc), depending on interest, so if there is a particular story you'd like to alt end, let's talk.
all content, (including text and photos) copyright saul tanpepper © 2011-2016, unless otherwise noted. all rights reserved.
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