Question for Authors/Writers on the Hive

I'm not a writer but I do photography and I know a couple of forum communities (big ones!) which have done the whole publication of a book with select photos. It actually went down rather well and today the actual act of getting something self published for a small audience isn't too hard. If you also do a digital release then hitting the bigger markets isn't too hard either (get it on Amazon and a few reviews which a community is bound to provide up early and it will get noticed very fast).

Most of the downsides that I can think of and am aware of to this idea are honestly in the management side of matters. It's a LOT of work to pull something like this together. That and you must also not forget that if you are going to go to print you'll likely need to prepare a full year in advance (ergo you wouldn't have a publication out in the first year of running). Simply because to get from draft to print you need an editing phase - so you'd need good editors on board to work through each submission and to work with the authors of those submissions to ensure that they are print ready. You sadly won't be able to skip this step even with a community helping here and there - someone has to sit down with a pen and go through the whole story at length to get all the editing done - then ensure that changes are met with author approval.


That is likely going to incure costs which raises the next consideration of if the book/publication would have any cost and if so who would get the profit from that. The digital could be done "free" easily and that cuts out a lot of paperwork (although you will still have to do some copyright and legal paperwork). A physical copy you would have to arrange for a price point to sell it at to, at the very least, cover its printing and production cost.


Also be weary of fanfiction itself, this is often something that exists mostly because its allowed to exist because authors and publishers basically ignore it. Legally speaking if you start putting it into formal publications you could hit legal landmines. It would be something to be aware of and set out clearly in policy but also something you'd want pro legal advice upon to ensure that you were taking the right steps.

Plagiarism and other matters of that kind would also be a matter you'd have to be prepared to deal with. You wouldn't want people stealing others stories and posting them up so for the formal publication you would want some manner of formal searching through common other archives online. Note that a community that is active and established should be fairly good at being able to police itself and help in this regard.

It can be done and honestly I think such a site has great merit behind it. Indeed there are already some communities that engage in this (consider looking at Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov's Science Fiction - two big names in the short stories publication world that do regular print and digital releases of short stories.).

Thanks for the replies all!

Regarding the concerns, I'd have to lay a few ground rules on what can be considered. Fanfiction just couldn't be done - simply put, there's too many legal issues. It'd be a strict no-go area.

On actually getting the annual/magazine developed - the website would spend several years generating and establishing a community to the point where it actually becomes feasible. It would require a volunteer effort, but the general aim would be to simply promote writers and become large enough for profit to actually arise.
E-publications are probably the best bet - it might not have as wide an audience as the physical book, but it would allow for discovery from within the community (if it reaches a great enough size it's possible for many works to be unseen by many people), and deals with Tablet and E-reader companies could possibly be looked at. Physical will depend upon the sales of the electronic copy, though arguably we could also look at Print-On-Demand.

On quality - that'll be difficult. Naturally we'd have to look at the top recommended pieces from users, and decide whether editing would be necessary at first. Admittedly, we're looking at the possibility of something a bit trashy turning up, but the idea is to have a large enough community to push through enough things to give us a good enough selection.
Therefore, we'd have to allocate a variety of sections. So for example, children's, teen, romance, horror, crime, etc - and have possibly an 'Editor's Choice' as well as a 'User's choice'. We want to make sure good things get noticed, but at the same time we have to be careful to avoid ending up like the Booker Prize - considered literary genius by a select few but not really what the vast majority wants. Seriously, there's some pretty difficult and unrewarding stuff in there.

The thing with publishing is, Publishing Houses traditionally had control over what was released and so bad books never arose, or never did that well. But then stuff like 50 Shades got through via a self-published model (from an online community no less), and despite being critically panned it's the best selling book of all time (from what I recall). So we have to acknowledge that people want what they want, but at the same time we don't want to reproduce trash constantly whilst ignoring wonderful little hidden gems that genuinely deserve praise and attention.

Regarding end goals of potential applicants - the idea is to promote writers who wouldn't ordinarily consider writing as a means of income. A lot of people write but never really make a great effort of it, due to lack of confidence or belief that it won't get them anywhere. It'd be nice to be able to have a site where you can just write as you do, and then if it turns out that you're actually capable of writing great things you'll be told. It's generally an encouragement thing, but we could also look into some form of deal wherein we could send a copy of the compilation to various publishers too - see if any of them would be interested in any of the writers we find.



Ultimately, I realise that I am being very dependent on the forming of a community here - however cost-wise as a strategy it's very cheap. Forums like this generate tremendous amounts of traffic despite the niche subject (though I will admit the Hive is one of the most active forums I've ever seen, far beyond most other GW ones), and with a reasonable amount of volunteer work the likelihood of success and failure can be assessed without risk in the early stages.




Thanks for all the input so far people! If you're just glancing through the thread, please give us at least a comment on the idea, even just a sentence! Some feedback is better than none!

As far as the whole volunteer effort thing goes, I'm looking for internships now and it is pretty hellish with what I've majored in. A thing like this would feel like a god send to English Majors, especially the kind like me and many of my friends that feel the internet is the future of all print. So we'd happily volunteer especially if we knew there was a chance upon graduation of a real job being there.

Well, remember, this is only a fictitious business proposal for a Uni module. Having said that, there is a point you've raised that I do need to think about...

I'm concerned about people losing interest if they come looking strictly to be published. However, I would have to point out that the site's end goal is not to act as an agent - the site is to help cultivate writing skills. The incentive is that IF you're good enough, you may get noticed.
It's to help people who enjoy writing for fun - they may not be serious writers who spend time trying to get a book published, but if someone tells them that they actually are good enough to be considered in the publication, which people WILL see, then they'll prefer to write on a site which will let them know they're good enough (and maybe get them contacts), rather than one that exists in an isolated state.

About the difficulties Editors will have choosing a good entry, I do see your concern. I do want to keep those categories separate - if it's becoming obvious that people are getting friends to join just to vote for them, or just harassing people to vote for them, then probably I'd look into a system where it groups together the top user-nominated entries and have those few selected by editors too. Though it'd probably look quite controversial, so I'd definitely be open to alternative options - but as anyone who has been on DeviantArt knows, the writing section there is... well, it's pretty varied. (Funnily, I've heard similar things about Wattpad, which is rather professional otherwise, so image may not be the biggest concern).

Internships would be great - that could be another pull for the site. Maybe have a system where we offer it to members first? Definitely another lure, and internships are extremely sought after these days... especially for poor English students, who need a lot more than their degree to get work.

The idea of keeping the genres split into fewer broader categories seems good too - at least until the community grows. I have seen some other forums for Warhammer armies that're very quiet in the majority of their sections, with just traffic in a 'general' board, so it's best to avoid that.



You know what's funny? I've gotten the most feedback from here than from various writing forums I've asked around on...

Well, I could expand to those, but as Overread said, it'd probably be kept under broad categories - so I'd still accept them. People who only dabble in writing on websites and the like won't be writing full novels anyway, so I'm not really expecting those!

There is a site that does this already exclusively for poetry, but keeping a mixture might be best - if the categories are broad people providing critiques won't start developing niches so much so that cliques are created. That's another thing - the Hive is good because it has broader categories and overlap isn't frowned upon. I've seen other forums that're so strict in these that you get people who only live in some parts.

Well for basic forum software VBulletin is a very popular commercial software setup which many of the bigger forums use for a formal setup. It allows a fair amount of control and customising. It's likely one the better "off the shelf" packages that you can use without having to go for a fully customised interface. A fully customised interface will give you the most freedom in site structure; but its going to cost you a lot more up from (VB is mostly monthly running costs).

Of course you can go for a free website, however a free forum will have more limitations, more restrictions and also will have outside advertising to pay for itself which might not be what you want (and long term you want to see advertising return if you're going to be big and advertise).

Also you'll need to register domain names and such (sadly I've never gone into this I can't provide more accurate/detailed info)