Best that ATDrake have a sticky to post their threads in Deals forum?

[Catlady]

I don't want to subscribe to a thread.

Since just about every genre of book now has a sticky, just what are the important deals and freebies that are somehow becoming obscured by ATDrake's single-book threads?

I'm flabbergasted that instead of being grateful, members are complaining. How petty can you be? Get a life. Or go find some deals yourself and post them in what you consider proper fashion.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

There was no actual decision. People have always had the choice to post however they felt worked best for a particular offer, and even back when indivdual threads were the default choice, there were still round-up threads for grouped/periodic offers.

This probably says more about my personality than anything, but if there wasn't actually an agreement about which deals go in what threads, then how you post doesn't concern me at all.

[Athens80]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I don't want to subscribe to a thread.

Since just about every genre of book now has a sticky, just what are the important deals and freebies that are somehow becoming obscured by ATDrake's single-book threads? ...

Or go find some deals yourself and post them in what you consider proper fashion.

+1

I don't understand the proposal to segregate one user, period, much less one who is one of the top contributors. The forum was pretty quiet a year ago (without AT's contributions), and a good chunk of those posts would be in the many sticky threads now.

What are the many threads I'm missing because one user is posting several -- useful to some -- single-book threads a day? Who is unable to contribute threads because another user is contributing?

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

@ATDrake, my thinking is that if your many (generously informative) single post threads went into a sticky members would be able to subscribe to your thread in the same way that they subscribe to other threads. Alternatively members could drop into your sticky thread, in the same way that they drop in now.

Either way a member chooses, that is by subscription or dropping in, they know that you provide quality information and offerings that either need to be taken up quickly or adhere to a mentioned time frame.

You would still be able to contribute to the genre threads as you do now, but members will also know that you will have many more offerings in your sticky thread.

I'm sorry, but this seems based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the points I have been making for the logic behind the greater usefulness of individual threads which show up as brief, easily scroll-past-able 2-4 line listings when originally seen vs the typical length of a standard post in any given thread, when it comes to easily searching and scanning for any kind of e-book offer, be it free or otherwise, both in this discussion, and the original post months ago you made which I replied to months ago explaining my reasoning when you asked me why I chose to post a particular official publisher promotional freebie in an individual thread.

I'm not going to reiterate them again, especially as other people have been making much more eloquent and concise statements as to why they find individual threads for particular offers more useful for the way that they personally spot things of interest to them.

Perhaps an illustrative example that might be Relevant To Your Interests would help.

1. I spent a few hours today tagging a bunch of threads to hopefully be of even more use to people quickly trying to find an applicable interesting offer.
   
2. So, here's the auto-search for the new "australian author e-book" tag I've been using: australian author e-book
   
3. Clicking on it automagically brings up a listing that looks pretty much like the default forum page.
   
4. If you hover over the little tag icon, there will be a pop-up (you may possibly have to set Thread Preview in your User Options to Enabled, and maybe it doesn't work on a tablet/smartphone browser) that will show you additional tags which have been used for that thread.
   
5. I've marked most of the books as either "expired freebie", "permafreebie", or "long-term freebie", and thus people can easily skim over and see if an offer is still available without having to open up the thread, much less having to scroll through and check a whole bunch of posts in the hopes that some of the links are still good.
   
6. If you scroll down far enough, you'll notice that the listing goes back as far as 2012, as there's an Australian-authored chick-lit short story which is still available for free.

My motivations have never been about things being short-lived or POSTED BY MEEEEEE!!!!!*. In fact, the greatly varying availability times of freebies, from "as long as the site and servers last" to "oops, glitch, less than a day" are part of the influence on my inclination for individual threads for what I feel are sufficiently significant† offers.

In any case, it's not as though I haven't already done my own dedicated megathreads threads for freebies, for which I will link two old examples:

• Free backlist & small press books @ Smashwords, iTunes, et al. where I maintained an updated list of reasonable-quality non-KDP freebies which were still available in other stores back when many of the authors were yanking their stuff for Amazon exclusivity.
  
  People would comment and contribute their finds and recommendations, and I'd add them to the front-page lists if they qualified for the criteria of "previously published backlist" or "self-pub by an established author with a good reputation" and "offered for free in a non-Amazon store/website".
  
• Free book (nook/Sony) - The Brand Within [Business Self-Help] + Sony freebie round-up: the longest-lasting of the sporadic Sony-compatible official publisher promo multi-store freebie round-up threads that I did, purely so that people who used stores other than Amazon and/or didn't want to DRM-strip could get compatible freebies that were otherwise commercially available and not ported Smashwords self-pubs.
  
  Every few days, I would update with the new books that showed up and make an announcement post, and check the availability of the older books and edit the 2nd post so that only the still-available freebies were listed. This was before I owned anything besides my original Kindle, by the way.

It is precisely because of those prior experiences with my own megathreads that I now favour the posting of individual threads for sufficiently significant offers both in my own workflow and as a browsing preference, though of course people have always been free to post their finds in whatever manner they preferred, and I have never suggested to anyone that they do otherwise than what Works For Them.

* If I had that much egomania which I felt a need to express here on MR, I'd still be doing all those daily KDP freebie round-up threads.

† I reiterate: "official (or occasionally glitch) publisher promotional‡ freebies from established imprints with decent reputations who make their books (if not the current freebie) available in multiple stores, which I believe they deserve a minor visibility spotlight for, in order to encourage them to offer more"

‡ And occasionally stuff I just happen to really, really like.

[Lynx-lynx]

@ATDrake, upon reading your post it's very clear that we have a different viewpoint as to whether or not a sticky is an appropriate way forward for your offerings in the Deals forum.

I consider the viewpoint in the affirmative, and you don't.

[pdurrant]

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Poll and Thread Closed

The mods do not consider that posting info about free/bargain ebooks in the free/bargain ebooks forum is a problem.