Forum: Author Hangout

"Arlene and Jeff" is tagged as "much sex" on SOL. That's not allowed on wattpad.

I recognised TechnicDragon's stories too. Most of them are also 'much sex'.

AJ

I just found two things on the Wattpad site that have me confused:

1) The list of 13 stories is still there, but it doesn't come up with a search on Vicky4470 like it did earlier today.

2) On the full list that I just found, the book's cover is shown with the book's title and by Vicky4470. To me, that makes it appear that this Vicky4470 is claiming authorship of the stories. When I expanded several of the stories, Vicky4470 was crediting the authorship to the actual SOL author. On other stories, there was no credit given to the actual author.

Does anyone have an explanation for what I am seeing on the Wattpad site?

Deleted my response. The link in question leads to exactly what REP described. So I second the question: what's the point of saying "By vicky4470" and then crediting the actual author?

bb

what's the point of saying "By vicky4470" and then crediting the actual author?

Maybe wattpad inserts the person's user-id there.

btw, the person says some of the chapters are private so maybe that's how she got around the sex scenes.

what's the point of saying "By vicky4470" and then crediting the actual author?

What you see at first is the cover of a book with the title and her name as the author, which leads the reader to assume she wrote the story. You have to bore down about 2 levels to find her accreditation of the actual author's name, and if you are a reader looking for a link to the story so you can read it, the accreditation is easy to overlook. Furthermore, I did not see an accreditation on all of her stories. I don't recall which had accreditations and which didn't.

She had a following of around 45 followers IIRC. She posted comments to what appears to be a blog, and these comments were sent to her followers; at least that is the way Wattpad's blogs appear to function. We all know of the feedback we get from our readers, and I believe she received similar feedback thanking her for going to the effort of letting her readers read the stories she wrote. She did make a mistake however when she posted Cogito's Demigod. She failed to note that it was incomplete and inactive. She fobbed this off by telling her readers that she did not plan to complete the story because she had become bored with it.

where account holders can list a story by someone else as one they like, and then provide a link to where you can get the story.

A wattpad user can put someone else's story in their library, either a public one that others can see or a private one. The public ones show up when you view their profile. But they are wattpad stories and wattpad does the linking.

where account holders can list a story by someone else as one they like, and then provide a link to where you can get the story.

I joined Wattpad to gather as much data as possible on Vicky. In my profile, I can define stories in a reading list. I gave it a try but I must not be doing something right for I didn't see what I expected.

I joined Wattpad to gather as much data as possible on Vicky. In my profile, I can define stories in a reading list. I gave it a try but I must not be doing something right for I didn't see what I expected.

Ask Switch, as he's the only SOL author I know who's a member of Wattpad. I tried, years ago, but Wattpad is basically a social trading site (i.e. I'll read your story if you read mine) and thus it's based on accumulating Likes and Friends more than it is on actual writing. If you're willing to put in the effort, the benefits are great, but if you're not a social being (or over the age of 20), you'll likely have troubles getting much traction on the site (I failed miserably since I tried to make 'friends' by posting stories, rather than gathering friends first who'll vote my stories up before posting).

Thanks CW.

As I said earlier, I really wasn't interested in the site except as a resource for information about Vicky. The little time I spent on the site did not impress me. I could not find the equivalents of SOL's Forum, New Stories, Updates, and Authors screens. It did provide a search function, but you had to use it you had to know the specifics such as full author penname. The features I was looking for may have been available, but I couldn't find them.

Forums are becoming a dying breed. The internet is becoming increasing personalized, and services are becoming more and more Facebook-like as time progresses.

The LinkedIn Forums are still strong, but that's despite LinkedIn's attempt to drive forum users away from the site by making it harder and harder to post (i.e. making the site more difficult to manage for the average user). :(

LinkedIn also caters to an older demographic that doesn't tend to embrace change like the younger types do.

It also represents recognized industry leaders/experts, as opposed to the mostly amateur authors on Wattpad (like SOL) who mostly market their works to friends (thought there are a few notable exceptions).

It also represents recognized industry leaders/experts, as opposed to the mostly amateur authors

There's one author on wattpad whose last advance was $750,000. There are other authors who are traditionally published as well, just not as successful as that one. But most of the wattpadders are teenagers.

There's one author on wattpad whose last advance was $750,000. There are other authors who are traditionally published as well, just not as successful as that one. But most of the wattpadders are teenagers.

I also imagine there are several representatives of the major publishing houses offering 'insider advice', but I can almost guarantee there aren't many over 25-years-of-age.

Not that I'm belittling the site, but there's clearly a different focus between the amateur teens on the one site, and the established professionals on the other, and technological/cultural barrier between them prevents many from crossing over from the other site. :(

but I can almost guarantee there aren't many over 25-years-of-age.

Most people in the Industry Insider's club are adults, most with teenaged kids.

Most people in the Industry Insider's club are adults, most with teenaged kids.

Again, since I don't frequent the site, I'm making blanket assumptions. Publishers are interested in the 'Young Adult' market, and thus are interested in developing and identifying new talent, but few industry insiders are up-to-date on what their kids are up to.

Forums are becoming a dying breed.

wattpad has forums. It calls them clubs. I guess the clubs are like the topics here. They have Industry Insiders, Improve Your Writing, Genre specific ones, the Cafe (which is social), etc.

Ask Switch

I spend my time in the Industry Insiders club where we discuss publishing, both traditional and self.

I do have some short stories on there, but haven't in a long, long time. And I never quite mastered the site.

One of the things I noticed in that article was one of the authors was able to obtain royalties from Amazon for the plagiarized books. Perhaps the authors Hooriyz Ahmed plagiarized could receive funds for the sale of their stories that hadn't been sent to her.

The person who plagiarized that person admitted it in an email and that plus jumping through a few hoops resulted in her getting the moneys. The email to Ernest would be a similar situation if any of them want to pursue the issue.

I checked as I am on Wattpad now that author has NO stories in his writing list. I checked a few others and all I got was this page is missing so I hope that Wattpad took all of them down.

Let's hope he didn't just do what most do--abandoned his previous ID and created an entirely new one so he could start again without any bad associations.

@ Crumbly Writer

I posted a number of comments about Vickie's activities on Wattpad in this thread.

Switch Blayde said most of the participants on Wattpad are teens.

I don't recall mentioning it, but I sent a message to Wattpad webmaster regarding Vicky's stories, which probably had something to do with Wattpad taking down Vicky's stories. I also posted a comment on Vicky4470 timeline about her plagiarism. She responded to me with a message. If what she said is true, and I think it is based on SB's comment, she is a teenager. She said she thought that since she always gave accreditation to the original authors, she thought that it was okay to post stories under her penname. She stated that she had deleted the stories from her account - regardless of why they were deleted, they were gone. She asked a question about copyright laws, so I gave her a brief explanation of the copyright laws and possible repercussions. I then dropped it since she was probably underage.

I then dropped it since she was probably underage.

Given the circumstances, and her responses, that's a reasonable assumption. It's not unreasonable to assume that many stories on a 'free-posting' site are beyond their copyright (despite the clear copyright symbol and date listed on each story index).

Hopefully that means these latest copyright troubles are past.

They may never be at SciFi-Stories. The Public domain stories were just added as a kick start.

Not quite. Most of the new stories added there are STILL public domain works!

e.g. To Ride Pegasus (by Anne McCaffrey)

As much as I hate to do this, but:

https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Pegasus-Talents-Saga/dp/0345336038

You may want to check if any of them are off copyright or not. The copies of Anne's books I have show the Talent Series as being originally published in the UK, and she died in 2011 so they come under the life plus 70 years so it's copyrighted until September 2081.

edit to add: Some of her books were first released and copyrighted in the US and some in the UK, but I can't find a definitive list of which is which.

she has her own website

http://www.pernhome.com

BTW, I hate DRM, so all my ebooks are DRM-free. Thanks Baen.

The majority of Kindle books are DRM free, but it's a switch you've got to select when you submit the work. Most authors (hopefully) know that readers DESPISE DRM, because it often restricts rightful purchasers from reading their legally purchased books.

Then don't:

When I ran a google search for it as an e-book the B&N page did not show on the first 50 hits (I've it set to show 50 at a time). Around hit 40 they were listing books by other people with the word Pegasus, despite me having Anne's name as a string and the book title as a string so it should only show where both match. So I didn't go to later pages on Google.

Probably none, but the Science-Fiction sister site was kick started by Lazeez with off copyright stories (probably from Project Gutenberg).

That's how he kick starts most of his sites, only the initial stories on SOL have aged out of the system a long time ago. (And personally, I wish he'd knock it off on sci-fi, as I feel most authors feel like their stories are getting buried under all the junk and thus he may be preventing more contributions, rather than encouraging both readers and authors.)

it's here that the good stories are getting "buried under junk"

I resemble that remark!

They may be junk, but a few readers actually enjoy reading my stories. I'm happy that SOL is a home for lower quality submissions.

AJ

It's a humorous play on the commonly used expression 'I resent that remark'. To work, it requires some actual resemblance between what the originator said and the respondee. In my case, I wrongly thought @Grant was praising the out-of-copyright stories and questioning the quality of stories purposely written for SOL. My scores speak for themselves :(

AJ

considering the rate of posting there (1 a week or less is not a lot) compared the rate stories are posted here, it's here that the good stories are getting "buried under junk".

Sorry, I didn't mean that the stories themselves are junk, after all, most are considered classic best-selling sci-fi novels. Instead I consider them to be freeware junk (stories loaded at no cost) to the site but which overwhelm the contributions of new authors struggling to find their voice.

However, comparing the site to SOL, I can easily find my own stories when I post on SOL, whereas I typically have to search through multiple listings before finding my stories when they post on sci-fi. I don't know how many new chapters are posted on scifi vs SOL, but anecdotally, it doesn't seem compatible.

On Sci-Fi stories it shows the posts for around the last month.
At the moment Vincent Berg makes up 11 out of 29 posts on the home page stream there.

It's more a matter of timing (maybe all the 'classic' stories get dumped first thing every morning). When I post on SOL, my stories usually appear near the top of the 'Series Updates' list. When I do the same on Sci-Fi, I typically have to search through a list of classic stories to find my latest post.

The stories are there, and it doesn't take a lot of searching. Call it a minor annoyance, at best.

When I do the same on Sci-Fi, I typically have to search through a list of classic stories to find my latest post.

I wonder if you're checking the right list, CW. I just checked the Updated Stories list on SciFi and it has 7 entries for the last 30 days. 1 by Lumpy, 2 by you, and 4 by Pars001. While the New Stories list has 36 stories in the last 30 days, with yours being first.

typo edit

Call me stupid, but this thread is the first place where I have heard of a Sci-Fi oriented "sister site" for SOL. But nobody mentioned an address! So: Where can I find it?

https://scifistories.com

I've only seen one, and the funny thing is that it's premium content...

It was one of the early stories, still left on the site. Check Sci-Fi, they're a dime a dozen, almost literally (they're actually MUCH cheaper than that)!

I've only seen one, and the funny thing is that it's premium content...

There are 3 novel-classic stories on SOL.
But there are nearly 500 novel-pocketbook ones.

Sure, but how many of the stories on here were written prior to 1976?

That's true, but you'll find most of the stories currently posting in Sci-Fi, at least, are stories well past their copyright. The people involved may have seen those (or similar stories on SOL) and simply assumed they applied to ALL the stories on SOL.

The point was only that the law changed in 1976.

However, the new law plus modifications defines what is and is not copyrighted. If the new law did not 'grandfather' prior terms of copyright, there is no guarantee the works are still protected.