Clarification on links / adverts policy

[All_These_Roadworks]

Hi all. Can I get a quick clarification on the links / adverts policy?

Quick version:
I would ideally like my stories on Literotica to start with these words:

STORY TITLE
by All These Roadworks (2019)
If you enjoy this story, Google me to find my creator site.
---
(story commences)

I'm getting this rejected by at least one editor on the grounds it violates the links policy.

Is this against the links policy?

===

Detail:

The Literotica submissions guidelines say, at point 9:
"No HTML links or web addresses are allowed within stories."

The further clarification of this point on the forum says:
"Quite simply, you may not link off-site. You may not put email address in the body of the story--yours or anyone elses. Literotica has email forms in place for your audience to reach you. Strip out all sites, newsgroups, and email addresses to fix the problem."

This seems quite clear to me. The policy applies to hyperlinks - presumably for the safety and security of readers, and to stop bots and other bad-faith users spamming the site full of links.

It doesn't appear to be intended to stop me connecting with an audience that may be interested in my other work, providing I don't use a web address or a hyperlink. I can't find any reference anywhere to something of the nature of what I propose above being problematic.

===

Context:

I write erotica. A lot of erotica. I primarily post it elsewhere. I have a creator site. On the creator site I sell e-books of my erotica, for money. Yes, I would like people to buy my books. But also yes, I respect erotica communities, and if I'm going to let people know my site exists, it's going to be through genuine substantive contributions to those communities, not through spam. Which is why I'm posting complete, enjoyable stories, and I don't know yet exactly what "successful" looks like on Literotica but 23.k views seems like a high number and I'm assuming if most of my stories have that little orange "hot" tag then it's a good start.

I would like to contribute to the Literotica community. I have nearly 600 stories, and more every day. They're not all going to get posted here, if only because Literotica has (I'm sorry) the most painfully slow and unpredictable submissions process I've encountered on any text erotica site, and getting even one story up is a ton of work and delay compared to elsewhere.

I'd therefore like people to be able to find my other work. Presumably other authors on Literotica would like that ability to transition from amateur status into having a Patreon following or e-shop. Presumably the Literotica community would like to support good authors.

So - do I get to tell people they can find me elsewhere, or not?

 

[ElectricBlue]

So - do I get to tell people they can find me elsewhere, or not?

You can put an off-site link in your profile, a link in your signature block (for forum threads), and you can promote here:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=569279&page=90

But that's it. Oh wait, I've added a comment to some of my stories that they're available as books, but you can't put links in comments, so they're dumb connects.

 

[All_These_Roadworks]

So I can put the words "Google me for my creator site" in the comments, but not in the main body of the post?

Is there an underlying logic to that? And is this actually covered in a submission guideline document that I've missed?

 

[ElectricBlue]

So I can put the words "Google me for my creator site" in the comments, but not in the main body of the post?

Is there an underlying logic to that? And is this actually covered in a submission guideline document that I've missed?

The story submissions gets vetted by the site editor, and her track record, as reported by those who have tried, is to not allow promotion of other sites in stories. Comments get less scrutiny - unless they include active links, in which case a spam bot will spot them and they'll get pulled.

All I'm telling you is my experience. I've referred to my books in comments and those comments are still there - but note, the versions on Lit are complete and they're not teasers, and I don't have active links in the comments.

The site allows limited cross-promotion - as noted in my earlier post. There might be something on this buried away in FAQs - but if I found it, I don't remember where.

The alternative is to submit something that includes a promotion of your other site, and see how you go with Laurel. Not far, I'd say.

 

[All_These_Roadworks]

Thanks for the replies!

Well, I was keen to be part of Literotica if I could, but donating free content to enrich someone else's site without any kind of reciprocation is for chumps, so I guess I won't waste my time. :-(

 

[KeithD]

You can put an off-site link in your profile, a link in your signature block (for forum threads), and you can promote here:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=569279&page=90

Just a bit of a clarification there, but an important one to prevent flooding of external promotion: You can announce publishing elsewhere of works by you on this page if you are a Literotica author. You shouldn't do so if you aren't part of the Literotica writing community already.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks for the replies!

Well, I was keen to be part of Literotica if I could, but donating free content to enrich someone else's site without any kind of reciprocation is for chumps, so I guess I won't waste my time. :-(

The reciprocation is a publishing platform at zero cost to you, and access to a huge audience. Perhaps you overlooked that.

Good luck getting tens of thousands of readers (or hundreds of thousands, depending on your category).

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm getting this rejected by at least one editor on the grounds it violates the links policy.

Is this against the links policy?

There is only one story moderator, who's also one-half of the site ownership, so the links policy is whatever she says it is.

It doesn't appear to be intended to stop me connecting with an audience that may be interested in my other work, providing I don't use a web address or a hyperlink. I can't find any reference anywhere to something of the nature of what I propose above being problematic.

The FAQs are less than perfect as a guide to site policy, so it's understandable that you didn't realise this would be an issue. But if Laurel's rejected that story for that reason, that's an expression of her intent, which is the intent that counts here.

As others mentioned, the site does allow authors some options to plug their offerings elsewhere. But I've seen authors exploit this site in the past - e.g. one guy who posted 24 chapters of a story here, and then told readers they'd need to go elsewhere and pay him to find out how it ended. I suspect the expansion of the "no advertising" rule is at least partly a response to that kind of shenanigans.

 

[All_These_Roadworks]

Thanks all for the constructive replies.

I respect the right of Literotica to have whatever policies it wants about content, and I also respect that a no-links policy has the benefit of creating a spam-free environment that's safe for amateur writers and casual readers, so I understand where that's coming from.

But it's not productive for me, so at this time I'm not intending to publish anything else to Literotica.

==

I'm also going to address ElectricBlue66's comments, and I do this not to argue, but because I've found it intensely difficult to find anyone talking about the realities of making a living out of erotica that isn't just a discussion of the Amazon e-pub marketplace.

So you say "good luck getting tens of thousands of readers" - and I don't think that was a sincere wish, but thanks, I already do have tens of thousands of readers across non-Literotica platforms, and for those sites that count "followers", my total follower count across those platforms is just a little shy of 10K.

But nobody should be writing erotica for the fame and glory, except maybe Chuck Tingle. It's work, and if you're good enough to be famous, you're good enough to get paid.

I'm making about $700 USD a month off writing erotica, which is WAY more than I ever thought I would when I started, but still only about a quarter of what it would take to count as a full-time job.

The numbers I care about aren't readers or followers - it's conversions. I'm interested in how many people follow me back to my website, and then how many of those people actually purchase a product. If you're reading but not buying, I love you to death, and I love your support, and I'm going to keep throwing free content to you - but only so long as there are enough people who *are* paying to make that viable for me.

So by way of example, I publish on Deleted by mod - and that has a HUGE conversion rate. I get a LOT of people tracking me back from there to my site, and they know what they want (generally hypno/mc stories), and they buy them. I love that site. The guy who runs it strikes a great balance between supporting authors while maintaining site quality and not giving himself too much unnecessary work.

I also publish on Deleted by mod, which has an *okay* conversion rate - possibly impacted by the fact I put so much free content up there it doesn't give a lot of incentive to pay - but it at least has some social features that let me stay in touch with my audience and get data about what people like and want more of.

And I publish on Deleted by mod - which is always a giant crapshoot as to what will float and what will sink - but it gives me enough conversions to be worth my time.

And all of those sites are really very easy to publish to - it requires little more than a copy-paste from my master file of stories.

Literotica, by contrast, has weird formatting restrictions (it can't handle smart quotes or single-character ellipses, for example) that require extra work to convert my stories. There's a fairly huge delay on submissions being approved, and it often feels arbitrary what gets approved and what doesn't.

... and its conversion rate is terrible. Of those 20K readers per story I have here, less than a dozen a month seem to be finding my site. Which is why I say that the ability to have a web address on your profile doesn't exactly add up to much.

So for me, the effort to reward is poor. I just can't justify giving my time and content to Literotica for free and getting nothing back.

Which is fine. I'm not who Literotica was built for, and I get that, and the first priority is on it being a vibrant, diverse amateur community. I *do* think it sucks for Literotica writers who deserve to transition to that paid status and who are going to find the fact that they invested in Literotica to be a barrier to that - but they're presumably more engaged in the community than I am and may be better placed to have that discussion.

==

Thank you all again, and I hope to catch you on another platform.


Note from mod . . . Promoting another site is not allowed.

Note from All These Roadworks: For the benefit of anyone baffled by that red text (as, honestly, I am) the text that's been replaced wasn't hyperlinks, it was the plain-text names of three websites, one of them being one of the largest and best known sites on the internet (porn or otherwise), the other two being fairly well known text erotica or porn sites. I don't honestly know why the name "Google" wasn't also deleted following this policy. *sigh* I'm out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Interesting - your [insert platform where people pay for content] says it's a dead link?

 

[Bramblethorn]

But nobody should be writing erotica for the fame and glory, except maybe Chuck Tingle. It's work, and if you're good enough to be famous, you're good enough to get paid.

That's a perfectly reasonable position to take for yourself, but not everybody has the same priorities.

For me, I'm happier treating my writing as an enjoyable hobby than as an incredibly badly-paying third job (and writing almost always is terribly paid, even for full-time professional authors, in terms of dollars per effort). I can write whatever I feel like writing without worrying about whether it's going to lose me readers, or feeling like I ought to be doing promotion that I don't enjoy.

So, for me, posting on Literotica makes sense. I do also put some work up on a pay site, but I put approximately zero effort into promoting it, and any sales I do get are a happy extra rather than a meager paycheque.

Which is fine. I'm not who Literotica was built for, and I get that, and the first priority is on it being a vibrant, diverse amateur community. I *do* think it sucks for Literotica writers who deserve to transition to that paid status and who are going to find the fact that they invested in Literotica to be a barrier to that - but they're presumably more engaged in the community than I am and may be better placed to have that discussion.

It sucks for almost all writers, Literotica or no.

There's one author I follow who's published about forty novels in the last ten years, as well as writing about twenty comic issues for Marvel and releasing a few music CDs. She's widely acclaimed in her field, she's won five major awards and another nine nominations for her books. She's talented, she works very hard, she's super nice, and she puts a lot of effort into promoting her work.

For all that, she makes just about enough to pay her bills and take a holiday to Disneyland about once a year. She hit serious financial difficulties a couple of years back when her cat got sick. It's not a great living. And she's still doing better than a bunch of "successful" authors who died because they couldn't afford medical insurance.

So for most writers, publishing work on Literotica might make the difference between earning jack-all and half of jack-all.

 

[All_These_Roadworks]

Interesting - your [insert platform where people pay for content] says it's a dead link?

I never posted my website in this thread, out of respect for the policies that say I shouldn't, so I'm not sure what link you're referring to.

I named three sites in the post above - not links, just the names of the websites, one of which is famously, for example, the front page of the internet. They've all been modded out, which - well, whatever. It's the nature of the erotica internet to be a series of petty fiefdoms. It is what it is.

The other reason why Literotica really should allow author signatures and links *within stories* is that a range of sites just wholesale harvest stories from Literotica and republish them. It's done by bots, they don't check the actual text, and so a link within the story can mean the difference between getting taken advantage of by these sites, or getting free advertising out of the deal.

If you're confused about the sites I'm discussing, I understand it *is* acceptable within policies to invite you to privately message me.