4 ms·

Apply HN: fictionhub – the best place to publish, discover and discuss fiction

11 points by rayalez 11y ago

http://fictionhub.io/ My goal is to make the perfect place for writers to find their audience, and for readers to discover great writers. Currently there's a few websites where people can post fiction, but none of them are done very well. fictionhub will make it easy for new authors to get discovered, build their audience, and sell their works. I want it to be the Hacker News of fiction writing - awesome community sharing high quality stories, discussing cool things, and helping each other to get better at writing.

jay_kyburz 11y ago
Hello rayalez. I posted my idea for something similar moments ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443376 I would love to chat about how you plan to monetise fictionhub. Any ideas yet?
- rayalez 11y ago
  Hi! Monetization is pretty straightforward - allow authors to sell their stories. Also I'm thinking about experimenting with the kind of monetization blendle.com is using - people automatically pay a small fee for reading a story(automatically refundable if they didn't like it). Edit: fixed the link to blendle.
  - jay_kyburz 11y ago
    I'll check out bende.com Thanks for the tip. edit:hrmm.. bende.com sells a lot of meat. I think I got trolled.
    - rayalez 11y ago
      Whoops, sorry, I meant https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/ =)
      - jay_kyburz 11y ago
        haha thanks.
atroyn 11y ago
Product Hunt currently does books and podcasts, but that part of that community is considerably smaller than the rest of the site. How will you attract the first readers and authors to your platform? How will you ensure a high standard of quality, both in submissions and in discussion?
- rayalez 11y ago
  At the moment I am personally looking for great authors, and asking them if they would like to join(or allow me to add their stories). We already have some pretty amazing authors and stories(check out http://fictionhub.io/story/the-metropolitan-man http://fictionhub.io/story/the-metropolitan-man for example). Great fiction attracts readers, and as we grow our audience of readers - other authors have more incentives to join. To maintain the high quality of content, we will have an invite system - new authors post their stories to the "sandbox"(a list of unapproved posts), and existing members of the community can send invites to the authors of stories they like. So we start with a few great writers, and organically grow from there.
  - atroyn 11y ago
    What else could you do to attract readers? How are they hearing about the site now? Is there a particular kind of reader/author you're trying to appeal to first? I would love to see an alternative to 1.) Fiction publishers as middle man and 2.) Awful self-published fiction in the kindle store.
    - rayalez 11y ago
      I want to grow organically, through the content quality and word of mouth. Right now most of the people come from social networks(reddit, medium, tumblr). I am an aspiring writer myself, so as I promote my own work, and works of other writers, people discover the platform. Also I've been thinking about creating fiction writing competitions - that would attract more writers, create original content, and give us some publicity. And, many of the writers have their own audience, so if they choose to use fictionhub as their main platform - they will bring their readers with them. Ideally, I would like to first attract readers and writers of rational fiction(basically hard SciFi, you can read more about it here: http://fictionhub.io/story/rational-fiction http://fictionhub.io/story/rational-fiction), that is people from HN and /r/rational.
akoder 11y ago
Hello Rayalez! I appreciate your initiative and drive to building a great platform for fiction. I would love to know how you would differentiate fictionhub.io from other services such as http://wattpad.com http://wattpad.com. Any writer would love to reach more audiences and i feel this is what made medium.com a hit among bloggers. Taking this into consideration wattpad.com has 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 android app installs.( taken from their android app page). This means that there are more people who might read my stories. So why would i share my stories in fictionhub than in wattpad?
Smaug123 11y ago
What specifically do you have over ArchiveOfOurOwn?
christudor 11y ago
I'd love a place to find great writers/writing. Are you talking about fiction/short stories or other kinds of writing (e.g. politics, business, economics, etc.?) Why would I go to /this/ site as opposed to the many other sites that have great (professional, paid) writers? If I want a great bit of fiction, I'll go to a bookshop. If I want a great bit of political analysis, I'll go to (e.g.) the New York Times. How would you convince people like me that /this/ is the place to find great writing? Most people don't make for great authors: will you allow just anyone to publish work on your site? If so, how will you make sure the really good stuff gets to the top? Good luck with everything with this!

11 points by rayalez 11y ago

jay_kyburz 11y ago

Hello rayalez. I posted my idea for something similar moments ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443376 I would love to chat about how you plan to monetise fictionhub. Any ideas yet?

rayalez 11y ago
Hi! Monetization is pretty straightforward - allow authors to sell their stories. Also I'm thinking about experimenting with the kind of monetization blendle.com is using - people automatically pay a small fee for reading a story(automatically refundable if they didn't like it). Edit: fixed the link to blendle.
- jay_kyburz 11y ago
  I'll check out bende.com Thanks for the tip. edit:hrmm.. bende.com sells a lot of meat. I think I got trolled.
  - rayalez 11y ago
    Whoops, sorry, I meant https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/ =)
    - jay_kyburz 11y ago
      haha thanks.

atroyn 11y ago

Product Hunt currently does books and podcasts, but that part of that community is considerably smaller than the rest of the site. How will you attract the first readers and authors to your platform? How will you ensure a high standard of quality, both in submissions and in discussion?

rayalez 11y ago
At the moment I am personally looking for great authors, and asking them if they would like to join(or allow me to add their stories). We already have some pretty amazing authors and stories(check out http://fictionhub.io/story/the-metropolitan-man http://fictionhub.io/story/the-metropolitan-man for example). Great fiction attracts readers, and as we grow our audience of readers - other authors have more incentives to join. To maintain the high quality of content, we will have an invite system - new authors post their stories to the "sandbox"(a list of unapproved posts), and existing members of the community can send invites to the authors of stories they like. So we start with a few great writers, and organically grow from there.
- atroyn 11y ago
  What else could you do to attract readers? How are they hearing about the site now? Is there a particular kind of reader/author you're trying to appeal to first? I would love to see an alternative to 1.) Fiction publishers as middle man and 2.) Awful self-published fiction in the kindle store.
  - rayalez 11y ago
    I want to grow organically, through the content quality and word of mouth. Right now most of the people come from social networks(reddit, medium, tumblr). I am an aspiring writer myself, so as I promote my own work, and works of other writers, people discover the platform. Also I've been thinking about creating fiction writing competitions - that would attract more writers, create original content, and give us some publicity. And, many of the writers have their own audience, so if they choose to use fictionhub as their main platform - they will bring their readers with them. Ideally, I would like to first attract readers and writers of rational fiction(basically hard SciFi, you can read more about it here: http://fictionhub.io/story/rational-fiction http://fictionhub.io/story/rational-fiction), that is people from HN and /r/rational.

akoder 11y ago

Hello Rayalez! I appreciate your initiative and drive to building a great platform for fiction. I would love to know how you would differentiate fictionhub.io from other services such as http://wattpad.com http://wattpad.com. Any writer would love to reach more audiences and i feel this is what made medium.com a hit among bloggers. Taking this into consideration wattpad.com has 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 android app installs.( taken from their android app page). This means that there are more people who might read my stories. So why would i share my stories in fictionhub than in wattpad?

Smaug123 11y ago

What specifically do you have over ArchiveOfOurOwn?

christudor 11y ago

I'd love a place to find great writers/writing. Are you talking about fiction/short stories or other kinds of writing (e.g. politics, business, economics, etc.?) Why would I go to /this/ site as opposed to the many other sites that have great (professional, paid) writers? If I want a great bit of fiction, I'll go to a bookshop. If I want a great bit of political analysis, I'll go to (e.g.) the New York Times. How would you convince people like me that /this/ is the place to find great writing? Most people don't make for great authors: will you allow just anyone to publish work on your site? If so, how will you make sure the really good stuff gets to the top? Good luck with everything with this!