Suggested extension to the forum.

[mosimo]

This is as close as I could find for a suggestion box. I have a suggestion and would like to bring this to the attention of the website moderators, but anyone else who wishes to comment as well can. The members of this forum all have great potential. The people who participate in this forum all participate because they all have a great passion for literature of all types. The members also write excellent short stories, novels and poetry. I am thinking there needs to be more recognition to the writers and editors on this site than there is. Those stories which win the 300 dollar prize at the end of each year are in truth worth more than just $300. Additionally those stories which are posted and win the monthly voting are worth more than the nothing that is rewarded. Nevertheless those people who wrote the stories did it not to win the money but because they enjoyed writing. Yet the tons of stories that are being created and the potential of the people creating the stories is endless. This comes down to my suggestion. Could this site not serve as a output for these stories and novels. Right now the stories just stop here after they are judged. Could not a branch of this web site be opened which publishes the winning stories if not even more and could sell them via Internet in either paper form or even PDF format. Then the writer of the story could also get royalties. To make this successful the short story competition would have to be made a restrictive portion of the forum, but to get in one would not have to pay but rather submit a story or such. Other competitions could be opened like an novel competition and a novella competition. Poems could be compiled into collections and the same with short stories. I let the technicalities of the operation up to those who understand how websites work but it is a shame that the short stories being judged upon and the other creative writings produced stop within the borders of this forum. Profits produced from the selling of the stories could be used to improve the site and increasing the prizes for the short stories. Prizes could also be implemented for the poems and other judges competitions. Thanks for your consideration.

[Admin]

It costs money to publish books, even self publishing. It also takes money to market books. There is a field called vanity publishing where companies publish anything that is submitted to them in anthologies and then sell those anthologies to the family of the author at a high price (preying on the author's vanity, hence the term). That is not something I would want to do.

So, who is going to buy them? Forum members who can read them here for free? Who else will know about them? Do we advertise, but then you're back to the money issue.

I'm afraid it is just not something that is feasible.... you would have to sell literally thousands of copies just to make a profit off the initial publishing costs, and that doesn't could any marketing costs.

[mosimo]

It does not need to be published as actually printing the book but just converting the book to PDF and allowing more people to access them. You already sell Cd's of the other classics on this site. The minimum would be to produce a link along with the author list or book list that is a separate page containing those works which where written by the forum members therefore people would not have to read though all the forums to get to them. It would not be necessary to sell the books but you could allow them to be downloaded even if it would be in word format. They could be arranged in such a way that those books which are prize winners could be easily accessed. Many people(myself included) search for online books to read. Placing these book outside of the forum would make them appear on a google search. I myself would find it easier to read the stories that have been written if I did not have to read them in the forum. Actually publishing the stories written would be something in the far future if the people would be willing to pay to read the writings. It does not have to cost anything to start.

[Admin]

Do you want to go back and search the Short Stories forum and gather links to the posts for all posted previous stories, then create a link-hub thread listing them all by title/author? If so, I'll sticky it.

[mosimo]

No what I am suggesting would actually require a little change in the website format. I am requesting that on the home page of Online-literature.com there be a tag like 'writers corner' which would house the member written books in the same way that 'Authors' contains the classic books. It should not change the actual forum except that the stories instead of being posted in the forum would be separate like the in the example of the other classics. They would then have their own threads for discussing the stories. You could also add a book club for discussing amateur written stories just like there is the other book club. If I still have not been able to communicate my idea or if it is really improbable that is OK and it can be discarded.

[jgweed]

Are you suggesting a new forum exclusively designed to allow Members to post original works (an internet kind of publishing), each work a topic with replies discussing it or offering critiques in the subsequent thread? I guess I am unclear about how this proposed change would differ from several other forums that appear to have the same function.
Cheers,
John

[Jozanny]

I think maybe mosimo means an author's website page which holds published content, but has a comment function much like a blog. I think it might be overkill, but then again, Slate Magazine is increasingly integrated, video, web content, offshoots like The Root, and networked with news magazines and traditional daily newspapers, so I don't know.

LN is a large web community. I'll give it that.

[mosimo]

What I am suggesting would be a layout difference in the how the website is presented and how the user written stories are presented. The change in itself would only be a small change yet I think It would produce easier access to the original works by the LN members. I am thinking though that the only way for me really to express what I am meaning would be to produce the design and send a sample of what I mean. Yet I do not really have the time to mess around and produce it nor do I have the expertise to do it quickly. I was hoping that someone would have understood what I was saying and have been able to do it themselves. Maybe it is not really worth it. It would not be formatically any different than what is in the forum with the classic authors already. Maybe it is really not as feasible as I was thinking.

Maybe I am the only one who really thinks that it would make searching easier. If that is the case then it is nothing necessary it was just a suggestion.

Thanks for your consideration.