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I want to start this article by addressing the elephant in the room first. There are a number of authors who want to write what they want to write and simply do not care whether people want to read it or not. I'm not here to change your mind. If that's how you approach writing, that's fine. You do you. The purpose of this article is give people who are interested more insight as to the audience they are posting their stories in front of. A lot of factors play out in how much a story gets read and writing something that appeals to a wider audience merely gives you more possible eyeballs to read your story. Some Survey Results Still reading? Great! I think most of us probably fall in the middle here between not caring at all and wanting more opportunity. We want people to read our stuff, but we want to tell our story our way. Back in the spring, we did a site survey and had over 600 people reply. This is a pretty sizable response, and it really ran a large range of readers. I'm going to share the results of three of the questions in particular. Authors following the Writer's Circle club may recognize my recent work on Genres. This was instigated by feedback from the survey. One more note on the survey results before we begin. This is a straight up survey, not a controlled statistical sample. This means that the results you see reflect the thinking of those people who were surveyed and may or may not represent the site as a whole. We are going to act as if it does though, as these are the people who took the time and effort to fill out the survey, meaning they cared enough to do it (and more likewise more likely to read and react to Stories content). Since I have had Masters level statistical courses, I felt compelled to point this out so as to not get smacked by others who likewise understand the magic of numbers. This is the breakdown of what the survey responders say they like to read, genre-wise: As you can see, our readers self-report a fairly balanced view on what they read. Interestingly enough, this and the questions I asked authors highlighted a few shortcomings on how I asked questions on the survey and how we actually use data here at Gay Authors. The author portion of the survey weighed interest on a 1 to 5 scale for each genre from a writing standpoint. But the reader scale was a yes/no on each. That means I wasn't able to do anything directly as I didn't have apples to apples to compare. For example, over 450 people said they read romance... but that could be "I'll read it if there was nothing else to read" all the way to "I'll stop sleep and anything else to read a good romance story". It's hard to do anything with that other than say, this is what people say they do or don't read. I'll get into what we're working on to address this in a bit after we go over the next parts. Next up, sex. As it shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention: sex sells. An overwhelming majority of readers will read a sex scene if you put it in front of them. Fortunately, when I wrote the survey, I didn't completely miss the boat. I also asked, how much sexual content do you prefer in your stories. Again: sex sells. As you can see from the survey results, of the people that answered this question, people prefer a decent level of sexual content in their stories. It should be noted that site rules says level 5 erotica text porn level sex in stories isn't actually allowed on site. The safest conclusion from the survey is that you are not scaring people away from your story if you include sexual content, and that there is a group that really enjoys it. Again, this is not a statistical sample and thus we can only apply this conclusion to the people who answered and guess, but not know, that it would apply similarly to those who did not take the time to answer the survey. So what to do? IF you are interested in keeping up with the latest information on writing tips and what is getting read on Gay Authors: Make sure you are following the Writing World Blog so you get notified when we post stuff! Go to your Notification settings and make sure that "Newsletter" email is checked. Go to your profile (click your avatar image on the upper right and then click "edit profile" on upper right side of page) and then make sure your Author and Genre News are both set to "Yes" and that you select at least one Genre on the list of Genres. If you like everything, select "everything" from the list. We are currently emailing a weekly Genre News update and a monthly Author one. If you want to stay in touch with what's going on, sign up! What else are we doing? We are working on some changes to the story archive software that will allow us to more tightly categorize story genres. This will allow people interested in writing or reading in the growing micro-genre niches to do so. The way the system is designed, authors will be able to stick to the more generic genres as well. More details will be posted as we get closer to release. We are also developing a couple of administrative tools to allow us to more easily analyze the data the system is naturally collecting. For example, we collect time-based read data on every story in the system. It's generic insomuch as we can only tell if it guest or member reading. The tool we are working on will be able to tell us how many reads are occurring per genre and eventually per tag. There is where "Writing Where the Audience Is" comes into play. If the report is showing werewolf stories are popular right now, maybe it is time to dip your toes in the water and try one. Or maybe you see that popularity and decide now is the time to try posting that Were-Tiger story you've been secretly working on. Or maybe you want to see which way people are going so you take the other fork in the road and avoid the crowd. You can do any of that or none of it. We'll be working to give you the option. You could also try mashing together two trending genres. This is how many of these micro-genres have formed. Romance was popular. Werewolves are popular. Suddenly, you have Paranormal Romances / Shifter as a sub-genre. We might see Horror and Western both getting hits so you decide to write a Weird West story. Zombies at the OK Corral. This data could work for anything. Or take one genre that's popular, take one that isn't and create your own space with one foot in popular stuff and one foot in a new frontier. There is nothing wrong with using data to fit in with the popular crowd or avoid them so you have your own swimming spot. What is the Gay Authors motivation in this? We want eyeballs on site reading. If you come for the popular and stay for the niche stuff, that's fine by us. Or if you come for some of the unique content and try out some of the other things, that works too. So long as you're hanging out here, that's our interest. 😉

Would anybody be really surprised to learn that I am an avid reader? I have a tendency to overindulge on different topics to not only learn, but to see other people's points of view on the same topic. I'll skip the obvious tie to society's ills over not listening to each other's points of view. I just completed reading a book dealing with Gamification and how it relates to marketing. The book is "Press Start - Using Gamification to Power-Up Your Marketing" by Daniel Griffin & Albert van der Meer. I have a couple of books on this subject and this one flows much easier than the other and it has a more accessible approach to implementation of its concepts. Why am I reading about gamification and marketing? Well, one reason is to be aware of the manipulation that is always going on around us. Professional marketing runs the western world. Though I suspect a long overdue crash is coming on that after so many people experienced the cognitive dissonance associated that occurs when they put lipstick on a pig and tell you it is the centerfold out of Play Girl. On a topic like Gamification, it is extraordinarily easy to dive deep down into a rabbit hole, as this is a topic that stands on a foundation of human behavior, psychology, game theory, marketing, and motivation. It's all wrapped up together. Humans, after meeting their basic needs of food, shelter and safety, are motivated by rewards. Games we make are designed to make use of our motivations and provide rewards. Marketing uses these to get you to buy what they want you to buy. Marketing is like a magic trick... they do big flashy campaigns showing you a product to make you aware of it. But that's not really the main driver. "Product Placement" is. Seeing others performing the desired behavior. Making it a game, adds another layer on top by rewarding specific behavior (and depending on game, punishing bad behavior). Gamification Elements are things like Badges, Trophies, Achievements, Leaderboards... Plenty of people are motivated by getting recognition. Others by competition. Others are on a journey to better themselves. Some people are into it all. This book focuses on harnessing this and channeling it where you want to go and not abusing it. Because it is REALLY easy to abuse. Those loot boxes in mobile games? Those little gateways where you have to pay $1.99 to continue or wait... the fear of missing out. The fear of missing out is a HUGE HUGE HUGE way to manipulate people. The sale will only last another 3 hours, buy now or miss the discount! There are only 4 left, Order now! (Does that look familiar?) That's the fear of missing out. I've been using this book and others from a white hat side of things. How can we motivate more people to do what we want? What does Gay Authors want? We're still refining this, but this is what we're looking for: We want to encourage authors to post new content (stories/chapters) We want to encourage readers to post feedback (reviews, story comments, chapter comments) We want to encourage readers to react to content (reactions (like's,etc) We want to grow the community and retain members. (Keep people coming back every day or at least every week to see what's new) We want to grow Premium Content Membership to keep the site Viable. (The more people that subscribe, the more stable we are as when people come and go, it doesn't cause wild swings. ) Thankfully, what we desire feeds into each other and is not in conflict. Adding some game elements on top of what we have, just adds a new layer of motivation for some people that helps the cycle keep going. Anyway, this turned into a bit diversion, but know that I'm always doing research to improve the site. Not all aspects will appeal to all people, but it doesn't need to. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

With the latest update to the Stories archive, you can now assign default discussion locations for both Author and Stories. This gives authors one more change for interacting with their readers. I have added FAQ entries for these two new options:

You’ve done it! You’ve written your story and had it accepted for publication, or you’ve decided to self-publish. You’ve done more edits than you ever thought you’d had to, you’ve done proof reads, cover creation, blurb creation, and everything else you can think of. Your release date is set, so that means you’re done now, right? Wrong. There is still more work to be done. In an ideal writing world, you’d release your hard work into the world and everyone would find it. That’s really not how it works. You have to get the word out there, and there’s a majority of ways to do it. For this topic, let’s discuss blog tours. What they are, how you set them up, and everything that goes along with them. There are numerous blogs out there dedicated to helping get the word out about new books. You can go about setting up your blog tour in two ways. Hire Someone You can hire someone to do most of the legwork for you. There are people out there that have lists of the majority of blogs that are willing to host authors to get the word out about your books. For a first time published author, this is the route I’d suggest, because there may be a lot of blogs out there that you don’t know about, but they do. Many of them have a few options, but some of them are: Blog Tour: Generally a blog tour will span a length of time. We’ll say two weeks. The person/company you hired sends out an email to their list of blogs with a list of dates. The blogs then sign up to host you on that date, and says what kind of post they want to do. These can include: book review, spot light, exclusive excerpt, exclusive blog post, interview, etc. Some promotion companies charge by how many blogs you want to visit. You look at their prices and tell them the maximum you want to visit. Others just have a set fee. Either way, they coordinate your blog tour. So you’re done, right? Wrong again. We’ll go into what you have to do next here in a minute. Cover Reveal: Sometimes, you want to get the word out before the release day. You’ve held that beautifully created cover close to your heart and now it’s time to share it with the world. Just don’t do this too early. Sharing the cover of your story is a good way to get the buzz started. Typically you might do a cover reveal just a couple weeks, and up to a month, before release day. It all depends on if/when your story is available for Pre-Order. If your story will be available for pre-order, that’s typically when you’d do your cover reveal. If it’s not, then a couple weeks before the release date is usually good. A cover reveal typically will include: the cover, the blurb, author information, and sometimes where they will be able to purchase it. Release Day Tour: A release day tour is just like a blog tour, only it only spans one day. The official release day of your book. Do it Yourself Essentially, you’ll need to contact all the blogs you wish to appear on and request for them to host you. Some blogs only really take requests from promotion companies, while others also accept requests from the authors themselves. Blogs that accept author requests will generally have a form you can fill out. They’ll want to know: Details about your book to decide whether or not they want to host you. The date you would like to be hosted. Many have you pick multiple days and they’ll pick which one works best for them The type of blog post you’d like them to post: cover reveal, excerpt, book review Contact info Which is better, a blog tour or a release day tour? It’s personal preference, but I prefer a regular blog tour. If you go with a release day tour, then you flood all the blogs on the same day, whereas a regular blog tour, your name and book get attention over a longer period of time. With a release day tour, you get that one day and that’s it. What if someone missed the blog post that day? I personally think you reach more readers by doing, say, a two week blog tour. So, now that your blog tour dates are decided on and the blogs have all signed up for their day? What do you do next? It’s time to see what all those blogs want and deliver the information to either the blog itself or the person coordinating your blog tour. If you’ve hired someone, you’ll send them any graphics you want included in the blog tour. This will always include a cover, but might also include banners, an author photo, or other graphics you’ve created to go with your book. You’ll also look at each blog and provide the specific info they want, some of which are: Interviews - Some sites will send interview questions, either to you or your coordinating person, with a date that they need it back by. You go through and supply the required answers and return it. Exclusive Excerpt - You’ll have to go through your book and decide what excerpt you want to be exclusive to that blog and provide that in a word document Excerpt - Provide a decent sized excerpt, but be careful not to give all the blogs the exact same excerpt. I usually create at least 4 excerpts and then vary which one I send to each blog. Blog Post - You’ll need to pick some topics for blog posts. No two blogs should have the exact same blog post, so you’ll need a variety. It might be what inspired you for that book. Or if your book setting is in a bar, you might include a list of some of the specialty drinks in your book and how they’re made. Make these fun, but they should showcase something about your book. Book Review - You’ll have to provide these blogs with an ARC (Advanced Review Copy) of your book. Blogs will tell you which format they require in order to do a book review. Generally you want to have available a .pdf file, a .mobi file, and a .epub file. If you are going through a publisher, you will have to contact them for the ARC’s. A key note is to make sure you have a good variety. Here’s a few examples for book tours of either my books, or tours I’ve participated in: Cover Reveal: Cover Reveal: On Fire by Alicia Nordwell Interview: Blog Tour: Swift for the Sun by Karen Bovenmyer Blog Tour: Blog Tour: Separation by Louise Lyons Review: Review: No More Hiding by Renee Stevens | Joyfully Jay It's been a while since I've participated in any blog tours, so if I've forgotten anything, I'll update when I remember!

Anthologies are a great way for you to promote your writing and show prospective new readers a sample of what you can do. While anthologies are short, they can give readers a sense of your style, and showcase your ability to craft a story. There is one way I can think of this could backfire. While it's great to step out of your norm once in a while, if you only do one anthology and it's a completely different style, genre, etc. than the rest of your work, it doesn't really showcase the majority of your work. I'd suggest to all authors, to participate in at least one anthology, preferably more, but do at least one that showcases your talent and gives readers a feel for what your stories are about.

One of the most powerful things you can do to market yourself is just being active and engaged on the site. You are allowed to set your signature here: https://www.gayauthors.org/settings/signature/ Put one of your stories there. Now, go and participate in discussions on the site. And I don't mean going to a topic and saying "me too". Well, sometimes that fits, but don't be a wallflower. If you want people to go read something you wrote, then say something interesting and relevant to a topic. If people like what you say, then they might go looking for other stuff you've said or written. This is not a one-time thing. This is something that builds over time. So don't go out and make 15 posts in 15 different topics and then disappear for a month, and expect more people reading your story. It's far better to make 1 post every day for 15 days. Now, that great thing about this technique is that it is win-win-win. The site benefits from the activity. Other people benefit from the engaging conversation and you benefit by putting your stuff out there where others can see.

I have added a new section "Image Tools" to the Writer's Resources page. https://gayauthors.org/writingresources/ One of the simple things you can do for your story is have a banner. There are lots of free tools out there to help you create it. There are also links to images you can use for inspiration. Reminder, if you use an image, you must have a license to do so so you don't run afoul of the copyright laws. You can search for Creative Common images or use your own or license images from photo stock images.