How appreciated are the readers' reviews to you Efiction authors?

[Andrew Q Gordon]

My response is two part -

 

1st - feed back is VERY appreciated - everyone who asks for it says the same thing - tell me the good and the bad. I personally, in less than two months, have learned more from feed back than in years of writing and reading book. Some of that comes from comments, instructions, editing, reviewing and some comes in the form of actually looking things up to see if I am right or the person commenting is right - [i have been wrong more than right but right a time or two] So from my perspective feed back is the other half of why I post - the first is to see if anyone likes it and as some have said before - the read count tells me folks are reading it.

 

2nd - the more people who give feedback the more it will encourage others to do so. Sounds silly I know but for example - there are some authors who work I love for whom I do comment when new chapters go up. But in several, it is just myself and the author. Then I feel hesitant to comment - I mean I am not Promising, Hosted or Published so who am I to be this persons only source of comments. So then I hold back or I send my comments in PM. One author - who shall remain nameless but if you read this know who you are - requested I post my comments in the forum, despite being warned there would be a bit of constructive criticism. I was told they wanted it all out there for everyone to read and HOPEFULLY comment on.

 

So - aside from pointing out typos and such [unless there are too many] - all comments, including things like 'I didn't get what you were trying to do' or 'I don't think your character stayed in character' or 'you know that was really awkward' or finally 'I didn't like it and here is why' those comments, if presented rationally and in a helpful way are valuable tools for helping me - and I assume others - improve.

 

That's my take and i am sticking to it.

 

Andy

[Rilbur]

And, I wish it was possible to post stories on e-fiction with the same formatting as on Word. I can't adjust the margins, can't have italics, can't underline, can't have para indents, I have to paste and then go through the whole thing, line by line to adjust it to make it readable. takes me about half an hour simply to post a chapter! No time left to browse the forums.

 

From the sound of things, I'm going to be getting the same problem in reverse with the new system (I write using HTML, and want to be able to just post the HTML formatted text into the box). So I feel for you.