Myr

This came up in my rotation while I was a road trip today... man David Cook has vocal talent

This, or something like it, is on the list already. We've had a number of technical issues we still have to work through. (Same with having more than the handful we can show) We are definitely aware of the issue of surfacing the stories that are no longer actively posting.

One thing that we'll be trying to get working is a better story suggestion system. I found one that is the basis of the concept of how Amazon and Netflix recommend new content to people. Though, obviously, the basic version and not the crazy creepy version Amazon uses The one I found for the site should be within the budget for us to implement and will help surface stories you are likely to enjoy based on things you've already read and enjoyed.

Welcome back!

Links are fixed. I think something was added from Comsie's end.

The links are fixed now.

It is indeed!

Peter Hollens and Home Free are both great channels for covers and vocal talent.

As @Daddydavek was nice enough to mention, we've done that previously and there was less than minimal interest. The ROI for this suggestion has already proven itself poor. We can't compete with the likes of Amazon and it is not our place to try. If you wish eBooks, go get them from Amazon. I've seen this suggestion exactly once before from a former member. Gay Authors is an online story archive, not a bookstore. If you want bookstore, try Amazon.com... they have a rather sizable inventory of your wide appeal options. with over 60% of the site now using mobile devices, it's quite likely that your browser stays sitting where you left it. I have added an action to investigate an option, though you are correct that it is probably daunting mostly because it would require programmatic tracking, which slows page loads.

The common bots should mostly be filtered out. It is Gay Authors policy be default that positive things can be said publicly and harsher feedback can be shared via PM if an author is interested. I am looking at better ways to deal with feedback and the type the author is interested in getting.

One person's "constructive feedback" is another person's "Obnoxious moron is whining again". Such feedback is provided privately, not publicly due to the issues this causes from a moderation stand point. This tends to be translated on site to: "comment on positive aspects and communicate privately with the author on negative aspects, if said author is interested". We do have a Critique Room set up for more active communication. It's been quiet for awhile though:

As is often the case, I am looking ahead to what is coming down the road for us on the software front. A significant revision of the forum software is coming for the first time in about eight years. Invision Community 5.0 will be upon us probably late this year or early next year. It's going to cause some very serious retooling of software for us. We will also be due for a server replacement in that timeframe. Lots of fun things to deal with on the software side. Some things we know are changing: Status Replies are going away. We will be turning those off ahead of time to start easing into that transition. The news will be posted in the next few weeks on it. Support Requests are going away—at least the email part of it. We'll have a simplified version. Such significant changes will be going on under the hood that we'll be rewriting the Stories Archive again. As we did on the last major revision of the software, we'll be going through a lot of preparation and beta testing before deploying it live on the site. How fast we go will be dependent on our programmer. We will also be doing a complete evaluation of our own short-term and long-term goals so far as plans are for 2024 and 2025-2030. I will be asking this a few times before the time comes in many different ways, but as an open-ended question: What do you realistically want to see from Gay Authors over the next year?

I'm starting to feel like the old man on the rocker shaking his cane yelling at people to get off the lawn... When I started Gay Authors in late 2002, we had Nifty and a scattering of other sites and it was still possible to own all the Gay books on Amazon without busting the bank. It was exceptionally difficult to get gay stories commercially. And in the good old days before Kindle, we were the easiest way to find great gay stories that had plot. Since Kindle came along, you can now choose to directly publish and sink or swim on your own. Great stuff. If you have that skill set, by all means, go take advantage of it. If you are growing to fill that skill set, then posting short stories on sites like ours to build an audience is just good business. For the rest of us we are a niche hobby writing site with a great community. So long as that is sustainable, we will be here. If authors enjoy what we have here, than great. If they yearn for more, the world's out there.