I am an avid reader myself, but it is hard to find free time. I mostly read technical books these days, currently Cocoa Programmers for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, excellent book. Other days when I do have a spear 5 mins I usually go the www.slapastory.com (sorry for the plug). Its one of my little startups.
This is an interesting site, and I think may benefit my startup users. My site slapastory.com is a social site focusing on writers, I would love to cross link with you?
Let me know.
Firstly, thank you for your honest feedback.
Writing sites do need self respect, and this is the reason that we have developed this site. I am personally a developer and an avid reader.
Although it may seems like a ripping of Digg - digg doesn't have a fiction category or any sub-categories that we have included.
In terms of layout we didn't want to get too creative, but we do want to make it as simple on the eyes as possible - so our priority at the moment is to style the stories.
You are right, at the moment we are trying to build a mini community of writers. Mostly this was a request from a few friends of mine that are avid writers. We just want to see how far this can go. Any exposure for them is good. Maybe we can even get publishers on board.
Interesting idea.. like the design, not sure about using pligg though, had some bad experience with it, but good luck with the 30 day mark, it sounds like a plan
resently I released http://www.fictionthis.com/ - "allows you to share ideas and have unbiased input into creating a published work of quality fiction. This open project was developed for inspired members of our online community to create their own version of the story and to rate their fellow authors."
I thinks its a great idea, but traffic has been slowly disappearing.. feedback anyone?
Thanks for the feedback, unfortunately since we are just starting and are working a shoe string budget we had to manage with the design, I do take on board the feedback and i am currently changing the content and some styles that do have some rough edges.
We are also in talks with different publishers to get the book published once its complete .. that was the initial idea.
It has a similar idea..although I haven't seen this before. What we are planning is to concentrate on one book. There will also be time periods for each submission.