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eventidepress

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I know you don't make any cash off of submitting stories to FictionPress, obviously. But I was wondering if anyone on here has written pieces for that site, or has experience with it? Is it a good way to find new audiences? Or does no one really go on it...? I'm just curious! :)
 

Old Hack

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I'm not sure that this is a question about self-publishing so I'm going to move it to BR&BC.

Find FictionPress here.
 

Sarashay

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If I understand correctly, it's the 'original fiction' version of Fanfiction.net. I seem to recall Uncle Jim once suggesting that if you wanted to know what a slush pile was like, to go to Fanfiction.net and pick a story, any story. Much of what drives Fanfiction.net is people seeking out what is already familiar to them and that they want more of (to the point that they'll even read stuff that isn't all that polished.) FictionPress doesn't have that, so I'm not sure what sort of audience would have any interest in it.
 

eventidepress

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Hmm, okay. Cause my friend has a new start-up RP game that he's trying to build promotion for, and he was trying to promote it via stories on FictionPress, but I'm wondering how many people actually write there, and what kinda writing, or if it's just like... dead now. Their forums don't seem to even load at all x.x
 

Carradee

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I actually know of some writers who got their start on FictionPress.com. (Not including myself, though I did once write there, briefly. I got some good feedback, but I was willing to return the favor—and I was willing to take the heat when others didn't like my honest critique.)

Overall, though, I can't recommend it. If you want to use a site to post your work for others to read and comment on, I found it to provide better feedback and be easier to use than other comparable sites that were around six years ago, but that was six years ago. I have no idea what it's like there now.

I know that back when I was there, some authors actually got huge followings, agents, etc. from FictionPress.
 

Sol Quince

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FictionPress?

I just made an account on Fiction Press, and I was wonder if it's a good website to post some chapter from my WIP? I don't know that website very well and I'm scared someone might steal my ideas or something. I could post a chapter here on AW maybe, but I don't want to spam or anything.

anyone else have a fiction press account? is it a nice place?
 

Silver-Midnight

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Well, are you posting to get a critique and you eventually plan to publish it or are you writing this fun and you plan to make it a free story? If you're doing the first, I would suggest putting it in SYW, not on FictionPress. If you plan to make it free and/or you're writing for fun, then FictionPress would be a nice place to post it, just know it can take some time to get some feedback.
 

JSSchley

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What Silver said.

Don't post anything in an open forum unless you intend to give it away for free.

AW's SYW and other sites like Critters or Bookcountry, which are designed for critiquing, are first locked sites, where search engines can't trawl. Further, they tend to be frequented by people with the same motivation—to critique and have their stuff critiqued.

But, also, since you mentioned stealing ideas: ideas are a dime a dozen, and most writers have no shortage of ideas. It's all in the execution. People won't steal your prose in SYW, period, but even without that, a plagiarist isn't going to be trolling SYW looking for an idea. It's way easier for a plagiarist to just steal a finished book than come in and steal your opening chapter and still have to write the rest of it herself.

So no: no Fiction Press. Yes to SYW. But if you haven't critted some others' work, do that first.
 

Sol Quince

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Well, are you posting to get a critique and you eventually plan to publish it or are you writing this fun and you plan to make it a free story? If you're doing the first, I would suggest putting it in SYW, not on FictionPress. If you plan to make it free and/or you're writing for fun, then FictionPress would be a nice place to post it, just know it can take some time to get some feedback.

I plan to get it publish. I may post it in SYW. ty ^^
 

Smiley0501

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Actually, a debut YA was on FictionPress from 2003-2008 and gained over 1,000 fans and over 6,000 positive reviews. The author took it down as soon as she began querying agents and the book is being published by Bloomsbury USA in about 2 weeks. (Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas)

Unfortunately it's not the best site for good critique. I would definitely suggest the Share Your Work section here for that. :)
 

Silver-Midnight

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Overall, though, I can't recommend it. If you want to use a site to post your work for others to read and comment on, I found it to provide better feedback and be easier to use than other comparable sites that were around six years ago, but that was six years ago. I have no idea what it's like there now..

Do you think the same could be said about a blog or blog-like site?

I'm kind of on sites similar to FictionPress, even though I haven't posted there in a while. And I was just wondering if I should continue to post there or create a blog to post it on. Maybe even do a combination of both?
 

Carradee

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Do you think the same could be said about a blog or blog-like site?

I'm kind of on sites similar to FictionPress, even though I haven't posted there in a while. And I was just wondering if I should continue to post there or create a blog to post it on. Maybe even do a combination of both?

Serializing a book on your own blog is useful if you want to build your own independent audience, particularly if you're self-publishing, but you have to do it right. I screwed mine up in the beginning.

(Tip: Have the skin finalized and the links to subscribe up before you go live. Also: Don't use Blogger; you can't put the posts in reverse order, making it a pain to program a ToC.)

With your own blog, though, you have to get word out to others that it exists. (There are directories of web fiction that can help.)

With sites like FictionPress.com and FanStory.com, readers are already there, looking for things to read, so it's easier to find readers. (Tip: Make comments on others' stories.)
 

MandyHubbard

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Actually, a debut YA was on FictionPress from 2003-2008 and gained over 1,000 fans and over 6,000 positive reviews. The author took it down as soon as she began querying agents and the book is being published by Bloomsbury USA in about 2 weeks. (Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas)

Unfortunately it's not the best site for good critique. I would definitely suggest the Share Your Work section here for that. :)

She had FAR more than 1,000 fans. I had about that for one of my earlier works (The Broken Road, it was called). The site is pretty big. :)

Fictionpress is predominantly used by teens just starting, not serious writers aiming for publication. I started there in 2003 and wrote a half dozen stories before I decided to pursue an agent. I got one in 2006. My debut YA came out in 2009 and my seventh releases in august, and I'm now an agent myself.

Fictionpress was fun and I have some wonderful friends from there, but it's not really a tool for your road to publication, IMO.
 

Silver-Midnight

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Serializing a book on your own blog is useful if you want to build your own independent audience, particularly if you're self-publishing, but you have to do it right.

Well, I really don't plan to self-publish. However, I would like a place to post my fiction, like serial and/or to get feedback. The real issue is that I know I want to write but I just don't know if I'm "ready to publish". I don't know how to really explain it more than my writing doesn't feel like it's reached "that place". Now, I could be very well wrong. But I think I should have a little bit more practice to perfect my skills, especially since I've slightly changed genres since I've been here. I just kind of want to see how I'm doing I guess. It's hard to explain. :tongue


I screwed mine up in the beginning.

(Tip: Have the skin finalized and the links to subscribe up before you go live. Also: Don't use Blogger; you can't put the posts in reverse order, making it a pain to program a ToC.)

With your own blog, though, you have to get word out to others that it exists. (There are directories of web fiction that can help.)

With sites like FictionPress.com and FanStory.com, readers are already there, looking for things to read, so it's easier to find readers. (Tip: Make comments on others' stories.)

Well, the sites I'm talking are like that, as in the readers are already there. I suppose I would just use the blog to bring other people to see it I guess.


Truth be told, I don't even know if I'm making the right decision. It's like on one hand, I don't know if I'm ready to publish yet. I really want to perfect what I have, especially since I changed genres only a short time ago. I have to build some skills. Plus, on top of everything else, I kind of want to just fall in love with writing again. Just get to that place where the main goal was writing mostly I think, not what I was going to do once it was finished.

But I've also gotten a lot of advice telling me not to post anything as well, simply because I don't know when I could be published.

I really just don't know what to do. :Shrug:



Fictionpress was fun and I have some wonderful friends from there, but it's not really a tool for your road to publication, IMO.

I don't know if I'd necessarily use FictionPress but it is an option.
 

Silver-Midnight

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I found these sites. One was just suggested, Fan Story, another I found from the main AW site, and another I only kind of know a little about.

Writing.com (This was the one I found)

Book Country.com (This one I found from the main AW site, not the forums)

Fan Story.com (This one was just suggested up thread)



So, far, I honestly like Book Country and Fan Story the most but I don't know for sure yet. I'm kind of looking at all of them.
 

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Well, the sites I'm talking are like that, as in the readers are already there.

I don't think they are, though. Display sites are full of writers hoping to get their work seen, and attempting to promote: but readers very rarely visit. Why should they? What's in it for them? They can read things for free at Amazon; they can buy books they like from Amazon. Why would readers find display sites in the first place, let alone hang out there? I've watched a few display sites over the years and know that this very rarely happens.
 

Katrina S. Forest

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I don't know about the others, but Writing.com is still quite searchable on Google. My only experience with it was finding out that someone had stolen one of my stories from FictionPress and gone to post it on Writing.com as their own work. The moderators took it down right away, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. The reviews I read of the story while it was still up were pretty shallow -- "Love it!" "You should write more!" that sort of thing. About the same as I've found on FictionPress. Honestly, I haven't posted anything on either site since then, and that was several years ago. You might gain fans there if you know how to promote yourself, but you'll gain few in-depth reviews.

I think most readers on FictionPress have wandered there from Fanfiction.net. You like a fanfic, the author mentions they've got some original stuff over here, you take a peek. There's also a lot readers whose reviews just say, "I love it! Now please go read my story!"
 

Silver-Midnight

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I don't think they are, though. Display sites are full of writers hoping to get their work seen, and attempting to promote: but readers very rarely visit. Why should they? What's in it for them? They can read things for free at Amazon; they can buy books they like from Amazon. Why would readers find display sites in the first place, let alone hang out there? I've watched a few display sites over the years and know that this very rarely happens.

So, does that mean I'd be better trying to eventually publish instead of trying to find a place to post to get feedback?

I don't know about the others, but Writing.com is still quite searchable on Google. My only experience with it was finding out that someone had stolen one of my stories from FictionPress and gone to post it on Writing.com as their own work. The moderators took it down right away, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. The reviews I read of the story while it was still up were pretty shallow -- "Love it!" "You should write more!" that sort of thing. About the same as I've found on FictionPress. Honestly, I haven't posted anything on either site since then, and that was several years ago. You might gain fans there if you know how to promote yourself, but you'll gain few in-depth reviews.

I think most readers on FictionPress have wandered there from Fanfiction.net. You like a fanfic, the author mentions they've got some original stuff over here, you take a peek. There's also a lot readers whose reviews just say, "I love it! Now please go read my story!"

I can see all of that happening. FF.Net does have some cases of users taking another user's fan fic. I can kind of seeing it happening on FictionPress. I can't really speak for Book Country and Fan Story. I haven't been on there. I just heard of them.
 

Katrina S. Forest

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So, does that mean I'd be better trying to eventually publish instead of trying to find a place to post to get feedback?

It's not that you shouldn't try to get feedback. It's that the quality of the feedback matters. There's places designed to get serious feedback (like SYW on AW) and there's places that mostly just give empty compliments (like FictionPress). Usually the sites that center around serious feedback are not searchable, so your work isn't self-published when you post there. (A serious problem to consider when posting on FictionPress or Writing.com)
 

Silver-Midnight

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It's not that you shouldn't try to get feedback. It's that the quality of the feedback matters. There's places designed to get serious feedback (like SYW on AW) and there's places that mostly just give empty compliments (like FictionPress). Usually the sites that center around serious feedback are not searchable, so your work isn't self-published when you post there. (A serious problem to consider when posting on FictionPress or Writing.com)

Well, I consider SYW to be more of a site if you're planning to publish something. FictionPress(and the above mentioned sites) would be places to just place/post the entire story. I take SYW far more seriously than I would FictionPress and etc. I do hope to get feedback from both, but I know I'll get different types. However, I would hope that both are helpful to at least some extent. But with SYW, I might try to eventually submit what I post their to an agent and/or publisher. What I post on FictionPress and etc. would more than likely stay there, or at least more than likely go unpublished. But I don't want my stuff taken either.