This is a pipe dream that I, perhaps naively, share. I agree that the market
to pursue is readers, with IF on the shelves by SF. I disagree in packaging
gobs of them on a $10 CDROM; myself, I think of that sort of CDROM generally
packed with junk (please no flames! I know this untrue, but it's just the
gut feeling I get when I see these on the shelves at Wal-mart). I would
shudder to think of Graham's 'Curses' or 'Jigsaw' packaged that way.
I agree also that we could use some good thoughts on
rec.arts.int-fiction.marketing; but my own thoughts are somewhat un-polished,
and, well, it's a tough problem! Could we really flesh-out a whole new
newsgroup? What we need to tackle are the questions of: if Curses is such a
great adventure (I enjoyed it when last I read it) why hasn't it caught fire?
Are any of the adventures we're writing really on a level with Infocom's?
No story I've downloaded yet has absorbed me the way 'Planetfall' did. How
did Infocom do it?
Anyway, here's my first posting in a couple of years. Why do I feel like I'm
handing a side of beef to a pack of wolves?