[Author's note: What you're reading is web literature

...or weblit for short.

Months ago, while doing search engine optimization for www.chevenga.com, I realized that we online novelists have a problem.

If you want to find a comic on the internet, you Google "web comics" -- everyone knows that. If you want to find fan fiction, you Google "fanfic." If you want to look at pics of a restored 57 Chevy, you image-Google "restored 57 Chevy." But if you want to read a good book online you Google... what? Online novels? Blooks? Web fiction? Internet stories? There is no one agreed-upon term.

So I started thinking that the online writing community needs to choose one term and promote the heck out of it so that it becomes known as the search word. That a) gets the idea out there more solidly that we and our works exist and are available -- that we are a field and a movement and a force to be reckoned with -- and b) provides a single search term for people to use if they want to find us.

Thinking about it, I came up with the term "web literature," for three reasons:

- the word "literature" points out that there are people writing on the web who are every bit as good as people publishing on paper, and so promotes the idea of us as professionals

- it is parallel to "web comics"

- it can be neatly shortened to "weblit."

I shared this with MeiLin Miranda the other day, and she jumped on it -- immediately registering the domain "weblit.us" for use as a promotional website -- and starting to use the hashtag "#weblit" on Twitter, where others picked it up fast. I am now tweeting each post there...

So it looks like people like it. Interested in your thoughts (as always). Otherwise, please spread the meme!




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