Short story up on Microcerpt.

[Kellemora]

Hi Icey

I know this is an old post, and I've been very lax in adding writing tips to my forum. Just been busy working on rewriting my series to include all the changes editors have suggested.

I decided to write a totally new book for my first book of the series and completed it during NaNoWriMo this year, so once again, I'm a NaNo winner. Now for the editing. Perhaps I will start getting the series published in 2015.

ALL of my short stories are up on Microcerpt in their entirety.
I started adding my last years winning novel three weeks ago, a half-chapter at a time, due to their limitations.
Although Microcerpt is great, I think it is much easier to read my stories on Wattpad. I place full chapters at at time on Wattpad, and they show all of the links in the same post under the books title. I have many more readers on Wattpad than Microcerpt too. Finding me is harder though.

Placing my books up on places like Microcerpt and Wattpad has not diminished the average number of sales, and in fact, may have been the reason for increased sales.
I receive an e-mail from a reader about once every three weeks. The only way they can find my e-mail address is to find my website and get it from there. All of the e-mails have been positive. But alas, no one ever seems to post a review on Amazon or Goodreads about my books.

I do cringe when I go back and read my first short stories, they could use a lot more editing. But as my mentors say, it's water over the dam, just keep moving forward and getting better. Don't worry about the past, it's past.

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

I don't think we can compete with Microcerpt or Wattpad, but we do get indexed by the major search engines. Placing the appropriate title on new posts and assuring there is relevant content within the post is key to a greater visibility. We can't handle book sized entries in our forums, but we do allow links. Your contributions to this forum do not go unnoticed, although it must seem that way at times. We don't have the traffic that some of the bigger sites have, but every little bit of visibility helps.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

Microcerpt limits each excerpt to 1000 words or less in a post.
What is the word limit on posts here? Maybe I can post the books in small sections like I do on Microcerpt.

I've invited every author I know to join us here on nBF, and I know Glenn has as well. We have so little time for platform building, most stick to the promotional boards.

I'll have to check with my book distributors to see if I can add books here.
They allow us to use places like Microcerpt and Wattpad, up to a point.
But most distributors who are trying to sell our books to earn their profits, don't want them on-line for free, with only the few exceptions mentioned above. Even then, were are supposed to take down one before placing another, or only use small parts of the whole book.

If it helps draw folks to nBF, I'll be glad to help all I can!

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

The limit in our forums is 10,000 characters per post. It's an arbitrary limit that I set and it was a lot bigger at one time. There are a couple problems with large posts. The most obvious is that we were getting inundated with trashy cut-and-paste material from people with a political agenda. Nobody read it all and it was taking up valuable space on our server, not to mention the time it takes to back up a huge amount of content. The current limit is probably ten times more than what it should be for this web site. Not even you exceed 1000 characters very often when delighting us with your interesting stories. People lose interest in anything beyond a few hundred words.

Your offer to publish your works here is very generous. It brings up a question I've had on my mind for a long time but have not been able to come up with a good answer, "Where is this web site going?" Looking at our Archive site will make it clear that we are not the same kind of web site that we started out to be. Everything has changed from the structure of the Internet to the way people do computing these days. We have essentially the same site we had ten years ago and that goes a long way to explain why we don't have more traffic. There is no place for a general discussion forum anymore. The likes of Facebook have replaced that concept. Thus the only way to bring in more traffic is to create something that appeals to a special interest group. A site just for computer issues would be a good example as would be a writer's forum. Unless our content is high quality and very specific, I don't see potential for growth. And that brings up yet another issue I've pondered with little enlightenment forthcoming, "How big do I want this site to be?" If we get to be too big we will have to move to a dedicated server and pay a healthy price for that. Advertising would be necessary to maintain such an operation and administration would have to be delegated to several people. It begins to look like work instead of a hobby when a web site becomes too successful. :grin:

I don't think we get enough views to make it financially worth the time and effort you would have to put into promoting your work here. Our best advertising is from people who search Google for specific information. If one of our topics have the right keywords in the title, we end up high in the search results. But that too depends on the content. A good title with only a smiley face in the reply gets ignored by search engines. Thus your book title with 10k words of synopsis would be a good candidate for advertising via SEO. But, as you must know, that kind of success depends on people searching for the exact title of your book. To see what I'm talking about do a Google search for "discussion forums." Then do a similar search for "Brainformation." We dominate the latter search, but who is going to be looking for anything like that unless they misspell Bra Information (which we have covered by the way)?

Last, and certainly not the least of the issues, is the matter of remaining non-profit. We are basically a resource for information with no promotional content. That status allows us to claim "fair use" of copyrighted content. I've never had a problem or a take down order, but I've also been careful not to give anyone the opportunity to come after us.

If you think it would be worth the time and effort, we just happen to have a spare website that is inactive: http://bfchat.brainformation.com/index.php That site can easily be converted to a special interest magnet given the right graphics, keywords, and content. At the moment I am the only active member there and use it for experimental purposes. I'd be willing to modify the appearance if you think promoting your work there would be of any value.

[Kellemora]

Hi Yogi

I wasn't thinking of using it for promotional purposes.
My books are on all the promotion book sales sites already.
And they are on places like Microcerpt and Wattpad where folks can read them for free.

I've not had time to write any new helpful writers tips to add to that category, since I was moved to full-time at work, who still only pays me the same as I was making part-time. Aargh...

I wasn't thinking of putting up a whole book at once, perhaps just one 1500+- word chapter at a time. But I already found I can't do that, as it constitutes unauthorized publishing.

I then thought about putting small parts of my WIP up for commentary and critique. Doing that is considered publishing, which causes another can of worms and problems down the road when I do get ready to publish.

I was thinking about talking about the world building steps I went through in the process of building the base for my series. But if some folks did start following it, it may blow my cover. I write under a pen name and keep my real name and personal life separate from my writing life, for now anyhow.

I just hate to see this forum go on for so long with no activity, especially the tips section you added for me, which I've not kept current as planned. Perhaps I should set aside a few minutes each day to work on something so I have it available to make more frequent posts. I like it here and wish a few more authors would come and join.

TTUL
Gary

[Yogi]

I've been fascinated by the fact that over the years we have attracted so many creative people. Writers seem to outnumber the rest. Most of the people with talent have moved onto other venues because there is more relevance to the content elsewhere. That's always been a problem here. We strive for general appeal, but the bigger social networks trump us even in that regard. I'd guess that if we were a site exclusively dedicated to authors' interests, there might be more activity. Then again, there is a lot of competition even in that niche so that we would have to come up with something unique to draw a crowd. That's why I suggested using our experimental site. It would isolate the attention to something specific. Getting visibility would still be a problem until the ball starts rolling.

I've renewed our domain name lease for a couple more years so that we should still be around for at least that long. I'm not certain what we will evolve into, but I'm open to new ideas. :mrgreen:

[Kellemora]

Writers are a weird bunch who never seem to agree on much of anything. So perhaps it's best they didn't flock here to argue over who is right.

I have so little time myself, I only hit a few of the titled forums each visit.
And as you said, the forums dedicated to writers have all kinds of things for that purpose available.

I'll put on my thinking cap and see what I might be able to add that is interesting, but won't cause arguments, hi hi...

[Yogi]

As you must know, it's the heated discussions that get the most visibility. We had some pretty wild characters posting at one time or another. They stirred up a lot of trouble and got a lot of visibility with their off the wall thinking. A lot of the members were offended, but they all flocked in to read it. I don't know if that's a better way to run a discussion board, but I will say it was never dull in those days.

Over the past year we had a few new people register and make a few posts. I personally encouraged them to come on by. None of them stayed very long. Our newest member is a random sign up who probably found us by accident in a Google search. I've not seen any more than that first post. I don't think we are unlikeable people, but the activity here is not strong and the content is not compelling enough to keep the attention of most strangers. So it seems to be a Catch 22 situation. We can't attract a crowd without a lot of activity, and we don't get a lot of activity without a crowd.

Most of the things I've seen you write about in our forums are interesting. I don't know what you can do to improve your contributions other than to get radical. How good are you at writing porn? :lmao4:

[Kellemora]

I would probably make more money with my books if I ventured up to PG13 from G, hi hi...
But then I would attract a whole different class of readers.

Heck, I get myself into trouble if I use a slightly off-color joke, even though many don't get it.
Something like "She wouldn't for a Russian, but she would for a Fin."

You know the ones who didn't get it, because they commented I spelled Finn as Fin...
Or others who didn't like my stereotyping nationalities.
The ones who did get it, complained about using innuendo's on their website.