Novels on Scribble Hub you can’t read.

[melchi]

Don't most of the stories that do that just post an announcement and delete the published chapters?

 

[Drag7]

Doesn’t Amazon have a 90-day exclusivity? After three months that stuff should be able to reappear, in theory.

That would be nice. There probably is some fine print work around because I’ve read a story before that was on both Amazon and online. It was some time ago and I don’t remember which story it was though I do remember that the author still legitimately had the story up somehow.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

That would be nice. There probably is some fine print work around because I’ve read a story before that was on both Amazon and online. It was some time ago and I don’t remember which story it was though I do remember that the author still legitimately had the story up somehow.

It depends on whether they signed the exclusivity contract.

 

[Drag7]

Those stories often started as free webserials posted on RR and SH. The income from going on Amazon can be 10x higher than a patreon. These authors are finally getting paid for their works. They also often are continuing the webserial while editing the earlier chapters/arcs into books to continue the series. So for fans of the story they are still posting 'raw' webserial chapters at the end.

Amazon has an exclusivity clause in KDP (where all the money is) that prevents them from leaving more than 10% of a work posted online. This requires them to take down and 'stub' the fiction. ScribbleHub should definitely have and require a 'stub' tag like RR, but the practice isn't likely to stop or go anywhere. Amazon has a massive stranglehold on the ebook market with Kindle Unlimited.

Its a natural evolution for authors to take this route since its basically them turning their writing into a career instead of a hobby.

I don’t disagree, and I think it’s great if authors can make a full time career of writing. (Authors may make more on Amazon but that isn’t always the case and there are some limitations and consequences to switching over.)

I just think that empty chapters shouldn’t be left up in mass on a free web-novel site. At least be upfront that most of the story is no longer here.

Don't most of the stories that do that just post an announcement and delete the published chapters?

I think most do. Most authors are also readers after all and it’s a curtesy thing.

 

[bokhi]

Personally I think there should be a tag for “premium novels” like this.

While I agree writers want to be paid for their work, SH gets money from traffic and if every novel a reader gets interested in is like this then SH will eventually start losing traffic.

Having a label for these novels would be good as it’ll let readers determine if they want to start a “trial” before purchasing the real thing.

Agreed about having a tag. I actually didn't know that SH didn't do this already, tbh, so I'm a bit surprised. I don't think SH would lose traffic if SH authors start using (or are already using) the RR model. The majority of works available are free, and usually authors will announce on their story page and in the story notes that the work will become a stub on <date>, and encourage readers to get through it while it's free and available.

This means that existing readers can access all of the content for free before it gets yanked on <date>. This is fair, since pre-existing readers get fair warning and an opportunity to read the full story. New readers get a sample, and if stubbed with the appropriate labels, they'll know it going in. It's pretty transparent and works well for RR. If there's no "stub" tag or rule about this procedure, it might be wise for SH to adopt the RR approach.

Premium is too nice a word. Stub sounds like it is: a pain in the toe.

I disagree that stubbed stories are akin to stubbing one's toe. If the author is spending significant amounts of time and effort to create a popular product, I see no reason why monetizing should be condemned. No one owes anyone a free product. The free product usually serves some greater purpose, either as advertisement for the full product, to test the market, or any other tried and true (and sometimes not tried or true) tactic. I don't fault anyone for this provided they're mostly honest about it.

I don't fault anyone who unexpectedly found success to go this route, either. Generally it's incredibly rare for anyone to find success without putting in the work at all (in fact, it's more often the case that people can put in insane amounts of work and end up with a flop), so I don't begrudge them.

Look. Your work. Do with it what you want.
Just understand this: THERE IS NO WAY TO FIX A BAD REPUTATION.
Once you do something that causes bad feelings, it haunts you. People will support your work if they like you, even if your work sucks. If people don't like you, no matter what you do, they won't read your shit.

Are you referring to how SH authors do this now? Do they just remove the text without indicating anywhere that the story is a stub? (That seems kind of odd. No announcement in the story page or in the author's notes?)

This would certainly cause bad feelings, and that is understandable. But I think having a system like RR where authors are required to add a "stub" tag or some other indication would reduce this type of "midnight run" tactic.

Doesn’t Amazon have a 90-day exclusivity? After three months that stuff should be able to reappear, in theory.

This is true. Some authors renew and others do not. I think I've seen a few stories come back on RR, tbh, but don't quote me on that.

 

[Cipiteca396]

I see no reason why monetizing should be condemned.

That's not the part I dislike. I understand the desire for fame and fortune, even if I don't share it. People need to eat.

I don't fault anyone for this provided they're mostly honest about it.

This is what I don't like. It's inherently dishonest.

When you click on a story, you expect to be able to read the story. That's the whole point of the site. Seeing it immediately creates the impression that all you have to do is click and you'll be in a new world.

It's a promise.

And 'stubs'- those are broken promises.

Now, it's not like it's the end of the world. At worst, it's like watching a harem anime and realizing best girl isn't gonna reach the finish line. Not too big a deal, just slightly disappointing.

---

But to me, there is an extremely obvious alternative... Just make a new story. Leave the free story up as- like you said- free advertising. Then write a new story, one that was intended to be monetized from the start.

Anything else, either intentionally or otherwise, is an attempt to prey on readers through 'fear of missing out' or sunk cost fallacy. "The story will be gone soon, read it before that happens!" "Oh, you didn't finish it in time? You want to know how it ends right? It's just a little investment, you know?"

It might not catch everyone, but it catches enough that big game companies have entirely moved to that formula because it makes them the most money. As someone who's particularly vulnerable to that tactic, it always leaves a bad impression on me.

 

[bokhi]

That's not the part I dislike. I understand the desire for fame and fortune, even if I don't share it. People need to eat.

This is what I don't like. It's inherently dishonest.

If you are referring to the scenario I outlined, which is that an author finds they are successful and thus decides to monetize, there is nothing dishonest about informing fans they have changed their minds about something being all free. The only way this is dishonest is if the author had previously promised somewhere that "this series will always be free." Without this type of explicit promise, announcing their intentions is incredibly honest. In the scenario I outlined as acceptable, there was no intent to deceive involved. What's dishonest about it?

It's dishonest for people to change their minds? Even if the stub has a "stub" tag or description, which is what I was describing as an acceptable scenario?

Or are you referring to some other scenario, which I disagreed with?

If the latter, then there's no need for continued dialogue since there's nothing to disagree with and I must conclude you've misread my post. If not, do continue.

When you click on a story, you expect to be able to read the story. That's the whole point of the site. Seeing it immediately creates the impression that all you have to do is click and you'll be in a new world.

It's a promise.

And 'stubs'- those are broken promises.

No, no one promised anyone anything. This is your own assumption projected onto the purpose of this website. Unless you are the owner of this website, there is no way to know what the main purpose or motivation is or was.

The only thing that can be assumed with certainty is that the most obvious purpose of this site is for people to upload their own stories for whatever reason and that any random person online can access said stories for free. That's it. There's no other obvious assumption.

There is no inherent promise that the story will remain up or free, and many stories are abandoned or deleted at the whim of the author, often without warning. There is no guarantee of anything on a free website such as this. That is likely why it is free--once you start charging for a service, you end up having obligations as part of a business arrangement. "Free" sidesteps these obligations.

Even without monetization, authors have the sole right to delete a fiction at their whim. They can be dealing with adverse life events, dealing with a mental health crises, or quite frankly, just bored of it--anything goes. Advance notice is simply a courtesy, not a requirement.

I certainly never promised random people on the internet anything when I uploaded on any of the platforms that I used. The only promise I made was to the websites themselves when I agreed to their TOS and privacy policy. That's it.

But to me, there is an extremely obvious alternative... Just make a new story. Leave the free story up as- like you said- free advertising. Then write a new story, one that was intended to be monetized from the start.

Why should they? Some stories are a flash in the pan type of success which cannot be replicated. Some authors only have one successful story under their belt, ever. There is no guarantee that their new story will gain the same traction or popularity, so why on earth should authors hamstring themselves in this way because some small % of their audience feels entitled to their work for free?

Because that is what this is: entitlement. No one owes you anything on a free website except basic civility, which is generally a part of the TOS or community rules. Nothing else.

Also, advertising works best if the advertisement itself is for the product that customers will get. Your suggestion is like saying you should give away free samples to Line A Energy Drinks and then use that campaign to try to sell Line B Energy Drink. How well do you think this tends to work?

Spoiler alert: Not nearly as well as an ad campaign for Line A and then selling Line A rather than Line B.

I find your rationale particularly pernicious since within the context of this discussion, the idea of giving readers advance warning before pay-locking these stories has already come up. That's already quite courteous toward readers, since the author has decided to allow current readers to continue reading their work for free until <date>. Normally, this date is measured in months, not days. I have yet to see any writer on RR or any other platform pull this without at least a month's notice, because that's more than enough time to finish whatever is left of the series. Further, said authors usually only lock the completed volume, meaning readers can continue reading the current volume as it updates.

There is no way to be fairer than this without taking a substantial financial hit on work that writers have spent a countless number of hours and effort on. Essentially, a simple interpretation of your post is that you want authors to sacrifice their projected earnings so you can get free enjoyment indefinitely off their work.

I'll be blunt: this smacks of entitlement to me. An author giving that much advance warning and that many chances to read a work has already done you a great courtesy. Quite frankly, I'm happy to buy an ebook of a work I've already read to support creators for the effort they've put in and the hours of entertainment they've already provided for free. If the work is especially good, I'm happy to buy a paper copy to put on my bookshelf. Even better if the author is selling signed copies off of their own store!

It's fantastic to see people doing well off of their hard work and passion, and it's not at all dishonest to be upfront about wanting to be compensated. It's the opposite: it's completely honest.

Anything else, either intentionally or otherwise, is an attempt to prey on readers through 'fear of missing out' or sunk cost fallacy. "The story will be gone soon, read it before that happens!" "Oh, you didn't finish it in time? You want to know how it ends right? It's just a little investment, you know?"

So you think they shouldn't give warning at all? After all, what you are proposing here is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, where the only way an author can get your approval is to simply not monetize at all. You started out saying you don't mind monetizing, but strip away your rhetoric down to the bones and it comes down to the fact that you simply don't want authors to stub their works to make money, even if they're being 1) completely upfront about what they're doing, and 2) giving readers plenty of time to finish up. In fact you seem to think this is somehow "dishonest", which doesn't fit any definition of dishonesty in the book.

The only way this is dishonest is if the author intended to do this from the beginning but pretended not to, but there's no way to know whether the market will like what they bring ahead of time. Most people just monetize because the opportunity presents itself. Sure, some people are careerists who can crank genre hits time after time, but they're usually pretty transparent about their process which is, again, honesty, not dishonesty. People who do this without being transparent are dishonest, yes, but I did not include this demographic in my original post.

As for your little comment about "Oh, you didn't finish in time?", that's not their responsibility. They gave you forewarning, and if you took no steps to either read the work or to download html copies of the work to read offline, it's on you, not them. You had the warning and ample time to do something to better your situation, and you didn't. That's a "you" problem.

What, do you want the author to personally email out an epub to you out of gratitude for reading a free work for free or something?

It might not catch everyone, but it catches enough that big game companies have entirely moved to that formula because it makes them the most money. As someone who's particularly vulnerable to that tactic, it always leaves a bad impression on me.

Which big game companies are releasing AAA titles and then stubbing them? This process is basically called "freemium", and that's usually something players are told upfront. This has also been around since time games were a thing, since even back in the '90s, Interplay (when they were around), Activision, etc. used to sell freemium game CDs. I played Pitfall and Stone Keep that way. It's not like the CDs being freemium was a secret.

But I really am curious as to which big game companies are "stubbing" their games. No, really. I'd be interested in reading an article on this.

If you're referring to pay-to-play (subscription) and free-to-play (with microtransactions), these are not the same models as the stubbing process described.

I'm also not sure why you're comparing a large company with, basically, independent indie creators who are probably spending more money on their hobbies than they're getting, on the whole. Not very a good (or fair) comparison.

If you personally don't like it, then hey, whatever. You can like or dislike whatever you want. But there's no reason to call people who are being upfront and honest "dishonest" (that's a lie) and there's no reason to pretend people making money off of their work fairly are somehow victimizing you because you can't be bothered to read something for free within a time limit or because you don't want to support the author by buying an epub or something for 99 cents to 5 bucks.

P.S. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're either a core millennial or Gen Z. Am I right? Double or nothing bet that you were born after 1990. Tell me how I did!

 

[Cipiteca396]

If you are referring to the scenario I outlined, which is that an author finds they are successful and thus decides to monetize, there is nothing dishonest about informing fans they have changed their minds about something being all free. The only way this is dishonest is if the author had previously promised somewhere that "this series will always be free." Without this type of explicit promise, announcing their intentions is incredibly honest. In the scenario I outlined as acceptable, there was no intent to deceive involved. What's dishonest about it?

It's dishonest for people to change their minds? Even if the stub has a "stub" tag or description, which is what I was describing as an acceptable scenario?

Or are you referring to some other scenario, which I disagreed with?

If the latter, then there's no need for continued dialogue since there's nothing to disagree with and I must conclude you've misread my post. If not, do continue.



No, no one promised anyone anything. This is your own assumption projected onto the purpose of this website. Unless you are the owner of this website, there is no way to know what the main purpose or motivation is or was.

The only thing that can be assumed with certainty is that the most obvious purpose of this site is for people to upload their own stories for whatever reason and that any random person online can access said stories for free. That's it. There's no other obvious assumption.

There is no inherent promise that the story will remain up or free, and many stories are abandoned or deleted at the whim of the author, often without warning. There is no guarantee of anything on a free website such as this. That is likely why it is free--once you start charging for a service, you end up having obligations as part of a business arrangement. "Free" sidesteps these obligations.

Even without monetization, authors have the sole right to delete a fiction at their whim. They can be dealing with adverse life events, dealing with a mental health crises, or quite frankly, just bored of it--anything goes. Advance notice is simply a courtesy, not a requirement.

I certainly never promised random people on the internet anything when I uploaded on any of the platforms that I used. The only promise I made was to the websites themselves when I agreed to their TOS and privacy policy. That's it.



Why should they? Some stories are a flash in the pan type of success which cannot be replicated. Some authors only have one successful story under their belt, ever. There is no guarantee that their new story will gain the same traction or popularity, so why on earth should authors hamstring themselves in this way because some small % of their audience feels entitled to their work for free?

Because that is what this is: entitlement. No one owes you anything on a free website except basic civility, which is generally a part of the TOS or community rules. Nothing else.

Also, advertising works best if the advertisement itself is for the product that customers will get. Your suggestion is like saying you should give away free samples to Line A Energy Drinks and then use that campaign to try to sell Line B Energy Drink. How well do you think this tends to work?

Spoiler alert: Not nearly as well as an ad campaign for Line A and then selling Line A rather than Line B.

I find your rationale particularly pernicious since within the context of this discussion, the idea of giving readers advance warning before pay-locking these stories has already come up. That's already quite courteous toward readers, since the author has decided to allow current readers to continue reading their work for free until <date>. Normally, this date is measured in months, not days. I have yet to see any writer on RR or any other platform pull this without at least a month's notice, because that's more than enough time to finish whatever is left of the series. Further, said authors usually only lock the completed volume, meaning readers can continue reading the current volume as it updates.

There is no way to be fairer than this without taking a substantial financial hit on work that writers have spent a countless number of hours and effort on. Essentially, a simple interpretation of your post is that you want authors to sacrifice their projected earnings so you can get free enjoyment indefinitely off their work.

I'll be blunt: this smacks of entitlement to me. An author giving that much advance warning and that many chances to read a work has already done you a great courtesy. Quite frankly, I'm happy to buy an ebook of a work I've already read to support creators for the effort they've put in and the hours of entertainment they've already provided for free. If the work is especially good, I'm happy to buy a paper copy to put on my bookshelf. Even better if the author is selling signed copies off of their own store!

It's fantastic to see people doing well off of their hard work and passion, and it's not at all dishonest to be upfront about wanting to be compensated. It's the opposite: it's completely honest.



So you think they shouldn't give warning at all? After all, what you are proposing here is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, where the only way an author can get your approval is to simply not monetize at all. You started out saying you don't mind monetizing, but strip away your rhetoric down to the bones and it comes down to the fact that you simply don't want authors to stub their works to make money, even if they're being 1) completely upfront about what they're doing, and 2) giving readers plenty of time to finish up. In fact you seem to think this is somehow "dishonest", which doesn't fit any definition of dishonesty in the book.

The only way this is dishonest is if the author intended to do this from the beginning but pretended not to, but there's no way to know whether the market will like what they bring ahead of time. Most people just monetize because the opportunity presents itself. Sure, some people are careerists who can crank genre hits time after time, but they're usually pretty transparent about their process which is, again, honesty, not dishonesty. People who do this without being transparent are dishonest, yes, but I did not include this demographic in my original post.

As for your little comment about "Oh, you didn't finish in time?", that's not their responsibility. They gave you forewarning, and if you took no steps to either read the work or to download html copies of the work to read offline, it's on you, not them. You had the warning and ample time to do something to better your situation, and you didn't. That's a "you" problem.

What, do you want the author to personally email out an epub to you out of gratitude for reading a free work for free or something?



Which big game companies are releasing AAA titles and then stubbing them? This process is basically called "freemium", and that's usually something players are told upfront. This has also been around since time games were a thing, since even back in the '90s, Interplay (when they were around), Activision, etc. used to sell freemium game CDs. I played Pitfall and Stone Keep that way. It's not like the CDs being freemium was a secret.

But I really am curious as to which big game companies are "stubbing" their games. No, really. I'd be interested in reading an article on this.

If you're referring to pay-to-play (subscription) and free-to-play (with microtransactions), these are not the same models as the stubbing process described.

I'm also not sure why you're comparing a large company with, basically, independent indie creators who are probably spending more money on their hobbies than they're getting, on the whole. Not very a good (or fair) comparison.

If you personally don't like it, then hey, whatever. You can like or dislike whatever you want. But there's no reason to call people who are being upfront and honest "dishonest" (that's a lie) and there's no reason to pretend people making money off of their work fairly are somehow victimizing you because you can't be bothered to read something for free within a time limit or because you don't want to support the author by buying an epub or something for 99 cents to 5 bucks.

P.S. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're either a core millennial or Gen Z. Am I right? Double or nothing bet that you were born after 1990. Tell me how I did!

TL:DR... I'm willing to to waste a lot of time talking about meaningless things, but even I have limits...

 

[bokhi]

TL:DR... I'm willing to to waste a lot of time talking about meaningless things, but even I have limits...

Cool.