maxbarry.com

Buy the Machine Man Serial

Please Note: This is not the Machine Man novel!

Buy your own feed! This works the same as the free feed: you get one page of the serial each day, Monday to Friday, via email or RSS. The differences are:

  • You get the whole story. (The free feed stops at page 43.)

  • You can pause, rewind, and restart your feed from any available page number.

  • You get a Machine Man subscriber icon next to your name when you post comments on this site, so everyone knows how rockin' you are.

  • I find you more attractive.

The full Machine Man feed is now free for site members!

If you don't have an account yet, click my head to get back to the home page, then using the "Join" link in the top right.

Any problems? Let me know!

More Information

Have you finished writing this story yet?

Yes! I finished on December 2, 2009.

So I missed it?

You missed the part where I write each page live, taking into consideration the feedback I received from people posting on the page the day before. That was pretty cool. But you can still get the reading experience: one page per day delivered to your inbox or newsfeed reader. You can also post comments and read those posted by other people.

How long is it?

It's 185 pages: around 55,000 words. By way of comparison, the Machine Man novel is about 85,000 words.

Should I buy the novel instead?

I think it depends on what kind of experience you want. The novel is supposed to be read as a regular book, i.e. you give it fairly large chunks of your attention at a time, reading as fast or slowly as you want. The serial is designed to drop into your email inbox once a day with bite-sized scenes that tease you over nine months.

If you're simply looking for a story, not an experience, I recommend the novel. It's longer, more polished, and, well, better, because the serial was essentially a first draft. But it won't be a ground-breaking experiment in serial electronic fiction. So, you know, horses for courses.

What happens to my feed when I reach the end?

You still own the feed: you can reset it back to the beginning for another read. You can do this as many times as you want. You can give it a friend. You can just leave it on pause. It doesn't stop working.

Can I share it with other people?

Yes, within reason. I don't mind if you and your life partner simultaneously use a single feed. Or if you read it, then when you're finished, you rewind it and put in someone else's email address, for them to read. I would mind if you made the story available to the whole world, though, like posting it on your web site.

Will it work forever?

If, years in the future, it becomes impractical to continue deliver Machine Man this way, I'll give purchasers access to download the entire book in an open, unprotected format. One way or another, it's yours to keep forever.

Can I get the whole thing in one file for my e-reader?

No, because then it wouldn't be a serial. It would be a novella with really odd pacing. If you want to read the story like that, you should get the novel, which comes in e-versions.