Author exposition

The thread on "My Best Work" got me thinking that perhaps it might be a fitting notion to have an "Authors only" contest. (Whch would really be more of an exposition for fellow authors under the guise of a contest.)

Authors would simply submit what they think their best work is from a more literary than fan-based evaluation and let everyone have a look and a vote.

No one needs to write anything new. No staff members have to wade through new stories to proof and validate. Just a simple "among ourselves" salon.

Winning the thing would be immaterial as the contest would be more of a platform for comparative critique among authors of their favorite pieces rather than a showdown of 'who's the best?'.

Yea, OK. It's 'blood in the water' time. But I agree! But I get to watch!
Grin & all that.

What a great idea - still another forum in which I could shamelessly plug!

I'm not sure how I feel about this being a contest. Maybe we could have a "gallery" where each author would select what he considered his best work and people could comment on it, either agree or disagree or write reviews or something. If you have ever browsed books at Amazon.com you know that reader reviews are posted covering every book they sell and they are rated with stars 1-5. It might be nice to have that here. I'm sure Februs could bang this out in his spare time. It also gets the readers involved in a creative way.

I'm sure Februs enjoys people volunteering his time and effort.


I agree with rollin that, SHOULD this come to fruition, some sort of 'gallery' would be preferable to a contest.

Well, the thing about Februs was actually tongue-in-cheek. I'm sure he has plenty to do. But someday maybe we could have something like an "author's showcase" or something. Maybe allow authors to put one or two stories in there submitted as their best effort and see what happens. I know I'm sometimes scratching my head over what seems to sell and what doesn't. Things I've been real excited about have flopped and things I thought were minor fluff have been well received, so go figure.

So I figured.

Linda and I were just making the same observation on another thread. So many things come into play - how a title strikes people, what else is posted at the same time, how long it stays on the first page, people's individual fantasies, and people tastes (which there simply IS no accounting for).

I agree with Rollins. It's very hard for an author work what people will react to and what they won't. I've written stories that I've thought were really good and gotten very little response. On the other hand I've submitted things that while, well written, didn't fire my imagination in quite the same way and those ones have been raved over. Writers regularly cite their favourite works which often aren't commercial successes.

Rollin,
Your comment on rating stories is interesting. Februs would have to answer the question about how difficult that would be it implement. My feeling is that it would not be too difficult to do as Februs already has a voting system in place for the story contests so that it would seem that something similar could be applied to all the stories posted.

If it could easily be applied the question is; do we want it?

Pro: It gives readers a guide as to what stories other readers liked.
Con: It makes all the story writing competitive, not just the contests. Should people compare a story by, say Mark Twain, to a story by Edgar Allen Poe and decide which to read based on a scoring system?

I am unsure as to whether such a rating system is a good idea or not.

Well, as I said above, I'm thinking of the Amazon model, which is becoming ubiquitous for all manner of things, from plumbers to hotels. See tripadvisor.com, for example. It was actually in use at a site called BDSMlibrary.com last time I looked. Now that particular site caters to an edgier crowd than we loving and gentle folk here but the concept is interesting.