The Pub Discussion Board

for the donation thing i visit one site that has promised a chapter for every $50 donated

just a thought

Corvis:

I'm not so worried about people encouraging me or giving me ideas for improvement as much as actually just participating and having discussions here.  You know, actually communicating with one another.  The site's supposed to be a community, not just a "story store" where you grab what you want and go.

Neitherspace:

How long are those chapters?  Because if you were to look at that as being paid for your writing, it's not necessarily very good pay.  Let me show you what I mean:

My average chapter is about 11,000 words long.
5,000 cents divided by 11,000 words = .4545¢ per word.  That's .45¢, not $0.45 per word
As a reference, I believe the industry standard for magazines is something like 3¢ per word, 6.66 times as much.  (Granted, you have to get accepted by a magazine to get paid.  This is just a comparison.)

But, having said that, I've thought of offering to do a chapter of CAMP: Sibling Rivalry for every $X of donations received, but I don't know what people would really think of that, nor am I sure what the $X should be.

Eric "Dammit, I still type Net Wolf once in a while" Storm

Yes, they do.  And how many non-authors have you seen there?  Like three or four, total?

But this isn't even about story discussion.  This is just about discussion in general.  The other day, I posted a rant about the nature of science fiction.  NO ONE responded.  It was a good opportunity for people to say what they thought science fiction was, or how I was misguided... or even to agree with me... but no one said a word.  Many times on this forum, people have opened up topics that were good jumping-off points for a conversation, or they outright asked a question... but no one picks up the ball and runs with it.

I do my best to participate in the conversations here, but very few seem to be following my lead.  And I don't know what else to do to get people interested and excited about this website.  In fact, it often seems that my participation can KILL a discussion.  Is that, in fact, the case?  Do I need to silence my voice to keep people interested in this place?

Finally, after my rant, we have a few people recommended for posting here.  That's great, but the list should be longer, and lots more people need to participate before it's a useful system of choosing the next person to join.

In essence, I'm not complaining about any one thing or any one small group of people.  I'm saying that people aren't participating in the site at all.  And this site, as conceived, cannot work that way.

Eric