Critters^TM Workshop

Notices

New perk for Critter members — Free ads for your books

Many Critterfolk have asked if they could advertise their books and stories on Critters. I know how important it is to get the word out — and how hard that is — so I decided heck, let's try it as an experiment and see how it goes. Details are here

The State of The Future?

What are your thoughts about the future (as in, "The Future")? Is the future healthy or are people burned out on it? Share your thoughts at http://newnewforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=553

Ebook Pricing Results, and an Experiment

The results are in! I've written up an analysis of the results of that Ebook Pricing Survey I conducted. The analysis is at:

http://www.critters.org/ebookpricing.ht As a result of it I'm also doing an experiment to test out the variable pricing, "Pay As You Like It" idea by posting some ebooks under that model. (Reader pays after reading based on how much they liked it, with suggested prices for liked it / average / disliked it.) You can read about this little experiment here: http://www.critters.org/pricexp.ht Readers often say they'd like to avoid high prices on DRM-locked ebooks, and they'd pay if only they had the opportunity... so I'll be very curious to see if that bears out! I'd also like to hear what people think of the idea and how I've executed it.

Vote for Your Favorites!

http://critters.org/bestpoll

It has polls for your all-time favorite books / short stories / poems / poets / authors, each in genres of mainstream / SF&F / horror / mystery / romance / erotica / thriller / childrens / young adult / nonfiction. (Ok, there's no "nonfiction poetry" category but... :) )

Please give it a try, vote for your favorites, and please spread the word. The more people vote the better the scoring gets. Hope you find it useful!

Wishes for the Future

What do you want the future to hold? World peace? Self-driving cars? Share your dreams of the future, big or small, on the Wishes for the Future forum. What would you love to see? (It's part of my NewNewForum.com site. Meant to be fun, and it's anonymous, so don't be shy!) We're 73% of the way there, thanks!

Critters Workshop Admin Functions

Join: Drop in here to join.

Submit: Submit a ms. for the queue by going here.

Ratio check: Check your participation ratio (the 75% thing) here.

Email Preferences / Change of Address: Change your Critters Ms. email preferences (how much email you get and what kind of stories) and/or your email address here.

Aliases: Add an email alias (i.e., get credit for critiques sent from different email addresses than you signed up with), here.

Reset: If you want to reset your Critter-counter (used to determine if you're over/under 75%), stop in here. Use this if, for example, you're so far behind you feel you'll never catch up. This resets you to zero critiques in zero weeks, as if you quit and rejoined. (Note that if you're already at zero currently, you'll be asked to do one critique for the privilege, so you'll get a "-1" critique credit.)

Crit count: A count of how many crits this week's mss. have so far (updated hourly) is here.

Receipts: A list of what critiques have been filed recently (in case you wonder if yours was received) is here.

RFDR completion: To report when a dedicated reader is done, and award credit, go here.

Late/too short credit: To give credit to a critter whose critique of your piece was marked as late or too short, go here.

Forgotten password: If you've forgotten your password, go here.

Change Manuscript Title: If you absolutely have to change your manuscript title, go here.

Remove Manuscript: If you absolutely have to remove your manuscript from the queue, go here.

Change Genre of Manuscript: If you need to change the genre of your manuscript in the queue, go here.

Quit or go Inactive: If you want to go inactive (stop receiving manuscripts but stay on the weekly notes mailing list), or if you want to quit Critters for good, stop in here. Note that if you're only going on hiatus for a short time, you need not quit -- you should simply set your preferences to receive no emailed mss. or critiques. But read the quitting/inactivation page for more guidelines on whether it's best to quit or suspend email.

Flyer: If you're going to a con, and would like to place some Critters flyers on the literature table (almost all cons have these, where folks pick up flyers for other cons, magazines, special interest groups, etc.), there's a Critters flyer here. It's a PDF file. It has two flyers per page, so you should cut the sheets in half. I usually print up 50-100 for the first day (25-50 sheets, that is) -- more if it's a big con, e.g., a worldcon (if you know the con organizers, ask how many attendees they expect; I'd print about one flyer for every 4-5 attendees -- many con folk think themselves writers and/or take one of every piece of paper). If they fly off the table, I bring more the 2nd day. For maximum exposure, I usually print them on a variety of colored papers, and place two stacks on the table at opposite ends.