Stories pending over 3 weeks

[AbbeFaria]

You can have stories deleted. I have done so.

which publishing guidelines, which I guess was my actual question before.

I’m not quite following what happened to you.

I’d not find thaf helpful. It sounds like most of your issues are commercial publishing ones, do I have that right?

Incorrect.

Point one: You have to send a request to have them deleted. I can't just hit delete. These stories aren't for sale, they're on a free site, but I need to submit a request that goes through the same agonizing review process that can take weeks to more than a month. I can have them deleted. I can't delete them.

Point Two: My book went to Kindle Unlimited. Per their guidelines, the story can't be available anywhere else. Even having it behind a paywall on Patreon. You're allowed to stub it on sites like LE and Royal Road, which lets you keep the first five chapters up, but no more. I had to have it removed from LE for that reason.

Point Three: it's not about whether you would find it helpful, it's about giving authors tools to grow their fan base, if they wish. You may not want to, but others might. I happen to want to grow my published works and develop a following. I'm not saying they even need a partnership program with Amazon, I only bring that up as an example of what is possible when a site wants to nurture talent and encourage authors to use their site, rather than throwing up roadblocks that only make it inhospitable. Again, they could have been a leader in this. They've been in the game so long, they could have developed a LitErotica Press, created an epub store, developed partnerships for authors. Instead, we have...whatever this site has stagnated into. One fuck-up after the other and admins who are unresponsive and give the impression that they just don't care because we keep showing up regardless.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Incorrect.

Point one: You have to send a request to have them deleted. I can't just hit delete. These stories aren't for sale, they're on a free site, but I need to submit a request that goes through the same agonizing review process that can take weeks to more than a month. I can have them deleted. I can't delete them.

Point Two: My book went to Kindle Unlimited. Per their guidelines, the story can't be available anywhere else. Even having it behind a paywall on Patreon. You're allowed to stub it on sites like LE and Royal Road, which lets you keep the first five chapters up, but no more. I had to have it removed from LE for that reason.

Point Three: it's not about whether you would find it helpful, it's about giving authors tools to grow their fan base, if they wish. You may not want to, but others might. I happen to want to grow my published works and develop a following. I'm not saying they even need a partnership program with Amazon, I only bring that up as an example of what is possible when a site wants to nurture talent and encourage authors to use their site, rather than throwing up roadblocks that only make it inhospitable. Again, they could have been a leader in this. They've been in the game so long, they could have developed a LitErotica Press, created an epub store, developed partnerships for authors. Instead, we have...whatever this site has stagnated into. One fuck-up after the other and admins who are unresponsive and give the impression that they just don't care because we keep showing up regardless.

Yeah - this seems pretty much all commercial-focused. I’m not sure that’s a priority for the site. They are committed to free work. That’s probably why there aren’t tools to make commercial publishing easier.

Plenty of other for profit authors seem to thrive here. I’ve never looked into it as I have zero interest in making money from my hobby.

I get you think the site should have different priorities. Their choice I guess.

I’ve not found deleting stories a very onerous process TBH - obviously you have.

I understand you want the site to be different and respect your decision to leave when it doesn’t meet your requirements. Totally your prerogative.

Good luck with your publishing journey.

 

[AbbeFaria]

Yeah - this seems pretty much all commercial-focused. I’m not sure that’s a priority for the site. They are committed to free work. That’s probably why there aren’t tools to make commercial publishing easier.

Plenty of other for profit authors seem to thrive here. I’ve never looked into it as I have zero interest in making money from my hobby.

I get you think the site should have different priorities. Their choice I guess.

I’ve not found deleting stories a very onerous process TBH - obviously you have.

I understand you want the site to be different and respect your decision to leave when it doesn’t meet your requirements. Totally your prerogative.

Good luck with your publishing journey.

They don't have to make publishing for profit easier. I'm just saying they could have been a leader in that regard if they weren't so ass backward. I only brought up what sites do to help published authors as an example of what is possible when a site tries to nurture talent. Fine if they don't want to. I'm not leaving this site because they don't have an Amazon partnership program. I don't use RR's partnership program, either because I write haremlit and that's barely tolerated there as it is.

I'm leaving this site because of how hard it is to post stories and how little control they give me over my work. I laid it all out already. I didn't need them to help me promote my work, just not reject my story because I told new readers how to find it if they wanted to read it. Which was not through links in the story, just 'check my profile for info on how to find it'. That's not just not nurturing talent, that's working against them. But even that, I could tolerate if stories didn't randomly hang in pending as is now happening (29 days, baby, and not a word from admin! woohoo!), and give me zero control over it without going through the same arduous process to even adjust a title sequence error. Which happened on my last story.

There was a sequence error and I didn't catch it right away, and so a 325k word story with I don't even know how many installments was showing up out of order and caused the story to be broken into multiple groups. By the time I saw what was happening, I had nearly a dozen installments up. Since I can't edit them myself (my god, the horror!) I sent a request to our overlords for a mass edit of the title sequences just to get them to appear sequentially for readers. It was either ignored or rejected. I could have resubmitted each installment after that, a process that would have taken an absurdly long time, but that it would come to that at all is ridiculous.

That is why I can't stomach this site anymore. The only reason I'm here at all is to check in and tick off another day that my story doesn't get rejected or approved. And the only reason I submitted it at all was to leave a comment to my nearly 2k followers that I'm done, but they can find my work for free elsewhere, before it goes to Amazon. That is the only reason I came back after it was rejected last year. My fans left me comments that literally made me tear up and I felt bad just leaving my account dead after the hassle of getting the story deleted in time, plus all the shit I went through getting it posted in the first place.

This site sucks for writers. Full stop. We have to fight them to make them money. And now, when you look at the mass chaos this AI rejection system is caused, it has only strengthened my resolve to leave this dinosaur of a site in the dirt, where it belongs.

 

[EmilyMiller]

They don't have to make publishing for profit easier. I'm just saying they could have been a leader in that regard if they weren't so ass backward. I only brought up what sites do to help published authors as an example of what is possible when a site tries to nurture talent. Fine if they don't want to. I'm not leaving this site because they don't have an Amazon partnership program. I don't use RR's partnership program, either because I write haremlit and that's barely tolerated there as it is.

I'm leaving this site because of how hard it is to post stories and how little control they give me over my work. I laid it all out already. I didn't need them to help me promote my work, just not reject my story because I told new readers how to find it if they wanted to read it. Which was not through links in the story, just 'check my profile for info on how to find it'. That's not just not nurturing talent, that's working against them. But even that, I could tolerate if stories didn't randomly hang in pending as is now happening (29 days, baby, and not a word from admin! woohoo!), and give me zero control over it without going through the same arduous process to even adjust a title sequence error. Which happened on my last story.

There was a sequence error and I didn't catch it right away, and so a 325k word story with I don't even know how many installments was showing up out of order and caused the story to be broken into multiple groups. By the time I saw what was happening, I had nearly a dozen installments up. Since I can't edit them myself (my god, the horror!) I sent a request to our overlords for a mass edit of the title sequences just to get them to appear sequentially for readers. It was either ignored or rejected. I could have resubmitted each installment after that, a process that would have taken an absurdly long time, but that it would come to that at all is ridiculous.

That is why I can't stomach this site anymore. The only reason I'm here at all is to check in and tick off another day that my story doesn't get rejected or approved. And the only reason I submitted it at all was to leave a comment to my nearly 2k followers that I'm done, but they can find my work for free elsewhere, before it goes to Amazon. That is the only reason I came back after it was rejected last year. My fans left me comments that literally made me tear up and I felt bad just leaving my account dead after the hassle of getting the story deleted in time, plus all the shit I went through getting it posted in the first place.

This site sucks for writers. Full stop. We have to fight them to make them money. And now, when you look at the mass chaos this AI rejection system is caused, it has only strengthened my resolve to leave this dinosaur of a site in the dirt, where it belongs.

I understand your frustration.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I understand your frustration.

I think that everyone does.

We can only control those things within our power to control.

After exploring all their options, if a writer believes that the only control that they can exercise here is to leave the site, then that is what they should do.