Dear authors and readers,

Thanks again to all who completed our recent surveys. Your feedback, experiences, and insights continue to inform how we advance Inkshares as a community, publisher and creative IP marketplace.

In the first survey, a vast majority of you stated that you found credits helpful, but with caveats. Many communicated that the credits policy is confusing and needs to be more strict, and that overall it’s too generous a system to continue in its current form. We agree.

The intent of the credit system is to encourage engagement with the platform.  Specifically, we want to incentivize readers to re-engage with the platform after their first purchase and to reward readers that bring new users into the Inkshares ecosystem.  At the same time, it’s important for us to be proactive in preventing harmful uses and abuses of this system.

To that end, we are updating credits to make them more sustainable. Starting today we will issue two types of credits:

Referral Credit for referring someone who buys a book (one credit per book): $2.50

First Order Credit for first-time users only, earned after their first purchase: $5

As always, we welcome feedback and questions.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I mentioned yesterday that I would create a list of resources that were specifically for writers. This will not cover everything you can find on Reddit, but I really hope it does help people and get them interested in using the site. As always, familiarize yourself with the rules of a subreddit before posting there. Make sure to join the community and get involved before you try to sell your stuff. There are places you can shamelessly self-promote, but most will just ban you and delete your stuff.

As always, please subscribe to r/Inkshares if you do sign-up for Reddit. I’m not sure how we’re going to build the community there, but I think it’s something we need to do. If you have any ideas or questions feel free to post them.

Many of resources are community-based that you can interact with other authors in your genre and learn from each other’s experiences.

General Resources

r/WritingPrompts - If you are having trouble getting to work, or just need something to warm you up, the writing prompt subreddit is the place to go. There are over 6 million subscribed to it, and there are hundreds of prompts posted there daily. They come in many forms, with people posting ideas, art, or even music to inspire people to write. They also have workshops every other week focusing on different elements of writing. You can even post what you’ve written in the prompt thread and someone might comment on it or even give you constructive criticism. It’s a very respectful place.

Personal Note: I used to frequent this subreddit daily, choosing a different prompt each time, in an effort to get into the practice of writing every day. If you need to get into the habit of consistently writing this might help you.

r/Writing - You’re probably surprised that I didn’t list this one first, and there is a reason for that, mainly that it only has 175 thousand subscribers. There are all sorts of things here for you to work with. They have a self-promotion thread where you can advertise your work (I’m sure you can sense this is a common trend, it’s used to combat spam). Keep in mind that it does not allow self-promotion outside that thread, they will delete and potential ban you if you do that. They also have a critique thread where you can post your work and people will give you feedback. If you want to get to know other fledgling or experienced writers this is a good place for you to go.

r/DestructiveReaders - Please note that before submitting anything here to be critiqued you need to have somewhat thick skin (people can be jerks, and this subreddit can take it to the next level) and have already gone over someone else’s work equivalent to the word count that you are posting.

Destructive Readers is where authors go if they need someone to tear their work apart. If you want to improve your abilities this is a place for you to do it. This might be especially beneficial if you lack beta-readers. Not only will you receive comments on your work but you constantly improve your skills by dredging through what other people submit. The only goal here is to become a better writer, that’s what everyone is striving for, so keep that in mind.

r/Writers - A relatively small subreddit compared to the others, r/writers is geared towards achieving excellence in a less moderated environment. This means that you can potentially self-promote your work, to a certain extent, but you shouldn’t take this for granted.

Genre Specific Writing Subreddits

r/FantasyWriters - Not going to go into much detail here. This is dedicated to fantasy writers, they don’t want to see anything else. You can promote in the weekly check-in thread, but I’d go into more detail about your progress on projects first..

Please note I don’t have much experience with these next three. I probably will be joining them in near the future.

r/WritersOfHorror - Dedicated to horror writers. You can post your stuff here, I wouldn’t spam it.

r/SciFiWriting - Meant to discuss science and speculative fiction. You can ask for critiques of your work, and even promote yourself as long as you follow the guidelines.

r/YAWriters - Discuss your works in progress. Network. The first Tues of every month you can self-promote as shamelessly as you want in the dedicated thread.

Promotional

r/WroteABook - Once your book is ready to go you can post it here.

r/Ebooks - You’ve finished your novel, your release date is right around the corner, and you want to boost your sales. You can message the mods here and then self-promote if they give the go ahead.

r/FreeEbooks - If you have something self-published, and you are doing a free weekend, post it here. It results in hundreds of additional downloads depending on genre and quality (I routinely see 175 when I post other people here). Just remember, it has to be free.

r/IndieAuthorPromotion - Dedicated specifically to indie authors. It’s a small subreddit, 77 people, but that is actually a fairly large number considering our requirements to be published.

r/EbookDeals - Let’s say your ebook has gone on sale, you can post it here. That sale can be the result of a free promotion even.

That’s all for now. It took longer than I thought, so I’m sorry it ended up later than I originally intended. I’ll be posting more soon.

Edit: We now have 15 users on the r/inkshares subreddit, which is great. I also create a thread where we can promote ourselves for the time being there. Check it out.