Hi All!

Recently, site staff has been reviewing stories on GA, and we’ve come across a few things that we need your help to fix!

Missing/Incomplete Story Descriptions: 

A good example of missing/incomplete story descriptions can be found in many of the earlier anthologies. Many of these stories simply have a description of “2006 Summer Anthology”. Incomplete descriptions do nothing to engage readers or entice them to read your story. When updating the story description, keep in mind: "I'm trying to get people to read this.  How can I make this interesting enough for someone to want to read it?"  (while being truthful and no spoilers, of course).

Missing Tags:

Tags are a great way to help readers find your stories. For example, if you are writing a paranormal vampire story, using these tags will allow anyone interested in that genre to simply click a tag and bring up all stories of that type. If your story is not tagged as such, no matter how good the story, a reader interested in the content you provide may miss out on reading it.

Series Information:

We’ve found some stories that are a part of a collection, but the series information is missing. We’ve also found instances where the series field is used incorrectly. When you post the first story in your series, you don’t use the series feature. When you post the second story in your series, you add in the series field the name of the series and what book in that series it is. Then you go back to the first story and add in the information, labeling it as book one of the series. Please do not use the series field until you have posted the second story in the series as the series field is meant to tell readers that there are more stories in that series that are ready to be read.

Unpublished Stories:

We’ve found a lot of stories that are unpublished for one reason or another. However, as staff, we don’t know the reason. It could be perhaps that the author no longer wishes the story to be available online, but since staff has to delete the story, they simply unpublish it and leave it. If you have unpublished stories, then please contact staff to let us know if you’d like the story deleted from the system or if you plan to republish it.

How can you help?

If you are an author, we ask you to revisit your stories and if any of the above applies to you, please update your stories. If the story in question is an Anthology, contact Renee Stevens. I can temporarily remove the story from the anthology to allow you to fix it, and then move it back. If you are a reader, and you come across a story with any of the above, please PM a moderator or an admin. You can find a list of all mods and Admins here. You can also provide suggestions, which will be extremely helpful if the author is no longer on GA.

Thank you for your help!