Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5632861" data-attributes="member: 18253">Hi Ari- I discounted the character in the free story too much and for that I apologize. I'll also admit my feedback could have been more kindly put. Thank you for your considered response. It honestly was motivated by nothing more than a desire to respond to your question knowing how frustrating it is to ask a question in a public forum and get no answer at all. At the time I did it, there was little traffic on the thread. This whole thing has gone far enough that if you do hold the contest, I will feel obligated to enter (using the short story character) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> However, if I hadn't been invovled in the thread, I would still be leery of participating under the suspicion that using the free character would put me at a disadvantage. That is, it would still feel like I needed to purchase the novels to have a chance. Again, I've been graceless on this thread but I do have an issue with a contest that seems to require purchasing something to play. I really do not think I'm especially unusual in this and I'm guessing I'm not even very unusual in my concerns about using the character from the free story. That said, there are ways to even the playing field (for the participants) and encourage more folks to look at your work (for you). Danny has already provided some more graceful feedback along those lines. To his thoughts, I could add the following. These ideas would lower the bar to participating (even a motivated person might feel obligated to read a novel which would delay entry) but still gets people looking at your stuff.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Post excerpts from your works on your website that highlight other characters that could be used for a submission.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">See if you can find some 'impartial' judges (and not necessarily your co-author who came to your defense, albeit with a warhammer in hand <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Open it up to submissions based simply on the cover artwork. What I noticed was good and it would pull in even the more casual folks.</li> </ul>Along those lines and in support of the contest, you could add a page to your site that highlights various characters, provides excerpts, plugs the novels they are in and maybe provides cover art images if you can swing the copyright. Sorry for the fuss on this.</blockquote>

Verification