What are Promising Authors at Gay Authors?

[Graeme]

A.J. posted just above the details of how to be nominated, as well linking to a blog post about the Author Promotion Team that is still largely appropriate (the team has changed since that blog and we're not currently looking for new members, but the process is still the same). As A.J. said, it's not a quick process and we've already got several months of backlog to get through.

Please be aware that there are a number of factors that are taken into account when determining if an author is to be promoted; reputation by itself isn't a significant factor because reputation can be gained for more than just stories. The APT has a number of metrics available to it, as well as using the old-fashioned approach of actually reading the stories of the author being reviewed...

If anyone has any questions, or would like to make a nomination, please feel free to PM the APT Lead (who happens to be me at the moment  ).

 

PS: As per the instructions in that blog entry, we don't take public nominations so please PM me if you want to nominate someone.

[quokka]

5 hours ago, chris191070 said:

 

I think that @quokka should be promoted as an author as he has 16 stories on GA now. Chris

Thanks for your nomination @Chris191070, its very much appreciated mate.  Q

[quokka]

On 6/14/2018 at 1:00 PM, chris191070 said:

 

I think that @quokka should be promoted as an author as he has 16 stories on GA now. Chris

Ten years now…

Prolific Author for quite some time.

 73 Stories 
 104 Reviews  
7,298 Comments  
 2,928,982 Words

Am i ever going to be promoted?

[E K Stokes]

Prolific author is a badge, not a rank which is given by the site management. The ranks are Promising Author followed by Signature Author. These ranks appear permanently fixed, or at least have not changed in nearly ten years. February 2014, Myr wrote: "We are still updating a lot of things and it takes time." Sasha Distan, a Promising Author, replied (February 2014): " wonder the promising section on the weekly update is so small. there are only six of us..."

There were six Promising Authors in 2014, the same six today in 2024. I could be sarcastic and say those authors haven't lived up to their promise, but the simple evidence is the ranking of authors is obsolete, fixed back in 2014 and not touched since, well as far as I can see. 

In any case, being prolific has nothing at all to do with gaining Promising Author status, it is not a foot on the ladder to promotion, simply a recognition that you have published a lot of stories.

[drown]

50 minutes ago, E K Stokes said:

There were six Promising Authors in 2014, the same six today in 2024. I could be sarcastic and say those authors haven't lived up to their promise, but the simple evidence is the ranking of authors is obsolete, fixed back in 2014 and not touched since, well as far as I can see. 

There have been so many promotions to Signature and Promising since 2014, I don't even know where to begin. Your statistics are completely wrong, just read through the promotion blog posts.

To sum it all up, I'll refer to Cia's post "How do I become a Promising or Signature Author?" from the FAQ. The criteria are clearly listed and word count isn't one of them.

[LJCC]

6 hours ago, drown said:

There have been so many promotions to Signature and Promising since 2014, I don't even know where to begin. Your statistics are completely wrong, just read through the promotion blog posts.

To sum it all up, I'll refer to Cia's post "How do I become a Promising or Signature Author?" from the FAQ. The criteria are clearly listed and word count isn't one of them.

I think word count is one of them:

• She has been a member at GA for just under five years, and in that time she has posted over 900,000 words across ten stories...
• ...has been a member since 2016 and in that time has posted over 500k words across 35 stories including the popular...
• has only been a member at GA for less than two years, but in that time he has posted over 700,000 words across twenty-three stories
• for almost eight years, and in that time has posted over 1,370,000 words across thirty-one stories
• a member at GA for over three years, and in that time has posted over 340,000 words across twenty-three stories
• has been a member at GA for over six years, and in that time he's posted over 700,000 words across eight stories including his highly enjoyable epic 

It kind of makes sense they'd consider prolific writing as a testament to the promotion since they'd have to ensure that you'd keep on writing after being promoted as part of their requirement: Promising Authors must be willing to agree to post concurrently on Gay Authors any new material with the exception of personal blogs

Although it begs the question, how often should you post once you're promoted?

Are you required to post at least 100,000 words a year to complete a single story to maintain your status?

Or,

You'd have to shell out several stories a year regardless of the word count?

Because, based on the promoted authors, they've had numerous stories (with lots of views) on their plate, and those collated stories were (based on the lowest number of their 'wored count' announcements) more than 300k+++ words at least.

Is it safe to say you'd need to write at least 300k++ words to be considered?

They should definitely have a clear cut rule on that.

Because it makes authors assume that you could write ONE very successful story and that you could be viable for promotion when, in fact, you'd need to write an X amount of successful stories with an X amount of word count that are legible, readable, well-written, and have a core audience or demographic before being considered.

And I'm not saying it's wrong or it's bad.

It is just the requirement to keep this site flowing (which I wholly understand), because promoted authors who aren't exactly posting is a definite 'bad for business' model.

So if you're writing a lot, but those stories aren't really picking up traction, or if you're writing once in a blue moon and you're like RR Martin who'd post a story once every turn of the third moon, then chances are, you won't be considered.

[drown]

2 minutes ago, LJCC said:

They should definitely have a clear cut rule on that.

I do agree that word count matters—it is a metric available and most likely being used—but making clear cut rules defeats the whole system. Editorial decisions shouldn't be based on statistics alone, and their reasonings shouldn't be available to the public. This however, is just my personal opinion. 

[LJCC]

16 minutes ago, drown said:

I do agree that word count matters—it is a metric available and most likely being used—but making clear cut rules defeats the whole system. Editorial decisions shouldn't be based on statistics alone, and their reasonings shouldn't be available to the public. This however, is just my personal opinion. 

Well, they're the ones who made it obvious by stating, elaborating, and elucidating the numbers. It's not like I just magically made it up to prove a point.

I got it from the link you posted, and all of their announcements for their signature and promising authors had a very clear word count description.  

https://gayauthors.org/search/?tags=author promotion&updated_after=any&sortby=newest >> the link you sent.

As I've said, I'm not saying it's a bad metric in general, but when they've blatantly made it obvious, then come on, just make a rule about it.

Chances are, if they wrote, for example: You need to write 300k+ words a year (or something).

Aspring Writer A would think: "Hey, my stories were a hit. I have an audience. I've written around 250k+ words. Why not write another epic banger so I could be considered?"

I mean, that's basically going for the basic script of why they had promising authors and signature author titles to begin with, to inspire writers to write...and of course, to have those stories posted on this site. 

[Graeme]

Don't confuse correlation and causation. One of the key criteria for Promising Author and Signature Author is quality, but it's difficult to judge quality on a small sample, so naturally there's a certain minimum amount of writing required to allow the quality to be assessed. So there's a correlation with word count but there's not a causal link.

[LJCC]

32 minutes ago, Graeme said:

Don't confuse correlation and causation. One of the key criteria for Promising Author and Signature Author is quality, but it's difficult to judge quality on a small sample, so naturally there's a certain minimum amount of writing required to allow the quality to be assessed. So there's a correlation with word count but there's not a causal link.

It's not really a correlation and causation fallacy if the word count appears to be the glaring truth as written in every one of your promising and signatue author newsletters. You could have omitted that and just stated that X Author has published 150 books in 10 decades or something. 😂

Even quality could be tested for metrics and paramaters, as with everything else this world. If let's say:

Author X has a very good response rate/feedback from readers. (Quality metric, 50%)

Author X has written 5 stories in an X amount of time. (Quantity metric, 20%)

Author X has written roughly 300k+ of text. (Consistency metric, 20%)

Author X has been consistently posting in 5 years/1 story per year...(Consistenty and Quantity metric, 10%)

And so on and so forth, then it'd be easier for authors to have a set goal to aspire to. The only objective metric would be quality, to assess if whether the feedback or response are actually commentaries aimed at the quality of writing or not.

I'm just imagining writers are like in an X Factor stage and the mods are like, "Sorry sweety. It's an X for me." And then the Simon Cowell of the juding panel are like, "Your writing's shit. I do love your similes. Improve on that. Next!" 🤣