Wholesaling Lit stories?

[ishtat]

We constantly see threads here about on two particular subjects:-

1 The 'theft' of stories from Lit and their publication on pay sites by said thieves.

2 The legitimate retailing by individual authors of their stories.

It occurs to me that the days of successful electronic publishing by individual authors may be diminishing for various reasons but there may be an opportunity to wholesale larger number of stories into the pay market.

Lit stories have a very very short shelf life. In a matter of days they either have lots of reads and are decorated with red and blue or even green letters or they fade into oblivion/ The entity in the best position to market a substantial quantity of Lit stories would be Lit itself. They have actually done this before when about ten years ago they published a hard copy of some of the better stories.

Technically it should not be too difficult to 'hide' the more successful stories on Lit and publish them on a pay site for a period of time before reverting back to the Lit site.

I know there would be all sorts of issues about for example,who gets paid what? Does Lit have the necessary publishing skills? marketing skills, entrepreneurial skill, etc. But I think that the wholesaling of this massive list of product might be worth talking about at least.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

There was a consortium of authors who have tried that.

The Coming Together Anthologies were all Lit. stories put together in a publication and published...I forget where...maybe someone here remembers. The published several volumes. You can find them at Smashwords and Amazon and Excessica.

You can find them at facebook too...Coming Together.

 

[JKendallDane]

What I would like to see, is the option to put a story or multiple stories "behind-the-curtain" so to speak, much the same way you could put an eBay store "on vacation" at one time. Basically "remove" something from your story file in order to publish it on Amazon Kindle where you are not permitted to have it available anywhere else initially.

As it stands now, the only way you can do it is to have Laurel completely delete the story, publish it at the Big A, and then eventually put it back on Lit where it would show up as a new story again. That usually doesn't go over well with readers and/or fans.

If we had the ability to put stories on ice for say four to six or nine months and still have them hold their views, votes, scores...and most importantly, their status as an existing story...then both the authors and Lit can come out as winners.

Just a thought.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

What I would like to see, is the option to put a story or multiple stories "behind-the-curtain" so to speak, much the same way you could put an eBay store "on vacation" at one time. Basically "remove" something from your story file in order to publish it on Amazon Kindle where you are not permitted to have it available anywhere else initially.

As it stands now, the only way you can do it is to have Laurel completely delete the story, publish it at the Big A, and then eventually put it back on Lit where it would show up as a new story again. That usually doesn't go over well with readers and/or fans.

If we had the ability to put stories on ice for say four to six or nine months and still have them hold their views, votes, scores...and most importantly, their status as an existing story...then both the authors and Lit can come out as winners.

Just a thought.

I put up MY stories from lit all the time on Kindle. The titles are even the same. Of course the Author name is different. Without Amazon complaining.

Or are you talking about that ripoff KDP Select? Never joined that mistake.

I can see where an unpublish to draft would be handy.

 

[sr71plt]

Lit stories have a very very short shelf life. In a matter of days they either have lots of reads and are decorated with red and blue or even green letters or they fade into oblivion/

First, this doesn't agree with my experience. My backlogged Lit. stories are being read at a much higher rate then my backlogged marketed books are selling.

Beyond that, all of my Literotica stories have already been in the marketplace for some time (except for contest entries, which mostly appear here first, but then go to the marketplace). And I use publishers that agree to have them in both places. There's no reverting back and forth.

 

[Thematterisclosed]

Interesting, I deleted a lot of my LeT stories because I assumed the publisher would be against me having them up for free when they were trying to make a buck from them.

I do love the idea of having an anthology of say short stories on sale in 99p editions whilst making use of your LeT reputation. Its tough to find stories in this place sometimes and people would be happy to pay for a goody batch if we could get a link at the bottom of the page.

Ultimately though the ethos of Literotica was that it was set up for free writing and sharing of stories. Perhaps a compromise could be setting up a bookshelf type page for paid stories.

I did laugh when I saw the KDP thing. First thing I tried back in 2013, total waste of time.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Interesting, I deleted a lot of my LeT stories because I assumed the publisher would be against me having them up for free when they were trying to make a buck from them.

I do love the idea of having an anthology of say short stories on sale in 99p editions whilst making use of your LeT reputation. Its tough to find stories in this place sometimes and people would be happy to pay for a goody batch if we could get a link at the bottom of the page.

Ultimately though the ethos of Literotica was that it was set up for free writing and sharing of stories. Perhaps a compromise could be setting up a bookshelf type page for paid stories.

I did laugh when I saw the KDP thing. First thing I tried back in 2013, total waste of time.

KDP in and of itself isn't a bad thing. I make most of my money there. It's the KDP Select or Ultimate bullshit ol' Jeff came up with, that's laughable.

 

[ishtat]

First, this doesn't agree with my experience. My backlogged Lit. stories are being read at a much higher rate then my backlogged marketed books are selling.

Beyond that, all of my Literotica stories have already been in the marketplace for some time (except for contest entries, which mostly appear here first, but then go to the marketplace). And I use publishers that agree to have them in both places. There's no reverting back and forth.

Good points Pilot but I suspect that your experience is not typical. You are different on at least three counts:-

1 You are prolific.

2 You have a following.

3 You have important knowledge about publishing and marketing your product.

Most writers here do not have the confidence or that knowledge and may well be 'not bothered' to sell their product.

It seems to me that the owners of Lit - if they wanted to, and with the authors agreement could put a large amount of stories onto a pay facility. It would advantage precisely the kind of author you are not!- the ones who currently do not publish for money.

With the right management and revenue sharing between authors and Lit it might work. The biggest downside to my mind is that I doubt that the owners and managers of Lit have either the skills or inclination to manage or promote such a project. And whether they might allow or contract anyone else to do so is also uncertain.

I should own up as to where this idea came from. I have a modest investment in a business which 'mines' certain existing data and then repackages it for marketing /selling on the internet. It then occurred to me that Lit has a vast library of unexploited data that could be sold. Not by me however - I lack the publishing and literary marketing skills.

After all, if selling stories works for thieves why not consider legitimising the process.