The Value of Experimentation

I've recently come to know and appreciate Brad King's work, both as an innovative media professional, as well as a university professor.

So I've been keeping an eye on a project that he and his talented students have launched: The Invictus Writers.

There's a lot to say about it, but—in brief—for the first volume, each contributor has written a personal essay about the moment in their lives when everything changed as they moved into adulthood. Along the way, they've tinkered with a few elements of publishing as well.

Here are some interesting stats:

• To date, nearly 3,500 have read the essays on Scribd.

• They launched a blog to discuss the process of writing the book. To date, there have been about 3,600 page views on the blog, which itself has 31 posts that were written by 7 authors.

• They put up a Facebook Page here.

• They created a 157-page print book that retails for $10. They also created a PDF that retails for $2.99.

• Soon they'll release an EPUB edition that will retail for $4.99.

Now I'd like to point out some things they did NOT do:

• They did not wait for permission to collaborate.
• They did not wait for someone to pay them to do or write what they cared about.
• They did not query editors or agents asking for approval.
• They did not look for a publisher to do what they could do very well on their own.
• They did not wait to be discovered.
• They did not angst over putting their work online.
• They did not limit themselves to one format or channel.
• They did not wait to learn everything first. They're experimenting and learning as they go.

I hope you get my meaning.