Hello Rodinhoods
Talking about writing, it is hardwired in me to notice it, thanks to the company that I run. Litizen.com is a literary platform. Here, all authors/ poets (amateurs or professionals) can upload their stories for free, and a reader can read the same for free too. We have tied up with published authors like Shobhaa De too, and are in the process of getting more on board. Short stories by published authors or even good stories by first time authors are available on pay per download basis.
Whilst we are seeing an increasing traffic from the author community, the readers are not really warming up to the site. When we discussed this with Alok, he suggested to do a real check if such a thing even has a market in India. He said he was quite sure no one in his office read (though, on an impromptu check, we managed to find 3 closet writers in his team which came as a surprise to him as well).
But we’re betting on discovering talent. We have a community of more than 500 authors and stories, and we’re seeing exceptional talent. If we can derive a way of funneling this talent and presenting it to the reader base, I think we’d be addressing a huge issue in the publishing world of ‘discoverability’. This will also differentiate us from wattpad.com’s of the world as we don’t just remain a platform for content, but for curated/edited content.
We are obsessed with finding great stories and authors, and making it available for avid readers. There is one little help we would like from all rodinhooders.
- What do you think of the idea. Putting short story industry on steroids. Is it even worth it?
- How does the website look, is the functionality good?
- Should we keep this as a platform and allows all fiction stories to be published (in this case we will have great and bad stories right next to each other), or its better to focus on good quality content i.e. allow only good stories submitted by users on litizen and reject the bad ones (This is what we are doing currently, but then a follow up question to this always is, how do you scale it up? Any ideas, anyone?).
You can be as blunt as you want, in a constructive sort of way. Whether it is the look of the site, the functionality, the content. All of it. If you’ll find something great about it, we’d be happy to hear that too. In a nutshell, we’d be happy to hear anything you’ll have to say on the idea and litizen.
A marketing maven had once given a marketing commandment: “sample to ample”. Which means you HAVE TO give a sample of your product or service (especially if you’re new) in order to get ample of customers. So here is a sample of some good stories. We all like stories, don’t we?
Insurance Imbroglio (humor)
Frozen ; Morbid Art (grotesque, horror)
A Night at the Ritz (humor, relations)
Regards
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UPDATE: SEPT. 21, 2013
Hello Rodinhooders,
A little development on Litizen. After we asked on this platform how cool the litizen idea is, we took it to Bloomsberg Pitch. Out of 450 ideas received from across the country, Litizen made it to the final 25.
The judges liked it. Vishal Gondal thought ‘we’ve understood the game’. To explain the game (where, to use Alok’s Words, that MAMMOTH, GAMMOTH ANACONDA CALLED AMAZON is sucking everything up like a vacuum cleaner), and our part in it in less than a minute, boy its a task. Especially when its on camera.
We didn’t make it, but we’re happy we came back with a nod of approval.
Here’s the whole video:
https://www.yourmoneysite.com/videos/watch/2565/litizen:-your-short-story-submission-platform