Who Is Going to Read the Slush Pile?

As the dead-tree publishers continue their descent into oblivion who is going to filter out the crap?  This is one of many points that author, Yuk Onna, was trying to make in a recent post explaining why she does not think a demise of the modern publishing industry is a good thing.  As much as I and others like to make fun of publishers for foisting the same old thing on us, they do have their uses.  Their use is that they maintain a minimum standard of quality for books that make it to the bookstore.  In other words, they filter out the crap.

By 'Crap', I don't mean stories that are trite or have characters that aren't "real".  By Crap I mean major, awful, blunders.  Things like:

• The Story isn't finished and stops either mid chapter or even mid-sentence
• Spelling and Grammar is so atrocious that it's hard to understand
• Blatant Plagiarism(word-for-word) or even more suble versions like(same story with changed names & dates)
• Doesn't match the story or description
• Huge logic or story blunders, like a character's name gets changed half way through the story.
• The story is missing either a beginning, middle, or end

We never see stories like this because they never make it out of the publishers' slush piles.  However, with things like Print-On-Demand(POD) and online publishing, you don't have that guarantee.  Nothing can stop a writer from pushing any old thing out via POD or online. 

So how can readers avoid the crap?  Readers can depend on publishers to filter out this crap because publishers have a financial incentive to do so.  Publishers only want to print good books that sell so they can make money off of them.  Books that misspell every other word and doesn't have an ending, aren't going to sell well.  If the major publishers go away, who is going to read the slush pile in their absence?

Do we need someone to read the slush pile?  Well, yes.  Readers don't want to sift through piles of crap to find something that is finished, legible, and resembles a story.  If readers have to sift through a pile of crap just to find a mediocre book, they're going to get frustrated and stop looking for good books altogether.

One thing a reader could do is check review sites.   My favorite is probably, WebFictionGuide.  However, WebFictionGuide can't possibly be expected to read every piece of crap that's produced and review it, can they?  Publishers do this because they have a financial incentive for finding the good stuff because they can profit off of it.  WebFictionGuide doesn't make money hardly any ad money for verifying that something isn't complete crap.  Also, online reviewers have it harder than a traditional book reviewer.  A traditional book reviewer only has to read books that have already met some minimum standards of the publisher.  In other words, the crap has already been eliminated and they only have to determine if it's a mediocre book or an instant classic.  Online reviewers have to do it all on their own.

So if we need something to filter out the crap, and online Review sites aren't the answer?  What is the answer?  Unfortunately, I don't have the answer.  In fact, I don't think anyone has the answer.  However it's something all web fiction authors should be thinking about.  Oh... and we need an answer before the publishers sue themselves out of existence.

How to Save Your Spot When Reading Online Fiction

I've mentioned before the problem with using bookmarks when reading blog fiction. The term "bookmark" is the terminology we use to refer to the concept of "saving" a webpage for later. I believe the Netscape coined the term for their original web browser - and it is something I may never forgive them for doing.

Even though we use the same word to describe saving our spots in books and on the internet, we use those "bookmarks" very differently. When I use a bookmark in the physical world, I am saving my place only until I get back. When I return to the book, I remove my bookmark, read and continue reading from where I was. The old "bookmarked" spot no longer exists. In cyberspace when we "bookmark" something we are usually saving it either permanently or at least "until further notice". We use our bookmark to jump back to a spot, but we do not remove the bookmark.

So why is this a problem? It's a problem because now I don't have the vocabulary to describe a "real" cyber bookmark. That is, a temporary bookmark that is erased when I open it. Well, for now I'm just going to refer to it as "temporary bookmarks". Now that my mini rant is done I come to the point of my article. I have found 2 bookmarking services that work like temporary bookmarks instead of permanent bookmarks.

The first service is a firefox add-on called "taboo". The idea behind "taboo" is that not only does it bookmark a page, but it saves any text you've entered into the page as well as how far down the screen your scrollbar is. It also takes a visual snapshot so that when you look at all of your "taboos" you see a nice preview of the page you saved. The service add 2 buttons to your browser. One is a button that will bookmark or "taboo" your spot. If you click it on a webpage that already has a saved taboo a little box pops up that allows to either change the name or description of the taboo and to move the taboo to the current spot on the webpage or you can just remove it. This makes removing a taboo very simple. Load a page, click taboo, click "remove". All of this without using any menu options.

The second button, as you may have guessed shows you all of your "taboos". If you click the button it will open up a firefox tab that shows all the thumbnails of the taboos you've saved. It lists them in the order that they were saved so you can see your latest bookmark -err... taboo- of each website you've visited if you have more than one taboo. Another quicker option is a little arrow next to the "show taboo" button will show a little popup of your latest taboos so you can quickly go back to a page you were reading.

Another bookmarking option I found was called dogear. This service is a little harder to describe. It places less emphasis on the time you saved a page than taboo does. However, the service works with all web browsers because all the information is saved on their webserver.

Here's how it works, when you want to start using it, you click a bookmark called "dogearit". What that does is create a frame at the top of your browser and the rest of the webpage in a frame below it. Then, when you want to "dog-ear" a page, you highlight the text you want to come back to and then left click it. That create's your dog ear. If you highlight other text on the page and then left-click it, it will move the dogear to that text.

To retrieve your dogears you have another bookmark. That takes you to a webpage(assuming you're logged in) that lists all of your "dog-eared" web pages. Then you can click them like any other hyperlink and you'll goto that webpage, scroll to where you left it, and the dogear frame will be at the top of the page.

So, which of these services works best? Hands down "taboo" is a lot better. I use it to read the archives of blog fiction and it works out great. The dogearit service is too slow. When the frame is on the page, it seems to almost quintuple my page load times. Unlike taboo, it is not as easy to remove a dogear you no longer want. Plus it seems I'm always getting logged out of the service so I waste time trying to log back in.

There are a couple things that dogear does better than taboo. First of all, any browser can use it. So if you use Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome dogear is pretty much your only option. The second thing is how the services handles saving your spot in a page. Taboo only remembers how far down the page you scrolled. That means if the page changes by adding content to the top, your scrollbar will not be in the same place. Dogear remembers by keeping track of the text you highlighted. Dogear will take you to that portion of the page regardless of where it is. So, if dogear ever solves the speed issue, it might become as good, if not better, than the taboo firefox add-on. Until the speed issue is resolved, however, I would recommend using firefox and taboo if you're looking to use temporary in-page bookmarks.

While taboo and dogearit solves a couple of the problems with reading online fiction it does not resolve them all. For instance, if you're not reading in a chronological order (which is definately a possiblity with blog or any online fiction) you can't keep track of what you have and haven't read. It does however, solve 2 big problems. It allows you to do an in-page save - this is especially helpful if you're reading multiple blog posts on a single archive page(i.e. all August posts). Also you can remove a temporary bookmark easily so you don't have 3 dozen bookmarks on the same webpage.

Chaos Reigns in World of Online Fiction

I really hope that I'm over reacting, but where the heck is everybody?! I'm not just talking about the dearth of activity on the Blog Fiction Forums. I'm also talking about the lack of forum activity everywhere in the online fiction world. I had a different post planned for today, but I can't ignore something really eerie going on right now. It affects not just Blog Fiction, but all online fiction.

As you know, Pages Unbound closed... and then reopened. Even after reopening though, I haven't seen any new activity on their forums. I don't know if people have started reviewing again (no dates on reviews or any way to list reviews by date published). Over at the Web Fiction Guide forums the only activity for the last 5 days has been a thread for new people to introduce themselves. The editors are still editing, but the visible users seem to be gone. Over at the Novelr forums, the only activity there in 2 weeks has been the mention that Pages Unbound has reopened.

So, I come back to my original question. Where the heck is everybody? I had a couple theories. My first thought was that the holiday weekend distracted everyone(Labor day in U.S.). That theory didn't hold, not every writer is from the United States after all - I would still be seeing participants from the rest of the world. My next theory was that maybe the chaos of people and their kids going back to school was to blame. Again, this theory doesn't hold up. Every school in the world doesn't start their school year around the 1st of September. I then formed a third theory that scared me. "Omigod, did we lose critical mass?" - That hard to define, but easy to recognize property that allows online communities to thrive.

Here's how the theory goes. When pages unbound closed, Web Fiction Guide became the immediate beneficiary. It allowed community reviewing and rating in addition to editor reviews. They added a forum. All of it was easier to use than Pages Unbound too. Pages Unbound even gave a banner ad advertising Web Fiction Guide. With all the activity at Web Fiction Guide I noticed that my forum activity grinded to a halt (Presumably, going to the more active and just as easy to use Web Fiction Guide). As far as I can tell, the same thing might have happened to the NovLounge. Then, web fiction guide forums slowed down a little. Why, I don't know. Maybe it did slow down because of theories 1 and 2. Then, something strange happened. Pages Unbound came back. Now, people don't know where they want their home to be. Now people have to choose which great review site they want to participate in. Internet traffic being the finicky beast it is, chooses neither. Now, the longer both forums remain inactive, the more people that are going to give up and not participate in either. Where as "critical mass" describes a virtuous circle of people creating content, which attracts more users, who create more forum content, which attracts more users... etc. What I'm describing is a vicious circle. People who would be willing to participate are leaving due to inactivity, which leads to more inactivity...

Alexandra Erin used Pages Unbound to create a critical mass of online writers and readers. She created a hub for the 2 groups to connect to each other. I hope that my theory is wrong and there is another explanation for the disappearance of forum traffic - that the critical mass held together during the chaos of the last month. It would be a devastating blow to online fiction to have to try and rebuild that critical mass.

In the end, only time will tell. Maybe everyone went to a different site that I don't know about and is having a hell of a good time. That would be good. If not and the forum traffic doesn't come roaring back, and is instead sparse, then my "chaos reigns" theory would be proven correct, and all will mourn our loss...