Quote:
Originally Posted by altworld
I have a tribe? When did that happen?
At the very least it should be open to read, and sign up to rate. This gives greater accessibility to the casual surfer, which will also increase page views and traffic dramatically.
And yes, even though page99test makes it impossible to land on your page I have pushed the website on several different websites. Wasn't aware it was a competition though, just a tool for writing and nothing more than that.
Load result... Phtt... 
Edit - Just had a thought if you want a genuine result that is totally unbaised drop the genre catagories. The page then stands or falls on the writing alone, and not if its the readers favorite genre. Certainly would stop those useless its not my genre so I am voting it down entries and would fall into your blind tasting catagory. |
Ah now I agree with your edit about dropping the categories. But I still think that Page 99 is an academic exercise to help you find out about your writing. If you get lauded at the end of your month THEN it becomes a marketing tool.
As for the rest, it still sounds as if you wanted to be able to send friends, family, readers, admirers to your page so they could vote up your writing. And that's not loading the result? How? Explain please? Oh yeh, and not forgetting the 'phtt
' two fingers to you too!
This is the model employed by sites like Authonomy. Now, perhaps I'm biassed by the other sites I've seen. Take Authonomy, it's a great site but don't think writing a great book will get you anywhere on there. The books that make it to the top of the rankings (and get read by a Harper Collins editor) are written by people who treat getting there as a full time job. Quality comes into it but it isn't the final arbiter.
There are lots of other sites which are similar to authonomy; ciao, dooyoo, youwriteon - all employ the same basic model - you treat it as a full time job, you succeed. There's nothing wrong with that it's just that page 99 is the first site I've encountered that is anything approaching writing driven and truly random/impartial.
What bemuses me is that you seem to think that's a bad thing and that I'm a git for being jaded and cynical about the others. I don't really get why? Can't you people of leisure leave the rest of us time-strapped souls one site where we've a chance of succeeding on merit alone? Sure, some of the comments are barking but it's fairer than anything else I've seen.
Everyone wants feedback but you get that, too, via the random route. You don't need to start drumming up support for your page and the minute you do; and can the site becomes about your sales skills, your ability to drum up votes and the spare time you have avaible to do so instead of your writing. I'm not exactly PG Woodhouse but the quality of my writing is all I've got and on page99, for the first time in my online experience, that puts me on a level footing with everyone else.
Cheers
MTM