Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

Has anyone here heard of, or used, a "new" (to us) Amazon site called Write.on? My co-author got an email notice about it. It appears to be a sharing and critiquing site (or something along these lines). The site says next to nothing, unless you create a profile (which neither of us have done).

If anyone is familiar with it, what are your impressions? The URL is:
https://writeon.amazon.com/

Sort of explains it a bit better than an a blank page.

http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10...

Robert wrote: "Sort of explains it a bit better than an a blank page.

http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10..."

Thanks. That's sort of what it sounded like. The crowd-sourcing publication program (which strikes me as weird) is a different beast. For the time being, I think I'll just rely on the people around here.

Hmm, I thought Az owned GR. Are they setting up in competition with their own subsidiary? Perhaps we're too subversive for them ;-)

If I'm grasping this, GR is primarily to discuss books and write.on is to share and discuss writing. It sort of sounds like a way to "crowd-source" beta reading (which I find highly dubious, though I don't now the mechanism). So the sites would be related in that sense but have a different focus. (For example, I would imagine write.on should have away to prevent open disclosure of WIP material -- not a mechanism GR has, as far as I know.)

But then, Amazon had Shelfari[?] before GR, which was (is?) pretty lame and widely ignored. So maybe they are just trying to see what works. Apparently someone thought this was related to their new crowd-source publishing venture and maybe they want a forum to support that, rather than just wading thru submissions based on FB friends or twitter followers.

I'm speculating, of course.

Well the name bugs me because I call the review segment on my blog Write On! (Exclamation mark included) But beyond that, yeah, it just sounds like a Goodreads style platform for the Kindle Scout program. Could be interesting.

I've been on it for a while, but don't use it much beyond posting a few chapters just to gauge the level of activity and engagement. My impression is that it's more of a Wattpad-type effort than a Goodreads type of site.

I've also been on there for a while. I think they've come out of beta now? Anyway it seems ok but to be honest there are more effective ways of obtaining critique. It has a pretty slow pace and people aren't really willing to read more than a few hundred words at a time. Which is fair enough but I'm already part of a really effective, much more active writing group online so not sure it has really added anything for me.

J. A. wrote: "I'm already part of a really effective, much more active writing group online so not sure it has really added anything for me..."

You have found the on-line writing group to be rewarding, then? How did you locate them? We haven't found any yet that we thought would work for us. Personally, I much prefer interacting with a group in person, but that's hard to come by.

There are a lot of advantages to the online writing groups, especially if they're set up correctly.

A long time ago I was on critters.org. In order to get critiques of your work done, you'd have to first put in time critiquing others.

It took a lot of time, but the advantages were that:
1) Everyone critiquing was a writer
2) Everyone was impartial because they don't know you. This made it far less likely that people would softball their responses for fear of alienating you or hurting your feelings.
3) Everyone involved had to stay involved or their own work wouldn't get critiqued, so you were guaranteed to have people actively critiquing.

The cons were:
1) Time. You had to put your time in before you could get work reviewed. And you couldn't spam your work to get a bunch of it looked at simultaneously or in rapid succession.
2) There was a bit of potluck involved in that you couldn't pick who would review your stuff. So the quality of the replies depended on the experience and sensibilities of the reviewers. However, my experience was that it was far better than the average beta reader crowd.

Like I said, that was a long time ago. Things may have changed and other groups may be better. YMMV.

Micah wrote: "There are a lot of advantages to the online writing groups, especially if they're set up correctly...."

Thanks. I can see those being worthwhile points. Is the critiquing public or no? One problem I've had with writing groups (and classes) is intellectual phase-locking. Once a couple of people get in something, they can drag the group with them.

Was critters categorized by genre at all? Another problem we've had has been people feeling obligated to critique, and then wanting you to write your hard sci-fi like it's a "marry a billionaire" romance. I do think critiquing can be valuable, even if it's misguided (there's often a problem there, even if the reviewer doesn't know what it is), but it gets annoying to wade thru if the reviewers don't know (or don't like) the audience you are writing for.

Finding good beta readers is tough. We have a nice astute bunch, but at this point, I'm afraid they may be getting too nice. Need to try to shake that up some.

Rob wrote: "@Micah, not sure if #1 is actually an advantage. Given that (hopefully) eventually most of our readers won't be writers, wouldn't reviews by non-writers be more valuable?"

Technically it's open to anyone who wants to do it but generally only people who want their own work critiqued are active.

As to whether you want writers or readers to do these, it totally depends on what you're after. Critters is not a review site, it's a writing critique site. General readers typically are worthless at actual writing critique. I'm generalizing, of cours, but most readers only go so far as to say "I liked this" or "Not really my cup of tea."

That's useless if what you're after is honing your work to perfection and improve your writing in general.

Writers are more likely to look at the mechanics of your writing and point out:

"Your story ideas are really interesting, but you tend to use the same sentence structure too much. For example, on page 2, every sentence begins with SUBJECT VERB."
--or--
"I feel the overuse of adverbs is hindering the story. Try to cut down on the number of words ending in 'ly' and the like."
--or--
"This sentence from page 33 is really confusing [example]. For starters it's actually a run-on sentence that also contains two dangling participle phrases. So it's difficult to figure out who the subject of the sentence is..."

And so forth. You won't get that from your typical general reader.

Not all the critiques will be as detailed, but it was generally better than what I see from beta readers.

Owen wrote: "Is the critiquing public or n..."

If I remember correctly, all the critiques were privately emailed to you. So, not public.

As for genre, here's from their FAQ:

"Originally there was only one workshop (for science fiction/fantasy/horror). When I branched out into all the other genres and creative areas, it didn't make sense to throw them all into one large workshop. It did make sense to house each related area in a separate workshop, with all the workshops under one roof.

Thus, each workshop has separate submission queues, credits, discussion areas, logins, etc."

Micah wrote: "If I remember correctly, all the critiques were privately emailed to you. So, not public.

As for genre, here's from their FAQ..."

Thanks for the info!

Hi Owen :)

I set up my own group via the word cloud ( the writer's workshop) forum. The group is closed - ie you need an invite from me to join . We've got an effective mixture of ages, gender and writing backgrounds. It took a little while to build up but we're holding steady at around 30 members. All critiquing is public to the group itself but otherwise private. I think it's been very successful as several group members have gone on to be published. We also collaborated on a book of short stories which has done quite well and generally been well recieved.

If there is a lesson here then it's if you can't find what you want, build your own. If you build it they really will come - as this GR group is a testament to! ;)

My only experience with this has been the Bettereads project, here on Goodreads. It's been really great as an education for me, seeing how other people see my work, and getting free advice from people who really understand writing. There's a "but" though, and it's about the ratings. My book has a lower rating now on Goodreads, because the Bettereads process has encouraged reviews from people who don't like the kind of book I write. Not my specific book, but the particular, rather narrow, genre that I write in. I don't know how important average ratings are, but if they are important, be careful about getting into a peer review process.

J. A. wrote: "Hi Owen :)

I set up my own group via the word cloud (the writer's workshop) forum. The group is closed - ie you need an invite from me to join . We've got an effective mixture of ages, gender and..."

That is certainly one approach. We have a small cadre of reviewers who are quite astute, but we're looking to branch some and get additional perspectives. We'll continue to look for the right type of "unlike minds".

Ah well we're more critique during the creation process and general support kind of group although there is no rule against reviewing something publicly once it's published.

By reviewers, I should have said beta readers.