Author:
I'm not sure how many authors were writing to BCTS twenty years ago (yr 2000). Can't even guess how many are here now. What I can observe is there are a whole passel of new authors posting stories. That said, let me say this one more time as I have explained many times before. If you are writing strictly for the knudos and comments, I wish you lots of luck. You are more than likely going to be disappointed. Trying to drive this home to you authors is like giving advice on how to drive to someone who has been driving for years. It doesn't register.
For the majority of authors every story is their baby. They spawned it, nurtured it, and watched it become reality. As every parent they want the world to proclaim how beautiful their baby is. Or in the insane world of publishing, they want money for producing such a beautiful child. If this is one's goal, emotions are going to be hurt or possibly even destroyed. For the one Hollywood actor who makes it up on the big screen there are tens of thousands who didn't make it. Writing is even more fierce. It's a cut throat business. How many movies are made that go straight to DVD if they are even published? They didn't make the "cut". How many books are published which never sold? Hillary Clinton's agents and publisher claimed exciting acceptance of her book, What Happened. The truth is far from the media hype.
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Sales of “What happened” were in the 400k range in December, 2017 and MAY have topped 500k by now.
It is important to point out, however, that in order to reach those numbers, and whatever sales have been accomplished since then, retail outlets have been forced to heavily discount the cover price of the book, in some cases as low as $2.00 for a hardcover just to clear out the inventory.
For example, Amazon currently lists the hardcover for $14.95, but just below that is an offer of over 400 “new & used offers” for as low as $1.32.
And isn’t it interesting that the book has sold around 500K copies when she got 65,788,583 votes. That means only .0076% of Hillary voters bothered to buy her book.
>>>>>>>>
The publisher was in reality paying people to buy her book as the selling price was less than the cost of publication, distribution. Many of those sales were people buying for an investment rather than read the book. Buy it now, sell it in years to come for hundreds of dollars. Read the story about Billy Beer when Carter was in office.
The only way most writers are going to get any satisfaction from writing is to write for the pure enjoyment of writing itself. Telling a story their way even if it has been told ten thousand times already by others.
Authors, I'm sorry but if you're writing for knudos, comments, or monetary compensation, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. What one receives is never going to meet one's expectations of a reward. Eight years back the shop was broken into and over half a million dollars worth of high end copiers, printers, mechanical tools were stolen. The doors to the shop destroyed. They were never caught. I try and grow crops every year hoping for financial reward. Three years ago was total crop failure. Nothing was harvested (drought). Two years ago was another disaster as payback was less than five cents on every dollar I invested to produce a crop.
Writing for me is therapy. The world turns out the way it should. Bad people receive their just rewards, good people find a life worth living. I'm a greedy, self serving bitch as I write for one person. Me. If others enjoy the stories, are allowed to escape for a few hours with the heroes and heroines, that is a bonus above something that has already brought me pleasure.
I know I'm preaching to the choir. The majority will still want acclimation for writing their story, their gift to the masses, and they should be rewarded. Write for yourself. If you aren't enjoying it or receiving pleasure from it, if it's a job and one wants to be paid for the effort, take up farming, running your own business, dealing with the public, and get a reality check.
hugs people
always
Barb
I've been a big success in this life. I was born with nothing and I'm going to finish with most of that intact.
Life is a gift. Treasure it until it's time to return it.
Comments
I write because I enjoy it
Originally, it was therapy when I needed to get my mind working again after having Chemo for Leukaemia. That was 2009.
Then for someone who was diagnosed Dsylexic in 1969 I started to realise that others enjoyed my scribblings.
I'm most certainly not in it for the money. I've not really thought seriously about selling my stories but the thought of Amazon taking 70% put me off (other deals are available)
I write now because I enjoy it, it stops me vegitating and keeps my mind active.
But it can get rather lonely without some feedback in the form of comments on your work.
Samantha
they
only take 70% if you let them and sign up for the wrong deal! I get 70%, I'm quite happy with that, they have all the customer interface hassles, site maintenance costs etc etc without them taking a cut they'd be out of business and I and millions of others wouldn't get anything.
I started off writing for me and still do up to a point but I'm pragmatic, people will pay to read my scribblings, the fact that this is possible without going through traditional publishing houses is for me, and many others, a godsend and I don't have any issue in tailoring my writing to fit in the boxes. I think its also given me the impetus to strive to write better, the naieve style of the first couple of Gaby books was intentional but the feedback I got suggested that readers liked it when I fleshed things out more.
I certainly don't expect a lot of feedback / comments and I don't get it either but I'm okay with that, the way I see it, if they don't comment theres nothing bad in the writing, after all, no one can be bothered to praise things but we all are quick to moan about anything that's 'wrong'. Very approximately with Gaby I get 1 kudo to every 6 reads, I comment to 600 reads - of course sometimes its more, others its less and other stories harvest different ratios.
I've been writing for pleasure on and off for @ 40 years, sometimes its fiction, others its fact, in some small way I consider it my legacy to my descendants. I do get a bit embarrassed when someone describes me as a writer but I embarrass easily!
Mads
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Low Correlation
There is almost no correlation between good writing and the numbers of kudos or comments.
There is a very strong correlation between the genre and kudos and comments.
I've tested this many times by posting poorly written stories that have very young protagonists and results in the hero married to Stanley Stunning after ultra-successful sex affirmation surgery. They score heavily while stories that are well written but have less popular themes draw few comments or kudos.
As suggested above -- I write primarily for one person -- me. However, during the writing process I imagine one of my supportive followers reading the story. To write coherently you have to be in the minds of all the characters plus the mind of the eventual reader.
I'm one of those who have been at BC a long, long time, much longer than my profile suggests because I took a sabbatical.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Writing as therapy
I started writing that way. The first half dozen or so stories that flowed out of my muse were just that. They were, should have been, would have been, could have been, if only stories. They were an outlet for pent up emotions and frustrations.
Then, when it turned out that a couple of people found my stories interesting, I decided to take a hand at simply story telling. To my surprise some of my efforts were also enjoyed by a few people. I've always said, that I write for me and if someone else enjoys it then great.
In 2016, I managed to get a break by entering a contest here on BCTS. I did it on whim because something about the contest set up intrigued me. It turns out that my take on the nature of the story was fresh enough that well over a hundred people (245 to date) liked it and as a result I won. Who'd have thunk it? It was a short offering whacked out in record time (only one other story by me has been written in a shorter time frame) with nearly no editing. But that effort got people to read my other work. Up until that time, I didn't have any story with 100 or more kudos. Now 15 of the 20 original works I've posted here have over 100; one has over 300. Is it because I'm a great writer? I doubt it. It's more likely just a break that got more people to read the drivel my muse produces. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. What happened was that people who hadn't noticed me discovered me.
Now, before my ego gets too inflated. The one story that has over 300 kudos required over 44,000 hits to gain that distinction. That's 0.008% of the readers liked it well enough to bother clicking the kudo button. The others? Who knows how many started to read and decided it wasn't their cup of tea and closed the page without finishing... certainly some did quite probably many.
I write because I enjoy writing and I suffer no illusion that I'm good at it. I will admit that I'm better at it than when I first started. But I'd do well not to quit my day job. I did, I'd be the epitome of the starving artist (writer).
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
You can't write for kudos and comments
but they are greatly appreciated. I write if I have something to say. (did anyone notice that the promise and no good deed were really about the trope that big athletic kids are necessarily jerks and bullies.) but I was very happy that both got kudos and comments. It's like dinner today. I had everything I needed in the roasted chicken thighs, potatoes and green beans but my favorite part was still the gravy
So...
First, I write cuz I can.
Second, I write because I like to tell stories. I know I'm good because of the reaction's I'm given and how I get lost in my own work. I love comments and when people discuss my stories it makes me giggle with glee. But if my story doesn't get a ton of attention - eh - I don't care. I write for myself first and others second.
"I like to be creative in a fight. It gets my juices going."
-Xena Warrior-Princess of Amphibolis
Writing
I've always been a frustrated writer. From elementary school onward, I wrote and drew my own comic books. I was always writing stories that never got finished and I wish I knew where they were now. They were pretty bad though. I did rewrite one I did in high school from memory about time travel and added a TG element. And then later when I got a computer and a modem and used these things called Bulletin Board services, I discovered TG fiction. Then I discovered I didn't like most of the stories I read. I had just installed a word processing program (something called Easy Text & Graphics) so I decided to give writing TG stories a try. And it was fun. And soul cleansing.
I like getting comments (and lately I don't get that many) because it's the only feedback I get on how well or not I wrote the story. Same for reviews on the books I'm hoping to sell. And if there's a way to get rich selling e-books, I hope someone shares that info with me.
I write stories that I want to read myself. It's a bonus if someone else reads them too.
Melanie
I enjoy writing
I have enjoyed writing since I was a child, and after I started having seizures it helps me concentrate. Composing music does as well, but writing stories helps to excercise my imagination more.
Hugs!
Rosemary
Perhaps just as important is why I read.....
Reading for me serves several purposes, just as prolific as they are varied.
Sometimes I read to educate, and sometimes to entertain. Sometimes to pass the time, and sometimes to create time. Sometimes I read to escape from my life, yet other times I read to ground myself. Some times I read to forget, while often I read to remember.
Like most people, there are those days when I want to forget about the harsh realities of real life - to escape into another world or universe, deep within my own imagination spurred on by the formula some talented author has laid down in print. And unlike many people, I often read to remember. To remind myself of who I am, and what I have seen in this world. To never forget those who helped me to get to where I am, as well as those who caused me to become who I am today - and especially those who I would prevent from hurting anyone else in this world.
I read to honor those I have known, and to meet those I have not yet had the privelege of meeting.
I read every day to expand my knowledge, and I am often amazed how I learn from the most unexpected sources. How everything I do, everything I see, and everyone I interact with has something to teach me if I simply open up and allow it to happen.
And often, I find myself needing to do all of these on the same day. Often I will read something which upsets me, only to then move onto something which I know will soothe me and help me to escape from my demons. And often times I find myself reading in order to tempt those demons, to force myself to face them even though I know that I will suffer for doing so. Such is my penance in life that I must remember, and I must ever face that which I would not.
For I am the one left behind. Fear not my friends, I will be along to join you soon enough. But not yet......
As for those who write here, well, I stumbled on this site some years back and have spent many an hour engrossed in the writings and ramblings of its denizens. I have found some of my favorite authors hidden here in the depths of this site, and perhaps more importantly I have found friends and comrades here within. I have found stories which stir my deepest emotions, and I have found stories which challenge my intellect. I have found stories which have me soaring to the heavens, and I have found stories which have left me deeply disturbed and wondering at the person who creates them as well as the person who wishes to read them. But as the saying goes, we each deserve our own pathway to hell.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
I write because I have to
Ideas just flood into my brain and need a way out. Frankly, I started writing porn as sublimation for the celibacy after a divorce. When Penthouse Letters published some of my stuff I was hooked. Some of it is still up on FM, but I don't need to write the explicit stuff any more; in fact it bores me these days. The porn palled pretty quickly. When I discovered BC, I rewrote Darlene without the explicit sex and it was a much better story.
One of the joys of writing is putting myself in the head of a completely different person and imagining what that person would do next. Mostly I start with some idea that floated into my brain and I put the first sentence down and let the character tell me what happens next. When the Muse is feeling generous the words just keep flowing and I am often surprised at where the story is going. This is especially true when writing dialogue when something the character just said changes the flow of the whole story. Being someone else for a while is a real trip.
Being retired, I can devote as much time as I want to reading and writing, so I spend an appreciable portion of my time at the keyboard.
I have occasionally taken a stab at writing non-transgender fiction, but my brain just doesn't seem to work that way. I am an avid science-fiction reader, but I can never seem to come up with a reasonable plot in that genre. I find myself consciously trying to invent different ways for the protagonist to discover the joys of crossdressing. As long as the words keep coming, I'm not going to argue.