A Change in Perspective

You do make good points. The read for read model does work. The big problem that I have seen with those threads (at least from Wattpad) is the thread creator uses the thread to leverage their work. If you only want to guarantee a read for X number chapters, that's fine. A lot of people post to those threads. Some people won't even look at your work until you've read X number of chapters and commented X number of times, etc. And sometimes you HAD to subscribe to get them to agree to the read. The sub wouldn't always guarantee they'd read your stuff.

I definitely think we should all be supporting each other, and I enjoy getting the genuine reads. In the past, I started to get really discouraged because my only reads were coming from R4R (read for read) and once our deal was done, they stopped reading my work altogether.

As someone who comes from Wattpad, R4R can be formalized to the point of becoming a cottage industry. I still do two clubs there to support my friends & stay in the habit of critiquing.

The biggest problem with it being formalized, is that you can end up being matched with someone whose work makes you want to stick needles in your eyes two paragraphs in, you can't get out of that obligation & you can't tell that to the person.

When your book is under 10 chapters, sure, a quick 1-2 chapters read exchange is easy & makes the difference. Once you have a 50 chapters saga, read 4 reads stops being efficient and convenient.

At that point, if you are lucky, you will want your own circle of friends who support and love your work--and you support and love theirs--and as many silent returning readers as you can

I agree that sub for sub isn't really the way to go because of the lack of engagement it's more likely to create.

Read for read, I imagine could be a sticky situation if someone doesn't have the time to set to reading, so I would definitely make sure all parties can commit! But I do see more value in a read for read then sub for sub

Reviews can be beneficial for sure (assuming someone asked for it) though my biggest concern there is a lot of people who basically say what they didn't like, or point out something that's might be approved upon, but give zero explanation or resources to help the writer. Feedback is important! If you're going to do it, then make sure you're doing it a way that constructive. In my opinion, of course.

Sometimes people get caught up in the numbers, that's natural. Everyone was to be successful to varying degrees, and what success looks like is different. I was the same way when I first started on Tapas.

I always recommend focusing on creating the best product you can, always be open to (constructive) feedback, engage with the community, read, and, ya know, be a decent human being

I'd think it would also have to be separated by genre though... Like I usually don't like reading horror so if I got matched with a horror novel, the entire time I was reading I'd be hating it... Where as I love romance so I'd be able to give better feedback on romance novels and also enjoy what I was reading

Another point I want to make is about people saying "I want feedback to help me improve". You will not get it in tapas' format. Feedback that helps you improve is a time consuming, hard work of someone who goes through your book with a lot of comments, and takes time to explain what is wrong.

Even then, such feedback does NOT mean it will improve your novel's performance. How can I tell you what I have learned about editing and writing from reading multiple books when I don't have high reads myself, despite following those suggestions and the novels with high reads blissfully ignore them?

So, in the end, the only advice that matters is study the trend, see what you love in a popular sub-genre, make it yours and write it as simply as possible with a simple plot and an attention grabbing character in the centre of it.

I only started posting here on Monday and I'll admit, I have a hard time engaging. Like, I market myself on Twitter with every update, but I'm having a tough time using the forums. It seems everyone just shoves links to their work everywhere possible and hope for the best.

I think what your describing here is a book club and they come with their own set of problems. It can be hard to gather everyone who wants to participate in one place, get them to... stay true to their word, dole out punishment when they don't etc.

As an honest person: I'm blunt, I'm too busy, and am an introvert.

Anything that even shows the sign of this site becoming a R4R community immediately sends up red flag warnings for me. Active communication on the forum generally spirals into nothing but R4R broken up into threads of "do mine!!" seperate threads, and "horror only!" "cute only!" "girl MCs only!!" And then any active communication that the forum may have had before stops within a few months as everyone jumps on the bandwagon of R4R threads and multiple threads of such, and you either join in, or leave the forum at large.

And I state this as a person who has seen many a site's forums and general community either die to, or become overrun with nothing but R4R. Mibba and Wattpad as two large examples. And I mean overrun to the point of:: if you do not interact with the R4R industry market, you are invisible. You are nothing. You might as well not even post on this site.
And that is a horrible and negative mentality that, at it's core, the R4R is trying to discourage, but ends up happening par the course.

That said, the current trend on this forum R4R is largely not applicable to me. "I'll read the first two chapters!" "First five updates!" That's nice. I don't care. I need input on stuff I'm currently working on, which is thousands of words past that point.

If, and big if, this forum adopts the R4R model as a community, I'm out like it's a building on fire. The only way I've ever seen this work both for people like me who need later stuff looked at, and the people who want the first sections looked at, is something called Random Excerpt Time

A RET is what we call Random Excerpt Time! Whenever someone calls one, that means it's time post a random snippet of something you've written! It can be the last scene you wrote, or even from an older project! It could be random, or someone might request something of a theme, like "opening scene of a story" or "terrible weather happens."

As far as RET etiquette goes:
- Spoiler-tag your quotes and check for formatting! Gaia eats indents, so please put a space between each paragraph to keep it from becoming a wall-o'-text!
- Try to keep it under 500 words! Remember, it's an Excerpt, not a whole novel!
- It's courteous to read and comment on everyone's posts! You don't need to go into long paragraphs of critique; a line or two is perfectly fine!

I've seen and used RET in action on my GAIA online writing group - both as part of NaNo and just "we're bored!" And we get people who come out of the wood work who don't normally post to give feedback on what worked, what didn't work, what was funny, 100% constructive and conversation building

See, this sounds super fun and community oriented while I’m 100% not okay with R4R. I feel like RET would be fun and creative and a MUCH less stressful way of helping other authors out

From what I have seen, the "Critique the Last Few Para You Wrote" or "Post the First Few Para of your Novel" needs the following to be successful:

1. a firmly stated rule that you must critique the guy above
2. someone to enforce that rule (otherwise no engagement)
3. word limit--nothing kills the thread faster than a guy who dumps 600 words

I haven't had time to read anyone's stories on Tapas in ages but I do think the self-promo stuff here is almost completely useless and people would highly benefit from starting an actual book club, even if it's a one-off one-weekend event where committed people spend a whole weekend reading other peoples' stories.

I feel like all the self-promo stuff is hard to keep up with everyone's stories. I'm gulity with the self-promo stuff but I think there should be a better way to organaize everything so everyone can promote their work.

I do like the idea of people reading the first chapters of other's people's work. Usually beginnings are what people get hook to certain stories to see if the pay off is worth it. It's a tough thing to decide.

I've only been on Tapas for three minutes. Here are my two observations:

• The forums here are a breath of fresh air compared with the spittoon of social media more generally (incl. those places populated mostly by wannabe writers)

• Tapas needs either to promote itself purely as a forum for comics, or it needs to go and attract a critical mass of novel readers across all of the genres it lists.

They already do. That’s why you see people getting 250 subs in a month because they hit the sweet spot and without the helping hand. That’s why someone who got 50 subs gets to 200 in one week after being added on staff picks. The readers are there.

But readers will never be distributed evenly between writers. Online is reflective of the creative sphere as a whole. 1% that have 90% of attention and popularity and the remaking 99% splitting—and not evenly so—the 10% willing to look beyond the top 10 lists or look for something of the beaten path.

It is what it is. Like in every sport, there could only be one champion, and the rest will be the also ran. And they can be at it for years, if they enjoy competing, even knowing that there always will be someone surpassing them, an old champ, the new talent, just never ever them.

Nobody would make readers read all books equally. You get your place on the fresh list here, visible for like 24-48 hours, which is by far more generous than you will have in most platforms.

The fact that Tapas is smaller is what gives a new writer a fighting chance. On a bigger site, you stand zero chance vs the heavy hitter that already have millions and hundreds of thousands of reads.

I see Read for Read as better than Sub for Sub, because there's no pressure to read, but I only do it if it's like...a critique thing or if I'm really bored. Tbqh I've only done it like 2 times. Otherwise it's still just gaining maybe a sub or two at a time. That's a lot of work for so little subs.

It's still best to go off this forum to do your promotion, except in the cases where staff are looking for works to put on front page lists. But those opportunities are few and far between youknow?

This forum really is a place to talk shop--and so I'd be down for a bookclub, but of books that have tons of readers so I could learn about what other people think works or doesn't work--so I could put those techniques into my own work. A book club to read stuff from other people on this forum--I've probably already read your work at one point or another.