New Site Spot: Book View Cafe

Today in my mail I found an unexpected surprise by Sylvia Kelso, who e-mailed me with a link to this new website Book View Cafe and asked whether I could cover it. The basic concept of the site is to supply readers with samples from already published and known authors in the market.

Book View Cafe is a new approach to publishing made possible by the Internet. While most of the fiction on the site is free, authors will also be offering expanded work, additional content, print versions, or subscriptions for a fee. Our authors are all professionals with publishing credits in the print world. The Internet is giving us an opportunity to make their out-of-print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable work to you. We love feedback on how we are doing.

Every day, new content available nowhere else will be served up on Book View Cafe: short stories, flash fiction, poetry, episodes of serialized novels, and maybe even a podcast now and then. The content will be archived and available after the posting date by visiting the author's bookshelf.

Author's bookshelves are accessed by using the pulldown menu at the top of the first page of the site. Current authors are:

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Brenda Clough
Kate Daniel
Laura Anne Gilman
Christie Golden
Anne Harris
Sylvia Kelso
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Sue Lange
Ursula K. Le Guin
Rebecca Lickiss
Vonda N. McIntyre
Nancy Jane Moore
Pati Nagle
Darcy Pattison
Irene Radford
Madeleine Robins
Amy Sterling
Jennifer Stevenson
Susan Wright
Sarah Zettel

Our blog is updated daily with posts from the member authors. Subject matter is up to the authors. There are no rules, guidelines, or speed limits.

Some of our authors will be providing additional work for sale. When this premium content becomes available, you can be sure we will be making announcements. E-mail us if you'd like to be included on our mailing list and receive all the Book View Cafe news you can use.

Although there is material for sale the site, Book View Cafe itself is not a profit-making organization. This is a cooperative effort between the authors. Book View Cafe welcomes donations to help pay for the site, site management, and upgrade efforts.

The website is stylish in its simplicity. The major colors are red, black and a pale beige sort of white, although I am not sure about the menu. The site is easy to navigate in. Its menus are defined and easy to spot. The blog is regularly updated with posts about fantasy, writing, literature and all in between. Plus I think the idea behind the site and the community is really worth it.