Cunning plan on Readwave

[Jim]

I'm trying something of an experiment on Readwave.
Readwave basically wants stories to be 800 words or less

So I've split a story into five exciting (or not) episodes and I'm going to post one a day over this week to see what happens and whether it builds up momentum.

Basically I'm happy to report back about what's happening and to see if it's something we can use

http://www.readwave.com/the-ballad-of...

For the Ballad of Stagbold Keep

[Anna]

Good luck with this, Jim. You're off to a good start; I liked it.

[Patti (baconater)]

Good luck with it, Jimbo.

[Jim]

Thanks both. As I said, it's an experiment and I want to see if it does build momentum

[David]

Jim wrote: "For the Ballad of Stagbold Keep "

Excellent stuff.

[Jim]

Glad you like it

[Jim]

The second part of the Ballad of Stagbold Keep is now up

http://www.readwave.com/the-ballad-of...

The experiment continues...

[Philip]

Don't forget to tweet quotes for more 'reads'

[Jim]

I'm just getting to that level of sophistication

just about ;-)

[Patti (baconater)]

Jim tweeting is freaking me out.

[Jim]

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Jim tweeting is freaking me out."

that explains the new avatar you've adopted obviously :-)

[Jim]

Actually what would really freak somebody out who knows me would be to get a text
I send one most years

[Patti (baconater)]

You'll be upgrading to a flip phone next.

[Jim]

Patti (baconater) wrote: "You'll be upgrading to a flip phone next."

Not a lot of point if we live where there's no signal. I might as well do a Dick Tracy and talk to my wrist watch, it works as well as an iphone round here :-)

[Patti (baconater)]

Still haven't built the mast, eh?

Pure laziness.

[Jim]

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Still haven't built the mast, eh?

Pure laziness."

But we have a telephone. Phone the number and somebody will probably answer.
Unless we're busy.

Actually with my mobile even when there's signal, when I'm driving it's switched off.
When I'm in a meeting it's switched off.
Obviously if I'm working it's switched off

So it gets switched on most months :-)

[Gingerlily - The Full Wild]

Every time I see this thread I think of Blackadder!

[Jim]

Gingerlily - Mistress Lantern wrote: "Every time I see this thread I think of Blackadder!"

but in better taste

[Gingerlily - The Full Wild]

And you have more style than Baldrick.

[Patti (baconater)]

But fewer turnips.

Probably.

[Gingerlily - The Full Wild]

I dunno - he might have fields of the things.

[Patti (baconater)]

Ah. But can he cook them?

[Jim]

In the media in this country there has been a big story about shortage of pumpkins due to weather and people might have to go back to carving turnips

Yet when I was in town yesterday pumpkins were two for three pounds and that sort of thing, so the much feared pumpkin shortage obviously hasn't hit this area

[Jay-me (Janet)]

Jim wrote: "In the media in this country there has been a big story about shortage of pumpkins due to weather and people might have to go back to carving turnips

Yet when I was in town yesterday pumpkins were..."

There were plenty of pumpkins in the supermarket last night.
The shortage must just been down south, so obviously it is like the news that it is raining when they have a two minute shower, whilst we have a heat wave.

[Jim]

Jay-me (Janet) wrote: "There were plenty of pumpkins in the supermarket last night.
The shortage must just been down south, so obviously it is like the news that it is raining when they have a two minute shower, whilst we have a heat wave. ..."

You get used to that. Rumour has it that although bits of the BBC has moved to Salford, the building doesn't have windows, just screens showing the outside world as seen from Broadcasting house :-)

[Jim]

Anyway the experiment grimly continues, defying weather,local or public decency

http://www.readwave.com/the-ballad-of...

[David]

Great stuff, Jim. But when did Patti's avatar become a batman super-villain?

[Jim]

Yes, I wondered that. A bit disturbing really

[Rosemary (grooving with the Picts)]

I just keep reading Spag Bol Keep...
But then food is never far from my thoughts, to be honest!

[Jim]

Rosemary (The Nosemanny) wrote: "I just keep reading Spag Bol Keep...
But then food is never far from my thoughts, to be honest!"

With Mango chutney instead of cheese

[Patti (baconater)]

David wrote: "Great stuff, Jim. But when did Patti's avatar become a batman super-villain?"

Mwah ha ha!

[Jim]

http://www.readwave.com/the-ballad-of... for the fourth gripping episode

The experiment has taken an unforeseen turn

[Jim]

Well here is the final installment

http://www.readwave.com/the-ballad-of...

My gut feeling is that the experiment has accidentally shown that readwave has serious problems but I'll try and report back after the weekend when things have had time to work themselves out.

[David]

I've enjoyed the ballad, but like you say Readwave itself is a bit... lacking.

I've lost count of the times I've tried to set my profile up so that it works.

[Jim]

Glad you liked it, but I get the feeling readwave don't really care about what happens on their site

[David]

I don't think it is as good - or has the potential reach - of Wattpad or ABCtales.

I'll give it a few more tries though, I think. See how it goes.

[Jim]

I think it has a place, but not a particularly useful one. However I'll wait for a while before posting my conclusions

[Patti (baconater)]

Just settled down with my coffee to read it and read wave won't open.

There's disappointing.

502 bad gateway error.

[Jim]

This is another problem with readwave. Now whether it's due to the fact that they seem to be overwhelmed with people spamming films, sport or TV shows to watch online I don't know

What I'm going to do is to put the entire story up on Tallis's blog at some point

[Jim]

Here you are Patti

https://tallissteelyard.wordpress.com...

[Patti (baconater)]

Thank you, sweetheart.

[Jim]

Don't I look after people :-)

[Patti (baconater)]

You do!

I shall read it with my coffee tomorrow morning.

[Philip]

I think, with Readwave, that the best policy is to post one episode (or whatever) accumulate as many 'reads' for that as possible (and hopefully get on the Trending screen as high as possible) then only post the next episode when your first instalment gets taken down from the Trending page. Just sayin' :-)

[Patti (baconater)]

Being able to, you know, access the site, would be even more helpful.

[Jim]

Anyway here is my report from the experiment

Readwave has issues. I cannot always get it, getting 502 bad gateway messages perhaps half the time. Others seem to suffer the same.

My cunning plan was, having watched the trending for a while, to get all five of the episodes trending at once. So anyone looking at the first trending page would get 5 out of 24 chances of spotting the story.
Then hopefully they'd read it, like it and click on a link and perhaps even buy

Worked well for the first three episodes.
Then for the fourth somebody else had had a similar idea. But their version was just to pour scores of 'articles' which were just plugs for watching films, TV series or sport on line.
At one point out of five trending pages (120 'articles') only one of them wasn't spam.

So this screwed up the cunning plan.
But I pressed on regardless.

So the first three had well over sixty or seventy reads. The fourth, dropped fresh into spam hell got 50, the last one actually got over 150 (because it was the only story people could find?)
My numbers of readers (whatever exactly they are) went up from 220 to 700 over the period. These numbers are from memory because of course I cannot get on to Readwave because of bad gateway error.

I sent messages to Readwave saying about the spam and have had no reply, not even an automated one.

I was left with the feeling that whoever runs readwave doesn't actually care any more

Also because of the spam it was easy to pick out new stories that were real stories. Frankly I guess that most days perhaps two or three stories are posted to readwave and get onto the trending page.

And all this hasn't resulted in a single sale. Now I wasn't expecting much, I'd have been pleased with one sale, delighted with two.

So my opinion of readwave
I think it's just somewhere I'll put stuff that's already been on Tallis's blog, because it might get another airing. (Tallis's blog hasn't built up a readership yet so it's still not drawing the crowds so it seems a pity not to post it elsewhere)

But I don't think it's worth putting a lot of effort into, if only because the people running it seem to share that opinion

[Philip]

Never experienced access problems like this before, Jim. Don't know what's happening. Pity it had to happen in mid-experiment.

[Patti (baconater)]

It's put me off ever reading anything on it.

[Jim]

Philip wrote: "Never experienced access problems like this before, Jim. Don't know what's happening. Pity it had to happen in mid-experiment."

I went to the facebook page, somebody else had raised the issue on October 23rd, but Readwave hadn't posted anything since 7th September

It's been getting worse over the last few days. I wonder if the spammers were vultures who spotted that there was nobody at the helm and just struck

[Jim]

Patti (baconater) wrote: "It's put me off ever reading anything on it."

I don't wonder. It isn't as if there is any shortage of sites

I used readwave because I quite literally cannot get Wattpad to post stuff for me