Submitted first story; and now I gotta wait?

[KeithD]

I honestly don't see having a submission looked over as any different from submitting a manuscript for publication. It just comes with the territory. I do wish the responses were a little less cryptic sometimes.

The difference between here and submitting to a publishing house is that, here, the wait you talk about is days and, with submissions to a publishing house, it's months.

 

[windar]

All of my chapters have gone up in 2 days, including the one I submitted yesterday, which is marked with tomorrow's date.

Which raises the question-if a 3000 word chapter can be approved in 36 hrs, why does a 50 word comment take 24 hours?

 

[Dashabout]

I've always wondered how long it took to have one published. I've toyed with the idea of adding one of the several I've written.

 

[KeithD]

The story I submitted yesterday is now marked to post tomorrow.

Annnnd, it's posted.

 

[Javahead]

I've always wondered how long it took to have one published. I've toyed with the idea of adding one of the several I've written.

I think right now it's running about a week between submission and acceptance/rejection.

Just don't do what I did - I usually post in MS Word format, and at the last minute added an Author's Note. Unfortunately, I forgot to mark those last-minute changes as "accepted." Last night - 7 days from my story's submission - I got a rejection notice because of the unresolved revisions.

Fixing it and reposting took about 10 minutes. But I'm still kicking myself for missing something that basic - I'd already made a point of clearing all that just before I added the Author's Note.

But it gives a good data point - for a known but not highly prolific author who's not posting a story for a contest the queue appears to be 7 days deep. That may be a little less time than for a new author, but not as streamlined as the most frequent posters.

So expect 1-2 weeks between the time you submit your story and notification it's been scheduled to go live.

 

[yukonnights]

This seems silly to me for anyone who has written here for years to do. It could easily be asserted without being true and I think Laurel should have gotten a sense of who knows and follows the rules and who plays at getting around them. So, when I get challenged, I assume it's some sort of program doing it.

I don't know if this has always been in place, I've never noticed it; The question mark icon for the Note To Admin box says this: Any comments you would like to share with Lit admin. If you used a volunteer editor, please let us know their username in this box.

On my recent story Bo Keap, I did have a well known fellow author read it prior to sending it in. That story is an 8 page, almost 40k word romance — it went through in a couple of days. Obviously, this one example can't confidently verify that Lit admin knowing the 'volunteer editor' helped expedite the story, but it does seem that it did.

 

[KeithD]

I don't know if this has always been in place, I've never noticed it; The question mark icon for the Note To Admin box says this: Any comments you would like to share with Lit admin. If you used a volunteer editor, please let us know their username in this box.

On my recent story Bo Keap, I did have a well known fellow author read it prior to sending it in. That story is an 8 page, almost 40k word romance — it went through in a couple of days. Obviously, this one example can't confidently verify that Lit admin knowing the 'volunteer editor' helped expedite the story, but it does seem that it did.

A Lit. member does edit mine, but he's not in the volunteer program.

 

[yukonnights]

A Lit. member does edit mine, but he's not in the volunteer program.

I don't think my friend is officially in the volunteer program either — but he/she is well known. Since I've never noticed that request on the submission form before, I don't know what impact it had on the review time.

 

[SimonDoom]

My stories typically take 3-5 days from submission to publication. I've been publishing for 5 years, usually stories or chapters of about 8-20,000 words (3 to 6 Lit pages), and I've only had one rejection, for violating the "no bestiality" rule, which I successfully pushed back, on the grounds that it was an alien and imaginary creature.

I personally wouldn't pay much attention to a delay in publication unless it got up to 7 days. Sometimes things are slow.

 

[Bramblethorn]

All of my chapters have gone up in 2 days, including the one I submitted yesterday, which is marked with tomorrow's date.

Which raises the question-if a 3000 word chapter can be approved in 36 hrs, why does a 50 word comment take 24 hours?

Different approval process.

There are several ways to detect spam comments, e.g.:

- human reads every comment (time-consuming)
- automated process checks every comment individually and tries to recognise whether it's spam or legit (tough to implement, can be circumvented)
- automated process checks comments against one another, looking for suspiciously similar texts (much easier to implement; can be circumvented but takes work, which is likely to discourage most spammers)

My guess is that Literotica is using the third or something like it. If that's the case, then in order to catch the first spam comment in any given batch you need to hold it long enough for more like it to come in, which requires some kind of delay.

 

[Dashabout]

I think right now it's running about a week between submission and acceptance/rejection.

Just don't do what I did - I usually post in MS Word format, and at the last minute added an Author's Note. Unfortunately, I forgot to mark those last-minute changes as "accepted." Last night - 7 days from my story's submission - I got a rejection notice because of the unresolved revisions.

Fixing it and reposting took about 10 minutes. But I'm still kicking myself for missing something that basic - I'd already made a point of clearing all that just before I added the Author's Note.

But it gives a good data point - for a known but not highly prolific author who's not posting a story for a contest the queue appears to be 7 days deep. That may be a little less time than for a new author, but not as streamlined as the most frequent posters.

So expect 1-2 weeks between the time you submit your story and notification it's been scheduled to go live.

Thank you Javahead, I'm still working on making everything flow better and correcting obvious flaws.

 

[windar]

Different approval process.

There are several ways to detect spam comments, e.g.:

- human reads every comment (time-consuming)
- automated process checks every comment individually and tries to recognise whether it's spam or legit (tough to implement, can be circumvented)
- automated process checks comments against one another, looking for suspiciously similar texts (much easier to implement; can be circumvented but takes work, which is likely to discourage most spammers)

My guess is that Literotica is using the third or something like it. If that's the case, then in order to catch the first spam comment in any given batch you need to hold it long enough for more like it to come in, which requires some kind of delay.

That's fine except that here on the boards, the comments appear instantly, so why not use whatever they're using here for story comments also?

 

[ElectricBlue]

That's fine except that here on the boards, the comments appear instantly, so why not use whatever they're using here for story comments also?

Forum comments don't go through the spam check.

There are two "sides" to Lit, story side and forum side. They use different software sets, and they're not connected. Also, the site is 22 years old, so there would be a ton of aged legacy software, none of it easy to manage and keep afloat.

If you want significant improvements, send a lot of money.