Story not getting published

[Wifeowner]

I have a new multi-part story that for some reason is not getting posted.


I submitted it multiple times with multiple titles but it just sits there in pending. For about a month.

I’ve submitted feedback to literotica but have not heard back.

Meanwhile, I’ve submitted an update to my Owning Professor Ballard series that got published within 36 hrs.

What gives?

I’ve posted for years and never had this happen.

Is there someone I can contact to help figure this out?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Send a private message to @Laurel.

 

[Wifeowner]

Thanks

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I submitted it multiple times with multiple titles but it just sits there in pending. For about a month.

Meanwhile, I’ve submitted an update to my Owning Professor Ballard series that got published within 36 hrs.

I've got a short non-fiction essay that's been pending for more than two weeks. Then yesterday I submitted a short story that was approved in less than 24 hours and is due to be published this Thursday. I'd love to know why some submissions are jumping the queue.

 

[onehitwanda]

I've got a short non-fiction essay that's been pending for more than two weeks. Then yesterday I submitted a short story that was approved in less than 24 hours and is due to be published this Thursday. I'd love to know why some submissions are jumping the queue.

Complete thumbsuck, but I'm guessing there's some sort of watermark on AI / triggerwords that flags stories up for enhanced scrutiny.

 

[TheLobster]

I've got a short non-fiction essay that's been pending for more than two weeks. Then yesterday I submitted a short story that was approved in less than 24 hours and is due to be published this Thursday. I'd love to know why some submissions are jumping the queue.

Reviews & Essays has probably used up its submission quota until 2027 after @StillStunned made everyone submit their WIWAW retrospectives in it

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Reviews & Essays has probably used up its submission quota until 2027 after @StillStunned made everyone submit their WIWAW retrospectives in it

I seriously hope you're joking about each category having an annual quota.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Complete thumbsuck, but I'm guessing there's some sort of watermark on AI / triggerwords that flags stories up for enhanced scrutiny.

I've never had any of my submissions flagged for AI before, and I've never used AI tools of any kind, including tools like Grammarly. Given the topic of the essay, it's plausible that extra scrutiny is needed, but I'm pretty certain it has nothing to do with AI.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Once you submit something, leave it alone. Each time you resubmit, you are shoving the story to the bottom of the queue all over again. Just sit back be patient, and let it sit. Last Nov/Dec I waited four weeks, but it eventually got posted. One person is doing all the postings and everyone deserves to do their job without being hounded.

 

[TheLobster]

I seriously hope you're joking about each category having an annual quota.

Maybe not annual but I read it on this forum that submissions may be held if there are too many in a particular category over a short period. This is allegedly to give each submission a roughly equal chance on the category toplist.

 

[Jorunn]

Maybe not annual but I read it on this forum that submissions may be held if there are too many in a particular category over a short period. This is allegedly to give each submission a roughly equal chance on the category toplist.

The non-member list only has space for about 20 or so stories in a category. If Laurel took 50 stories at once, it would bump some to the mysterious and obscure second page. Then you could complain about not getting enough reads instead!

 

[I_AM_ONE_OF_YOU]

Does review and essays category still open? Doesn't it take any submissions, as of now?

 

[StillStunned]

Does review and essays category still open? Doesn't it take any submissions, as of now?

I'm pretty sure it's still open, despite the jokes about it not being able to handle all the traffic over the past month.

 

[I_AM_ONE_OF_YOU]

I'm pretty sure it's still open, despite the jokes about it not being able to handle all the traffic over the past month.

I've recently submitted in that category,
First time. For more than a week, it didn't get published or even rejected.

I thought there is something wrong with my phone, and I refreshed my phone.

Then I re-submitted it with a few minor edits. It's more than a week now, it's not published or rejected.

I tried posting in other categories, its getting approved in a day or two.
But not in this category. What is to be done? Just wait?

 

[I_AM_ONE_OF_YOU]

I'm pretty sure it's still open, despite the jokes about it not being able to handle all the traffic over the past month.

Thanks for your response.

 

[EricaDoesNow]

I admit, I find it very frustrating, waiting to get stories published. This is made worse when I see some authors getting 3, and once, TEN stories published in one day. Does ANYONE have a solution? I've even volunteered to read stories for the editors.

 

[PennyThompson]

I admit, I find it very frustrating, waiting to get stories published. This is made worse when I see some authors getting 3, and once, TEN stories published in one day. Does ANYONE have a solution? I've even volunteered to read stories for the editors.

I think the answer is, "we don't know"

The back-end process for how stories are reviewed and published is totally secretive, as far as I know. We don't know how many people are doing the reading, we don't know what their workflow is, we don't know what automation tools they have.

I've only been at this a few months now, but some educated guesses that I've seen are:

• New authors take more time to vet and approve than established authors (Probably true, in the same way that new story commenters have to get their comments reviewed and approved, but once you've been commenting for a while they take that restriction off of your account!)
  
  
• Some story categories might have either more reviewers, or more prolific reviewers, and stories in those categories get processed faster than others. (Some people think that site owner Laurel personally reads. reviews. and approves every. Single. Story. That seems unlikely to me, but maybe? )
  
  
• Longer stories take longer to review and approve, because a reviewer has to read the whole thing. (Almost certainly true!)
  
  
• There might be some automated tools that flag words or phrases that could potentially violate content rules, and need to be manually investigated. Those automated flags might even bump a story submission onto a different review queue, which then adds to the approval time.
  
  
• There might be some kind of secret author-scoring system, where writers with bigger audiences or more positive engagement get some amount of publishing priority. (I doubt this, seems very conspiratorial)
  
  
• The way a story is submitted might effect how long approval takes. If a reviewer has to manually download, open, copy and paste something out of a Word document, it might take longer to approve than a story that was just directly submitted in the New Story text box. (Personally I think this may be true, I've always submitted direct text)
  
  
• Really poorly written stories might get de-prioritized, because they don't technically break any content rules, but the reviewer might aesthetically just not like them. (I'm somewhat skeptical of this, but... anecdotally I've seen some really bad, truly awful writers complain about how long it takes for their stories to publish... and that might be working as intended )

 

[RejectReality]

There's only one person reviewing stories, and that's Laurel. Always has been, and always will be. She's shown no interest in taking on the risk of volunteers doing the job. Length could certainly be an issue, but not because she's reading the whole thing. That's not happening unless you really capture her, which doesn't happen very often in the last decade or so, because the number of E marked stories has plummeted to the point of near nonexistence. It just takes longer to check all the squiggles for potentially problematic words and grammar issues.

Reports over the years indicate that new authors likely do receive a bit more scrutiny. So do people who have lots of content rejections. Likewise, it appears that there's an attempt to give representation to a larger number of categories, and to avoid overflowing the hub's new story list, which may cause some to get skipped, but that should be for a day or two at most if there's a glut of submissions in the category you're submitting to.

If you're waiting for more than a week, ( other than for audio, illustrated, or edits of already published work ) you may have fallen into the glitch in the submissions queue, which a resubmission/queue reset should fix in one attempt. The odds of falling in that crack twice in a row should be abysmal. I suspect the rest of the insane long waits are getting flagged as AI and are getting skipped as lowest priority to process, since the reports of AI rejections here fizzled out, and reports of extreme wait times then climbed in almost direct proportion.

If you're not using AI and getting flagged for it ( Check the settings of any program/service you're using and make sure to turn off AI assistance, if it will even let you. If it won't, dump the program/service. ) blame the hordes of people who are flooding the queue with crapflap. They're the reason for what I feel is an undue burden on new writers. Despite understanding why it's being done, I think it's an overcorrection.

 

[DrPope]

I can tell you it in a nutshell…. The people that run this site are shit …

 

[PadTy]

I think the answer is, "we don't know"

The back-end process for how stories are reviewed and published is totally secretive, as far as I know. We don't know how many people are doing the reading, we don't know what their workflow is, we don't know what automation tools they have.

I've only been at this a few months now, but some educated guesses that I've seen are:

• New authors take more time to vet and approve than established authors (Probably true, in the same way that new story commenters have to get their comments reviewed and approved, but once you've been commenting for a while they take that restriction off of your account!)
  
  
• Some story categories might have either more reviewers, or more prolific reviewers, and stories in those categories get processed faster than others. (Some people think that site owner Laurel personally reads. reviews. and approves every. Single. Story. That seems unlikely to me, but maybe? )
  
  
• Longer stories take longer to review and approve, because a reviewer has to read the whole thing. (Almost certainly true!)
  
  
• There might be some automated tools that flag words or phrases that could potentially violate content rules, and need to be manually investigated. Those automated flags might even bump a story submission onto a different review queue, which then adds to the approval time.
  
  
• There might be some kind of secret author-scoring system, where writers with bigger audiences or more positive engagement get some amount of publishing priority. (I doubt this, seems very conspiratorial)
  
  
• The way a story is submitted might effect how long approval takes. If a reviewer has to manually download, open, copy and paste something out of a Word document, it might take longer to approve than a story that was just directly submitted in the New Story text box. (Personally I think this may be true, I've always submitted direct text)
  
  
• Really poorly written stories might get de-prioritized, because they don't technically break any content rules, but the reviewer might aesthetically just not like them. (I'm somewhat skeptical of this, but... anecdotally I've seen some really bad, truly awful writers complain about how long it takes for their stories to publish... and that might be working as intended )

I had been trying to work out if there's some kind of "confidence score" that allows comments to show immediately, stories to post more quickly, etc. This post, even if it's speculative, helped me out in that at least my questions are common among other users. Thanks!

 

[PennyThompson]

I had been trying to work out if there's some kind of "confidence score" that allows comments to show immediately, stories to post more quickly, etc. This post, even if it's speculative, helped me out in that at least my questions are common among other users. Thanks!

There is definitely a "trusted commenter" flag, new commenters always have to have comments approved before they get posted, but after you've successfully commented some number of times, you no longer need approval and your comments get posted instantly.

Not sure if this threshold is automatic, or if Laurel or a moderator manually adds the "trusted comments" flag to a user account. But it definitely happens, it happened to me after ~20 story comments!

As for "trusted story writers," that get some kind of publishing queue priority, I think that's total speculation