Archive for the 'Essays' Category

DIY SP Sites–Improve the User Experience

The top two problems is that often there is a POD at the end of the rainbow and that the site is full of schmoozing rather than slush beating.

What do agents say time and again about slush piles and beating them. It’s the QUALITY of the writing that will beat the pile. The problem with such websites as this is that it tries to show how good of a social networker someone is rather than how good they are at writing–and that’s where you have the major issues.

It used to be believed that User experience was some kind of fairy magical mushroom dance where you could get anyone to come to your business, online site, or community (though there have been nay sayers for that idea for a while, businesses didn’t catch up.) It is no longer “You will build it and they will come.” It’s more, “You will build it, advertise to the proper segment of the population, and foster a community that you want to stay and they will come.”

User Experience is no different from Customer Service, only that you are looking at the shape of the community and they type of community you would like to build rather than trying to cater to the old Grandmother who really doesn’t care about a 2G processor in a fancy phone.

You want to create a community that actually sifts slush like your best bored intern? This is how I would do it (and I’ve been in various communities since 1998.)

The biggest factor is that people hate the schmoozing on the websites, which doesn’t talk about writing talent, but talks about the social ability to network–fine, you want that in an author, but how come the stories have all those errors? Spend that time elsewhere–with a publicist. Set up a Publicist website for that.

Anti-schmoozing:

The easiest way is to set up a series of checks and balances. Users will check and do informal social discipline on other users, especially if encouraged to do so. Also, if you widen the net of users, then you are more likely to get better and more consistent reviews. Here is my best bets for achieving this.

• Author Approval of critiques (Split to fair and unfair)
• Passing user useful/insightful rather by users in a star rating on the review. *important* do not give a visual reward for rating the the reviews. If you are going to make it visible, only give a rep for those books the publisher actually picks up and publishes (which helps keep the publisher in check as well.)
• Attract readers, not just writers.
• No talent spotting section like Authonomy–leave that to the editors if you must have it.
• Critiques also give a star rating.
• Critiques break down by chapter.
• Critiques break down to overall story based on chapter ratings by the readers.
• Critiques within them can rate grammar, story and style.
• Critiques allow for line by line edits.
• Critiques have a “I stopped here button.”
• Limit the amount of 5 star rating in a reading period–you as a publisher cannot hope to publish all books ever–put the same limitations on readers so they are forced to stop on quality, rather than story swapping ability.
• Put in a minimum word count for the reviews.
• You can also consider a schmoozer rating where users police other users on the amount of trading for the sake of it that people do. Or at least a reputation rating. (Which could break down if you like.)
• Reward randomly on the amount of good and quality reviews that a person gets that’s *not visible*.
• Limit the accounts to either writer or reader and if you are caught puppeting, you are banned. Writers can post and review. Readers can just review, but they get a discount on books after X amount of insightful reviews (which isn’t by author rating, but say by if one of the books they choose in a given period is picked up by an editor–which puts it outside of the community control.)

I believe you can police your users by putting in a user experience that says “Police them.” The average intern is told that they are not supposed to pass on things that are not of quality–use the users in the same way–they cannot pass onto the editor crappy material, because if they do, they get a penalty. If they do well, they get a reward.

Attract the Average Reader

Now, the question is how do you attract the average reader? You need to do what you do in any business: Incentives. The majority of people on good reads are readers, not writers, you can do tie ins with Goodreads, for example or other sites, offer a pittance of a discount to acclaimed readers to visit the website. When you do that, it also has the side effect of less schmoozing, because the writer is forced into quality rather than social networking–they not longer can win on swaps, they have to win on sheer quality. And since the amount of “5 star ratings” is now limited, they really have to fight for it–they could schmooze and try to faction, but then there is a social factor to tell them not to do that (the schmoozing rating, which could act as a reputation.) They are then, forced to really work on the quality of the writing–so by the time they get to the top of the pile, they really have to know their writing stuff.

The other problem people have is their immediate distrust of the publisher that they actually will publish anything as promised. So I would propose putting on the *front* of the website the author, name of the book and release date. Link to an amazon/Barnes and Noble Page. This makes the publisher look honest. Swear to no PODs, and it will work out fine. (Plus you can make a back end for this that makes it easy.)

I doubt a model like this will really happen since most of the big six are clueless about sociology or cultural anthropology to pre-think websites like this, but this would be how I would think it through. I still want an online bookstore that functions like browsing in a bookstore. If bricks and mortar are going out of business, then help me buy new authors you want to commit to by making a visual form of a bookstore online.

How is this a Chic Flick?

I went on a binge for stories since I’m short on stories and I decided to go after romantic comedies…

About 50% are about sanctioned cheating.

The movies with men in them have them being jerks and chasing women for basically sex. More than half is about how the man in less than two months slept with a number of women while separated from the mysterious female. (All I can think of is STDs)

And then the ones with the serious separation time that makes me want to bang my head against the desk and ask what are they thinking? Sorry, 3 years is three years too long. Spend more time on developing the relationship and less on montage scenes and separation montage scenes–please.

Then there are the films about women who dress up in heels and magically gets the man, whom they most likely did 1-4 with and then sleeps with a bunch of guys–and while I don’t sanction men doing that–I don’t sanction women either.

Women who seek love aren’t that stupid. We don’t sleep with 20 guys, in order to take back sexual power and then have to determine ourselves by men’s standards and then end up trying to reclaim our feminine power through things like clothes and make up (more men’s terms). Women can be women too without having to bend to how men define women. I want to see that in a romantic comedy. I want to see a woman being a woman, doing well at her job without being shown as a goodie two shoes or a bitch, but human trying to seek love without having to do the “OMG a make over.” I want to see women being women trying to keep a marriage together and rekindle that relationship. And I don’t like watching sanctioned cheating as if there is someone saying, “Hey cheat–it’s OK.” and when you ask the film why, it says something like, “It’s reclaiming the sexual power of women.” Can there be a romantic comedy without the rival? Without the Best Friend ever? Why can’t we women get films that actually empower women who are trying to seek love and a career–in true instance?

Is it sad the closest we got was When Harry Met Sally? Sally was flawed, not a bitch. But there was nothing really slimming her into a role of what is “female” v. what is “male” which just makes me gag more watching these films, which just feels like a long lecture to no where. Maybe I’m the only woman in history that dislikes shopping for clothes and doesn’t buy into the White Middle Class WASP definition of dating.

Maybe this list is the reason why I quit watching American Romantic comedy.

More professions are writer or in the industry… lazy writers.