To garner interest and anticipation for her latest novel, author Susan M. Brooks is revealing one page per day on her author blog.

Most authors or publishing houses wouldn’t dream of putting their works online for no charge, but Small Dogs Press and author Susan M. Brooks are trying a different approach to building interest and anticipation for Brooks’ second novel, “Collecting Candace.” Brooks is posting one page of the novel per day on her author blog, at http://www.susanmbrooks.blogspot.com.

Susan Sabo, publisher at Small Dogs Press, says:

“We don’t see this as a way of giving away the books. The book is 200 pages long, so this will go on till the end of the year. If someone is really bent on not paying for the book, I suppose they could visit the blog everyday and print it out, but I seriously doubt anyone would want to read a book that way.”

By visiting the blog, readers can read each entry (named by the page number) in sequence or out, depending on their need for continuity and linear action. But the main idea, says Brooks, is not to get people to visit everyday and read the entire book, but to be enticed by the few pages they might read into buying the book.

“Unknown authors have a really tough time of selling books,” says Brooks. “So free content, like teasers, are essential to building an audience.” Although there are dozens of ways an author can blog a novel, Brooks likes the idea of the slow tease of one page per day. “It can really build a lot of interest and anticipation,” she says, “when you’re in the middle of some really exciting scene, and you’re cut off by a hyphenated word!”

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