Site income and publishing stories.

[Talo Segura]

I have always preferred to read a book as a whole, pick up and put down the story whenever I want, where ever I want, as opposed to reading piecemeal online. The argument for keeping people on the site to attract advertising doesn't hold true, because there is no advertising. Storage space and running the site cost money and this is covered by donations, but how about an alternative or complimentary business model. One which is unique and not done anywhere else!

When a story, of a minimum length (20k words, novella) is complete, convert it to an ebook (reedsy.com), could be done by volunteers (not too time consuming), store the ebook somewhere online for download. When a new story starts publishing (one or two chapters online) offer the ebook for download at a small and reasonable price. The revenue raised supports the site and author, for example five dollars (4.60 Euros, 3.97 pounds sterling) per book, a dollar or two to the author, the rest to run the site. Preferably an anonymous payment system?

It doesn't go against free gay themed stories, because you can still wait to read the story. Why would anyone buy a free story? Why does anyone donate? To support the site, to support the author, to get something, an ebook to keep, it's kind of nice to have your own library. The remuneration of the author just gives a little bonus and maybe attracts new authors. The site still has complete editorial control.

[Cole Parker]

Any author can do this now if he wants, completely outside the scope of a website.  I personally enjoy the feedback of readers, either emails or forum coments.  Once the story is in book form, my understanding is that feedback is negligible or completely absent.  

I don't know the why of the serialization of stories with a day or two or a week or more between chapter postings.  Ever since I started reading and writing online, this has been the way story sites have operated.  I too would rather have the entire story available to read at my own pace.  Is it possible it was done as it is now because many authors posted a chapter as it was written, and there was a pause then while the next chapter was being written?  I think that was sometimes the case.

If the site does get some sort of remuneration from the number of hits it generates, that would be a reason to do it this way as well, but I haven't seen that.

I know a writer who has used Amazon and now has three books self-published.  As of now, there has been zero feedback from any purchaser and only very modest sales.  Talk about a moitivation killer!

C

 

 

[Altimexis]

The ebook suggestion has come up before and everyone thinks it's a great idea, but no one has ever stepped up to the plate to make it happen.

I do read online stories on the go on my smartphone all the time, and even write portions of some of my stories that way, so having an ebook format isn't relevant to me. I know for a fact that serialization started because most authors posted chapters as they wrote them - and it showed. Very often, they forgot things they wrote in earlier chapters and the result was something I can't stand - inconsistencies. Chris James did that all the time and even lost entire years out of his characters' lives. Even when I pointed it out to him, he refused to correct his mistakes. I know it was his prerogative, but how was I supposed to care about his writing if he didn't care? I long ago decided to write the first draft of my stories in their entirety before posting the first chapter, but serialization allowed me to post them while my editors were fixing my typos.

[Rutabaga]

26 minutes ago, Altimexis said:

I know for a fact that serialization started because most authors posted chapters as they wrote them - and it showed.

This is painfully obvious on Nifty, but people going there know what to expect.  Well more than half of the stories there start out with a burst of energy and then peter out when the author has no idea what to do next, or just loses interest.  Mostly this happens when the author doesn't really have a story, but only has a premise.  Occasionally we see the opposite phenomenon, when it is obvious that the author can't stand to end the story and keeps coming up with more and more contrived events and circumstances to keep the saga going.  

I would just add that nothing like this will ever happen unless someone new steps up to handle it.  John (@Alien Son) is already at or beyond capacity and in danger of burning out.  There is only so much I can do from the opposite hemisphere to help him.  It's remarkable how much housekeeping this site requires, and he is bearing the brunt of it.  

Cheers,

R

[Pedro]

I know of some sites that offer forward reading of chapters or completed stories through a Patreon paywall. I’m not sure how much extra work would be involved. IIRC, AD author Cynus, whose muse, alas, seems to have  done a runner, did this through his own site at one point. 
 

However one thing I should mention about my experience of Patreon for e-reading is that your payments are subject to VAT / Sales Tax as you as subscribing for a benefit. Whether Patreon handle the necessary reporting and payments over to the various tax authorities, I have no idea.

[Alien Son]

No one has mentioned the other obvious reason for posting stories a chapter at a time... to keep readers coming back to the site. That was Mike's justification for publishing that way.

~ John

[Talo Segura]

There are two significant points raised: the amount of work involved and keeping people coming back to the site. The amount of work involved in compiling an ebook using reedsy is not much, I've done it and would volunteer. Keeping people coming back to the site, nothing would change, the present periodic chapter posting would continue. 

The unknowns: how much work, cost, is involved to load and store the ebooks? Certainly setting up the system and payment involves significant work, but that is a one off, with some maintenance ongoing. Would the revenue generated justify the work? Another unknown, but there is huge potential.

Any decision rests with the site admin and I have only a vague idea as to who and how deeply those persons are involved. I understand it is a sort of hobby, leisure activity, and not a paid job running the site, which is probably the biggest argument against any changes.

I would just add, I set up a site for downloading ebooks using a free commercial hosting system and it didn't take too much work. The books are free to download, so no payment system involved, and the download process is messy because I didn't want paid for hosting, but it works. This is not a plug, but an example: https://the-gay-fiction-library.site123.me/

 

[Cole Parker]

I think we want as many visitors to the site as possible, and always have thought this was the main reason for serialization.  I also applaud the fact that this is a free service to readers.  Introducing a scheme to allow them to read ahead for money doesn't sit well with me.  Obviously, some people couldn't afford to do that as easily as others, and that could cause problems.

Too, why couldn't someone pay to read ahead, then mention what's coming in the forum, ruining the suprises and drama others would get reading the chapters as they were intended to be read?

The way the site was designed works, and is still consistent with how Mike wanted it run.  I'd say, don't mess with a good thing.

C

 

[Merkin]

  I agree. Let’s not try to fix what isn’t broken.

  Stories told through serial release have been a big hit with readers ever since magazines became popular and easily accessible to a literate public.  Charles Dickens established the form for English readers with The Pickwick Papers in the early 1800’s. Much of European and Russian literature was first published serially, including works by Alexandre Dumas, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.
 
  Most writers who set out to construct a lengthy narrative tend to handle the passage of time and the development of their characters through episodic reveal, and they unwind their plots in the form of chapters. Publication in a staged format is not only familiar to readers, it is often built in by the writer to support the pace of the tale he is unfolding.

[Talo Segura]

You both, Cole and Merkin make a fair point, if it's not broken don't fix it. If the site can run on donations for finance then other revenue sources are not needed. Serilised stories are a historic format, but times do change. Today's tendency, looking at television series, is to watch them when you like and as many episodes as you like, even binging a whole season of episodes. One installment a week, like one chapter a week can be a little frustrating, although you can argue just wait until the whole thing's published. 

I don't know how many page hits stories get, how many site visitors, or the sites long term viability. I do think it lacks dynamism. In a world of likes and comments, there is no way to like stories and chapters, comments are shifted off site to the forum. On the forum you seldom see the authors, what interaction exists is between a tiny group of supporters who've been here forever! 

Still, it's your baby, you nurture it as is your predisposition, I only hope it's still around for the next twenty years. That's my reason for the suggestion, to keep the place alive.

 

[Rutabaga]

John and I have been developing ways to measure site activity, but we're still exploring what can be measured and how best to measure it.  

Our newest stories have code embedded that tracks the number of times a page is viewed.  While the method is not foolproof, it's likely to be fairly representative.  Here is a graph showing clicks on the index page and the individual chapter pages of Cole Parker's current serial story, "Two Part Harmony":

The graph begins at February 27, 2024 and goes through this morning, March 26, 2024.  The top line is the index page for the story, which is where the home page link directs people.  As of this morning there are 4,994 clicks on that page, and you can see little hills in the graph every few days when a new chapter posts.

The lines underneath are for each individual chapter, of which eight are live as of this snapshot.  Not surprisingly, the oldest chapters tend to have the most clicks.  It's interesting to see the bumps in each chapter when it goes live, which correspond to the bumps in the index page.  For some reason chapter 6 has more clicks than chapters 4 and 5 as of this morning, so its graph shows higher in the listing than those two, because they are listed in the order of how many clicks were received.  (The number of views is shown as a number in the far left column.)

Our web host spits out detailed logs of every single transaction carried out by the server, and looking at the raw logs is like reading a telephone book.  Human beings need to use analysis software to extract information from these logs.  Here is a monthly summary of site activity to date since we opened the new site in January, produced by the AWStats program:

As of this morning, here are the most popular pages (note that the very top line is a sitewide total):

On the search side, Google reports the following overall search activity (note that "impressions" means that one of our pages appeared in search results, and "clicks" means that the person actually clicked on a displayed link):

Here are the most frequent search terms entered (again remember the meaning of clicks and impressions):

Of course we have no access to comparative stats from 2023 and earlier, since we lost all ability to connect to the previous host.  These numbers seem fairly respectable to me under the circumstances.  

And, in response to your last comment, I would say it's "our" baby.  It all starts with the folks who write and submit stories for publication here.  John and I and the others who contribute behind the scenes have a common objective of providing a good reading experience.  For better or worse, our technical platform and the existing standard for preparing and displaying stories will not accommodate a "like" function on the actual story pages, so this forum is the place for people to express appreciation.  Or they can email the authors directly in many cases (some of the oldest stories no longer have functioning email links).  We could consider putting legends at the end of stories to encourage people to visit the forum and post their comments, although my read of things is that the vast majority of stie visitors are bashful and would rather lurk than post.  Too, we have still not figured out the best long-term plan for this forum and its hosting by Invision in the aftermath of Mike's passing.  John and I hope to make progress on that in April or May.

Anyway, your suggestions are and will be appreciated as are your contributions as an author.  

Cheers,

R

[Talo Segura]

The stats are very interesting and I agree very reasonable in respect of the site, encouraging even! You are doing a great job and I appreciate the open communication. It is complex and not very easy to analyse all the numbers and you have to work within the software constraints you have. I am full of admiration for the job you are doing. Thank you very much.