Getting your story noticed!

[Empathy]

Try the e-fiction section here for your stories.

Smokr will certainly do the same deal for you he did for me.

$5 a month and yourname.smokr.info will point to your front page.

Send him the text in richtext, .doc or .htm(l) and he'll have it up inside 24 hours. You can pick the theme, he's got multiple pages set up for different kinds of looks, just pick one or send him a background image and colors you want. Buttons if you have them.

Sites on hosts all over run at least five bucks a month and you have to do it all yourself. He does almost all of it for me for the same.

I'm sure he'd do the same for about anyone here! He won't come register, though, the wuss!

Ya, I know you're reading this!

He's about ready to open the offer to anyone here who wants it.

I have to ask the guys admining here first, we in no way want to take an author who would have used GA without his offer.

smokrhosting@smokr.info

The email works already, he says it's fine, just ask here to be hosted first, especially if you'd prefer it!

 

 

My story A Cursed Life is already available under efiction. I'm not sure if I want to doing anything that big, I've some experience with creating pages myself so it's certainly something I could handle myself. The hesitation was more so on the point of wheter or not it would be worth it. I don't have any completed stories (only one that's been made public yet) and don't exactly have a readership. So I'm not sure if having my own page is really something I should bother with.

[Camy]

Personally I think it's best to get your fiction to the point where you don't have to pay to have it hosted. Writing is a craft, and if people like what you do you'll be offered hosting eventually ... otherwise it's the same as vanity publishing.

 

Camy

[C James]

Due to Nifty being discussed in this thread, I felt compelled to return and post a warning:

 

Read the Nifty licensee agreement BEFORE submitting anything, because what you are doing is GIVING UP your story.

 

Legal stuff: Authors retain rights to and title to their submitted works. By submitting a work, the author grants the Nifty Archive a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, and non-cancellable license to display the work. (If this is unacceptable, please contact us to discuss your concern.)

 

Authors may license their stories to other publishers, but that does not revoke the license granted to the Nifty Archive. Authors may reclaim the license granted to Nifty by replacing a story with an equivalent story appropriate for display in the Nifty Archive, or by making a contribution to the Nifty Archive of equal value in another form.[

 

The maintainers of the Archive will respect requests for changes to stories, to attribution, and/or to email addresses in the Archive by the original author of the work. Decisions to honor requests to remove a work from public display are determined on a case-by-case basis. This does not nullify, terminate, or revoke any license granted to the Nifty Archive. Updates and changes will propagate to all Nifty mirror sites within a day or two.

 

Take note of the words "perpetual, and non-cancellable", because what they mean is that you CANNOT have your story removed if they don't happen to feel like it.

 

I really liked (cough!) the end of that license agreement, which mentions ways an Author may "reclaim" a licence: "or by making a contribution to the Nifty Archive of equal value in another form".

 

Yes, they are offering to sell you your own story rights!!! You have to PAY them an amount THEY, at that time, decide upon to get your story removed.

 

Bear in mind also that granting licence to Nifty is also granting them the ability to display your work in whatever environment they wish: they might develop a pay site, or even a porn site, and you would have no say in whether or not your work was included.

 

IMHO, an author who is desperate to increase readership *MIGHT* find nifty worthwhile, *IF* they are fully aware of the strings attached and have no problems with that, but that's up to the author, and it;s a decision that can only be made once aware of the pitfalls of nifty (which have so far gone unmentioned on this thread). In my own case, I might (unlikely, but I might) consider posting a few chapters of a story there, in order to generate traffic, but I wouldn't put a full story there, but that's just my choice.

[shadowgod]

And that is why I really dont care to post to Nifty any longer. I am as I think we are looking for better alternitives. I thought I found it when I stumbled onto gayauthors.org. But this is more a community the an archive. If nifty's license agreement was a bit more negotiable or even if they stuck by their own submission guidelines ( propper grammer and sentance structure are requirments belive it or not) maybe the site would be worth it. BUt I honestly dont see Nifty in the same light I once did. A few short years ago it was home to the best alternitive fiction now well now it seems to be decaying into a mere shadow of its former self. Has anyone spoken to Myr about setting up an alternitive archive?

 

steve

[Graeme]

The warning above is one reason I currently don't post anything at Nifty. The other is that I'm not sure how appropriate some of my stories are, as it is the Nifty Erotic Story Archives, and none of my stuff is erotic.

 

As a side note, those conditions haven't always been in place. I know of one author who has successfully pointed out that the conditions at the time they posted a story were different, and insisted that the site obeys the conditions at that time.

 

Personally, I'm happy for my stories to be on smaller sites, and gain readers by a slow process of word-of-mouth and judicial advertising. I write because I enjoy it, because I think I sometimes have something to say. Feedback is my reward, but I'm not doing it just to be rewarded, so I don't mind (much) that I don't get huge numbers of emails.

[Davey]

I first posted at Nifty because I felt it was the 'thing to do'. In recent months I've been reconsidering that decision. My last post there was initially rejected as they had 'concerns' over the storys direction. I posted it in efiction here first to see what reaction I got, simply the feedback I recieved was only good.

 

I made my decision to stop posting at Nifty on the Archivist's attitude towards my work, my main home is now efiction, It may not be as big and well used as the Nifty archive but it feels much more like home to me.

 

If you post here and still want to get noticed, you can place links to your work in your blog of even on your posting signature. A great number of people read our posts, even though they don't activlily participate. I've had a good volume of feedback that's been directed in this way.

 

Dave

[Formosa]

Hm, shocking to read about the 'fine print' on Nifty's incensing agreement...don't know how it escape me since that's the kind of thing I did at law school

 

I started posting there because of the huge crowd all over the world, and it still is where I get most of my readers. So far I've not had much problem with Nifty, and they're always surprisingly fast posting my work (sometimes immediately!). Though when I posted my first chapter (which was a dream involving a adult-child sex scene), they initially put my story under "Stories involving Bondage, Control, S&M, and authority figures". I wasn't too happy about that, but managed to get it transfered to the "high school category" soon enough.

 

It's true what Graeme pointed out about the fact that Nifty is an 'erotic' archive. My story isn't all that erotic either (no much sex, yet), and I'm surprised by the amount of mails from readers who say they like it more because it's different from all the others which seem to revolve around sex.

 

>>About getting the story noticed, I have a blog and post story maps, pictures and background to my story on the blog. I find it's an effective way to attract 'stray' readers. But to be honest, when I started writing, reaching out to a whole lot of people wasn't what I wanted. I'd rather that my story is read by a few people who appreciate the work and see the fine details and symbolisms behind the words, than a whole horde who just rush through it in search of a little (s)excitement.

[DomLuka]

I don

[Dusk]

Concerning the word "erotic" in Nifty's title: As far as I can tell from what's available at the site, Nifty's archivist is interpreting the word "erotic" in the same way that ASSGM's moderator does (here I quote from ASSGM's FAQ): "The main requirement for stories to be included in this group is that they are same-sex in nature, and that they involve sex. The sex does not need to be graphic, and can be merely sexual tension. If the story involves breaking off a relationship, it is about sex."

 

According to my domain stats, Nifty is the single largest referrer of readers to me - and I post in a lot of places.

 

As far as "guilt by association" is concerned, John Preston commented that his publishers loved him because, rather than take the high literary road and only associate with the creme de la creme, he gave readings in leather bars to "the boys in the black leather jackets, the dirty old men in raincoats." Those were his faithful readers who bought his books - even his mainstream books - and made his publishers happy.

 

I'm able to trace clearly through my stats who some of my readers are, and which forums they found me on (because they're often coming from their blogs, and their blogs list the forums they belong to). From this I can tell that, even in the dregs of the Internet (and Nifty is hardly the dregs), discerning readers hang out.

 

Aside from Nifty, there's also ASSGM.net (a little closer to the dregs, but not quite there) and Literotica, which has both erotic and non-erotic sections and which encourages good writers. And there's also a host of fiction communities over at LiveJournal, such as gaywriters and gayrotica. The nice thing about those communities is that you don't have to actually post your stories there - you can just announce the story and provide a link.

 

If you write erotic fiction, my suggestion would be that you don't skip announcing your story at mixed-orientation erotica communities, such as eroticfantasies and sexstories. I get a healthy number of readers coming from forums like that. Either there are a lot of bisexual readers there or - just as likely - erotic writing knows no orientation bounds.

 

C James wrote:

 

"Yes, they [Nifty] are offering to sell you your own story rights!!! You have to PAY them an amount THEY, at that time, decide upon to get your story removed."

 

I just spoke this week with an author who went through that procedure, and what Nifty wanted was a percentage of the earnings on the published story. A bit greedier than asking for a flat fee, I thought, but I think a fee is reasonable considering the amount of work it takes to withdraw stories from an archive that size. If they didn't have that penalty in place, it's likely that the administration would be overwhelmed with requests for the withdrawal of stories, and the site would go under because the administration wouldn't have time to post new stories.

 

Since Nifty has been free since 1992, I think it's unlikely to become a for-pay site. (Of course, we all thought that about ASSGM too.) However, I agree that it's definitely not the right place to archive your story if you think there's any chance at all that you might want to withdraw it at a later stage.

 

Concerning the perpetual rights: Well, I'm afraid that's par for the course for even respectable e-publications such as Velvet Mafia. Authors don't much like it (which is why I don't require such rights from the authors at my e-zine), but it's quite a common requirement in the Internet world. The problem is: How do you maintain an archive if readers discover that stories that they liked reading there in the past are continually disappearing from the archive? It's a difficult matter to balance the needs of Webmasters and readers with the needs of authors.

 

What you really need to watch out for if you submit your stories to an online archive is the giving up of exclusive rights. No legitimate archive should ask for that, and a legitimate publication should have a time limit on exclusive rights. A print magazine, for example, will typically ask for First North American Rights, while an e-zine will typically ask for First Electronic Rights. In both cases, this means you're free to post or published the story elsewhere once it's published at the original publication. Occasionally an e-publication will ask for exclusive rights for a year or so, and that's a legitimate request also. But if any archive or publications say, "You own the copyright, but we get exclusive rights to the story for as long as we want" - well, that's as good as saying that you don't own the copyright, because you can't do anything with the story if they have exclusive rights to it without a time limit.

 

Now that we've discussed Nifty's rights situation, where is the license agreement for GA's eFiction writers hidden?

[Dusk]

The issue we were discussing in this thread was whether authors can withdraw their stories from an archive. This isn't an issue for me - I only post stories in archives if I'm sure I won't withdraw them later - but it might be for other authors here. Does GA have a policy on that matter? (Perhaps this is obvious to writers who have actually gone through the submissions procedure.)

 

By the way, one other gay fiction place I should have thought of - because it's especially friendly to non-erotica writers, though erotica writers can post there too - is the Yahoo Group WWGSS, which has two thousand members.

[shadowgod]

The issue we were discussing in this thread was whether authors can withdraw their stories from an archive. This isn't an issue for me - I only post stories in archives if I'm sure I won't withdraw them later - but it might be for other authors here. Does GA have a policy on that matter? (Perhaps this is obvious to writers who have actually gone through the submissions procedure.)

 

By the way, one other gay fiction place I should have thought of - because it's especially friendly to non-erotica writers, though erotica writers can post there too - is the Yahoo Group WWGSS, which has two thousand members.

 

When a author posts into the efitction section here they have control over the story and can remove it at anytime... That is my understanding, as tools for editing and deleting are provided.

 

Steve

[Dusk]

Cool!

[DarkShadow]

Dabeagle.com

 

Legal stuff: Authors retain rights to and title to their submitted works. By submitting a work, the author grants Dabeagle's Doghouse a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, and non-cancelable license to display the work. (If this is unacceptable, please contact us to discuss your concern.

 

They have a similar catch22 so to speak as nifty. Though I did email them about it, and here was the reply.

 

"We have removed stories before due to publication. We do not own the

stories and make no claim to them, all we require is a respectful

dialogue and reasonable reasoning and open dialogue. I'd hate for

someone to say they were printing, only to post it elsewhere :-)

 

So yes, a simple note requesting removal due to publication would be

acceptable."

 

They seem reasonable.

 

I've had a lot of luck with Nifty. They've even gone so far as to repost and eight chapter re-write of the story. Deleting a story from an archive takes all of about 3 minutes MAX. Ftp in... move to the correct directory, and hit 'DELETE'. Done!

 

If you have concerns about having your work held hostage. I'd suggest writing them an email and asking them specifically what their policy is when a story removal request is given.

 

I've recently heard from CRVBoy as well and they seem very friendly.

 

I suppose my best advice would be, if you have questions or concerns, then ask them before you post

Take care and I hope everyone has a great holiday!

[NickolasJames8]

Well I can tell you that CRVboy is great as far as posting stories goes. I've been hosted there for a minute now and as long as you have a good editor and a good story to tell, they'll probably want to host you. I've been at RCWP for a while, too, and even though it's been through some questionable changes lately, it still has top notch writers and a really dedicated webmistress.

As far as Nifty goes, my only problem with them is that they bury the stories I'm proudest of on the No Sex Page, the loneliest page in the whole history of the internet :| I've always been able to go back and make edits and crap like that when I needed to. JUst email them and they always take care of it

[Dusk]

DarkShadow wrote:

 

"Deleting a story from an archive takes all of about 3 minutes MAX. Ftp in... move to the correct directory, and hit 'DELETE'. Done!"

 

What I was envisioning was a scenario where five thousand authors sent in their requests to have their stories deleted. But yes, I too had a case where I asked that a file be replaced, and Nifty promptly complied.

 

Nicholas James wrote:

 

"As far as Nifty goes, my only problem with them is that they bury the stories I'm proudest of on the No Sex Page, the loneliest page in the whole history of the internet :| "

 

Well, now you make me want to dart over and read that page. I'd been avoiding it hitherto because it screamed the word "fetish" in its description. (I'll read fetish stories if they come my way for other reasons, but I don't seek them out.) But perhaps Nifty was just trying to make the page seem more salacious than it actually is.

[ACFan]

As an alternitive to Nifty, you can also email site owners of sites that host similar material as your story with a link to your story asking if they would be interested in reviewing it for inclusion on their site. As a general rule, the GA Community is quite open about giving stories of a similar nature exposure. If you have your own site; make sure it's on the GA Top Site List - you would be surprised how much traffic that will direct your way!

 

The best thing to do is make some noise! Announcing a new story in the proper places will give you more traffic than word of mouth; announcing new chapters does wonders. Like was said before though; if you do decide to use Nifty to generate traffic, follow these guidelines:

 

1. Make sure you are in the GA Archives first

2. Read what this weeks version of the Nifty license agreement is.

3. Always insure that your current postings at your home site are furthur along than the postings on Nifty - you want the readers to come to you first.

4. ALWAYS have a link to your site and discussion forums in the posting - this is a must; if you don't have a forum here yet, then just direct them here anyways with note on where to find the thread discussing your story.

5. Note in your story that your home site is ALWAYS updated before Nifty.

6. COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK! The following is what I use on my infrequent postings on Nifty - and was approved by the Archivist as acceptable limitations:(Blanks have been inserted for reuse by anyone who wishes to use it)

 

THIS STORY IS COPYRIGHT

[x Trevor x]

Nifty is alright i mean most of the stories are nothing but complete porn but i have found many good stories there aswell but most of them are simple mushy romance. GA has more categories you know with the mystery and horror Genre's I will respect GA more than Nifty any day. My first story I just came out with today in the efiction I did try to post on Nifty but they said they could not accept it due to the content of My story and of the gore. I dont plan to write many horror stories I do plan to try a new genre with each new story but I do like mature content and I dont like to hide anything that goes on in the real world i mean death happens suicide happens and I'm not saying that all of My stories will contain that but if I feel the need to put it in there I will. Nifty just doesnt give Me the freedom to write a mature content because of their limitations and I dont like to be limited so I will say I am sticking with GA but one story I will reccomend from the Nifty High School section is "True Love Never dies" It was beautiful.

[Kia Zi Shiru]

though the posts in this thread are a bit old....

I would like to mention Fictionpress to everybody here. I always post my story's up there and as I've been writing for the past couple of months people put me or my story on their fav lists and other people read it too.

That way I've also found some great writers. so maybe an idea?

[Drak]

Hm, shocking to read about the 'fine print' on Nifty's incensing agreement...don't know how it escape me since that's the kind of thing I did at law school

 

I started posting there because of the huge crowd all over the world, and it still is where I get most of my readers. So far I've not had much problem with Nifty, and they're always surprisingly fast posting my work (sometimes immediately!). Though when I posted my first chapter (which was a dream involving a adult-child sex scene), they initially put my story under "Stories involving Bondage, Control, S&M, and authority figures". I wasn't too happy about that, but managed to get it transfered to the "high school category" soon enough.

 

It's true what Graeme pointed out about the fact that Nifty is an 'erotic' archive. My story isn't all that erotic either (no much sex, yet), and I'm surprised by the amount of mails from readers who say they like it more because it's different from all the others which seem to revolve around sex.

 

>>About getting the story noticed, I have a blog and post story maps, pictures and background to my story on the blog. I find it's an effective way to attract 'stray' readers. But to be honest, when I started writing, reaching out to a whole lot of people wasn't what I wanted. I'd rather that my story is read by a few people who appreciate the work and see the fine details and symbolisms behind the words, than a whole horde who just rush through it in search of a little (s)excitement.

 

I have several stories on Nifty and I can tell you this. Once you post there, it is like disowning your story and saying you did not write it. You lose all control. It is from then on the sole property of Nifty. Now I did not particularly mind that part in the beginning. The stories I posted were not polished. All I wanted was to get some feedback, criticism, a reaction or two. I did receive some helpful feedback. But then I became busy in RL and forgot about Nifty for many years.

 

When my career settled down into a comfortable groove, I began to think about writing again. I looked Nifty up and discovered that the stories all had a defunct email addess attached to them. Then I discovered an unpleasant policy: Nifty will never alter a story, not even to correct a defunct email address. The editor is not willing to even go to the bother of checking the email address to ascertain whether it is valid.

 

Think about the clause I mentioned--no editing--and the implications. If you put the real name and address of your mother in the story, it will also remain there until the end of time. You had better be stone-cold certain your story contains no identifiable information in it, if you fool around with Nifty.

 

I have several stories on Nifty with an incorrect email address. Anyone that leaves feedback, the feedback goes to whatever anonymous stranger now is in possession of the email address. Or more likely, the feedback bounces, discouraging a reader from leaving any more feedback to other authors.

 

Another not-so-nifty aspect about Nifty is that it provides no statistics whatsoever in regard to views or ratings.

 

I wrote to the editor and managed to persuade him to post revisions to some of my stories. But he refused to replace them. Instead, he left the old copies intact and online, and then posted the revisions as well, thus defeating my purpose in making the revisions in the first place. When I asked that the incorrect email addresses be changed, the editor's response was to ignore my email on the subject. I took the hint and never wrote to him again.

 

Post on Nifty if you wish to give your story to the editor because you like him as a personal friend. Otherwise, steer clear.

[Mark Arbour]

I have several stories on Nifty and I can tell you this. Once you post there, it is like disowning your story and saying you did not write it. You lose all control. It is from then on the sole property of Nifty. Now I did not particularly mind that part in the beginning. The stories I posted were not polished. All I wanted was to get some feedback, criticism, a reaction or two. I did receive some helpful feedback. But then I became busy in RL and forgot about Nifty for many years.

 

When my career settled down into a comfortable groove, I began to think about writing again. I looked Nifty up and discovered that the stories all had a defunct email addess attached to them. Then I discovered an unpleasant policy: Nifty will never alter a story, not even to correct a defunct email address. The editor is not willing to even go to the bother of checking the email address to ascertain whether it is valid.

 

Think about the clause I mentioned--no editing--and the implications. If you put the real name and address of your mother in the story, it will also remain there until the end of time. You had better be stone-cold certain your story contains no identifiable information in it, if you fool around with Nifty.

 

I have several stories on Nifty with an incorrect email address. Anyone that leaves feedback, the feedback goes to whatever anonymous stranger now is in possession of the email address. Or more likely, the feedback bounces, discouraging a reader from leaving any more feedback to other authors.

 

Another not-so-nifty aspect about Nifty is that it provides no statistics whatsoever in regard to views or ratings.

 

I wrote to the editor and managed to persuade him to post revisions to some of my stories. But he refused to replace them. Instead, he left the old copies intact and online, and then posted the revisions as well, thus defeating my purpose in making the revisions in the first place. When I asked that the incorrect email addresses be changed, the editor's response was to ignore my email on the subject. I took the hint and never wrote to him again.

 

Post on Nifty if you wish to give your story to the editor because you like him as a personal friend. Otherwise, steer clear.

 

Your basic points about Nifty are true: that getting edits or revisions done is almost impossible and that once you post your story there, it's there. But I think you're being a little hard on the editor. It's a massive site with tons of stories, and he's doing it (as far as I know) by himself. I think about how many times I bug Joe to make changes here....if the Nifty editor let everyone constantly amend their stories, he'd be swamped.

[Guest The Nature Nut]

Thanks, Buddha. That was good info.

[Marzipan]

Nifty is alright i mean most of the stories are nothing but complete porn but i have found many good stories there aswell but most of them are simple mushy romance. GA has more categories you know with the mystery and horror Genre's I will respect GA more than Nifty any day. My first story I just came out with today in the efiction I did try to post on Nifty but they said they could not accept it due to the content of My story and of the gore. I dont plan to write many horror stories I do plan to try a new genre with each new story but I do like mature content and I dont like to hide anything that goes on in the real world i mean death happens suicide happens and I'm not saying that all of My stories will contain that but if I feel the need to put it in there I will. Nifty just doesnt give Me the freedom to write a mature content because of their limitations and I dont like to be limited so I will say I am sticking with GA but one story I will reccomend from the Nifty High School section is "True Love Never dies" It was beautiful.

 

 

Ok, old comment, but:

 

Wooot? Nifty doesn't allowe suicides etc...? That's news to me, not that I've red their rules or anything. But isn't there a beastiality section there...? I didn't feel like cheking it out, if it ment what I was affraid it met or werewolves and stuff. I think my mental health would have suffered badly by ít. But really suicides not allowed? As U said, it's real life.

[bigbear427]

When my career settled down into a comfortable groove, I began to think about writing again. I looked Nifty up and discovered that the stories all had a defunct email addess attached to them. Then I discovered an unpleasant policy: Nifty will never alter a story, not even to correct a defunct email address. The editor is not willing to even go to the bother of checking the email address to ascertain whether it is valid.

 

Well for what it's worth, I wrote a story and posted it to Nifty about a year ago. A few weeks ago I decided to rewrite it, trying to make it more descriptive (and explicit), the goal being to add action and immediacy to the narrative. I sent the revision to the Nifty webmaster, explaining as they request, the nature of the changes. They (he) replaced the story in the archive with the new edition. I'm not sure if this is relevant, since I made substantial changes to the story, but Nifty does replace postings under these circumstances, at least.

 

On a slightly off-topic point, while I worked hard to make it a well written piece, with a real story line, I hesitated to try posting it here. The guidelines here implied to me that such stories are not acceptable here, and i didn't want to get 'spanked' on my first submission. Having read a few of the short stories here, that seem to be along similar lines, I'm not so sure now...

 

Rather than belabor the point further, I'll include the link here: About Kirk, and ask the local public and the moderators if I have made an error. Should i submit this as a 'mature' story here?

Edited January 7, 2011 by bigbear427

[Cia]

BB427, my hesitation to approve that story would come from the fact that other than a small section at the end it's just about having sex. While having explicit sex within a story with a larger plot is acceptable, having a story that is 90% explicit sex and then a small amount of explanation of why it's being shared doesn't make it past 'porn' for me. I, however, am one of the more conservative moderators.

[Stargazer]

It was a hot story and an emotional account of your first experience, Big Bear. I believe with some revision, such as more lead in to the actual sex itself, it would be less 'sex' and more 'emotion' of a first time experience. Think about it. A little more background at the beginning would help a lot at getting it posted here and making it a more rounded account.