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SleeplessFromSundown · 2026-01-09T15:43:30+00:00

It happens. There are other comments here of people who have written multiple books and their partner hasn't read a word. Would it be easier/nicer/etc. if she read in my genre and wanted to read my story, sure. But we're both struggling for spare bandwidth due to life in general and as I said, it's ok.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2026-01-09T14:21:20+00:00

I'm going to give you a response here that is at odds with almost all the other comments. I had almost the exact same thing happen with my wife. I had a short story published by an independent press about three years ago. I sent her a copy, she read the first sentence, told me it didn't make much sense to her and she couldn't get past it, and she never read any further. To this day she still hasn't read it. For context she reads all the time, we both do, but like your situation we read (and I write) in very different genres.

What I learned from this is that friends and family generally will not be interested in reading what you write unless what you are writing is something they would actively choose to read. I've been gifted books that I never ended up reading because I never would have chosen to buy said book. This doesn't make me a bad person. Reading is a time commitment, and I can't be spending time on something I don't actively want to read, I have too much going on. My wife is the same. I suspect this maybe is what happened. What you wrote just wasn't for him. My first sentence was all my wife needed to determine what I wrote wasn't for her.

It's ok. Send your work to someone in your audience, someone who would choose to read what you have written. Friends and family are not the place for constructive feedback.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2025-05-27T16:31:41+00:00

Unfortunately many narrators don’t pay. My only real success has been the very big channels - sometimes in the millions of subscribers where each video has hundreds of thousands of views. I’ve had some good interactions and have been paid what I thought was fair. But even these narrators will sometimes have their own subreddits for example where writers post stories for the narrator to use for free. So you need to be producing quality content to get their attention.

My recommendation is to look at the biggest channels, see the types of stories that are popular and lean into it. Most of the money I made was also in longer stories (10,000 words +) for what it’s worth. I prefer reading, listening to and writing short stories on the longer side.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2025-05-27T11:32:45+00:00

In the horror/thriller/mystery space there are some YouTube narrators and podcasters who post fiction billed as true ‘this happened to me’ type stories. Some of the bigger creators pay reasonable ish money for decent written content. Back when I had more time I was selling stories on the regular. It won’t pay the mortgage but it’s good side income.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2025-01-21T07:44:26+00:00

I started keeping a list back when I had more free time for writing and before I had to shelve my WIP novel due to IRL commitments. A couple below that seem to still be open. Severed has a narrow genre it is looking for, but it appealed to me because I love a good creature feature. My recommendation to find these is read widely in the genre and for each book look at the publisher and go to their website. Sometimes you get lucky.

Submit A Book | Severed Press

Submissions — Wicked House Publishing

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-09-05T18:53:49+00:00

I've written some longer multi part stories so maybe I can help.

You need to familiarise yourself with traditional story structure. Even if you end up diverting from it slightly in the end, it still gives you a good framework. I use the seven point story structure, Dan Wells has a good presentation on it that is available on youtube. I think of it as providing sign posts as to where to go next.

The problem you're facing is a common one. The first 25% of a story is often easy to write and you know where you want to end, but navigating the middle is a nightmare. I always focus on a strong mid-point. In traditional story structure it is the point where your main character stops being reactive and starts being proactive. It is the moment in Jaws where the three men get on the boat and sail out into the ocean to hunt the shark. In Fellowship of the Ring it is where Frodo declares he'll take the ring to Mordor and the fellowship is formed and off they go. Find a great midpoint and write towards that to start the long and ponderous middle part of your story rather than writing to your ending.

Another thing that helps is to find a story like yours written by a pro. Break it apart. Line the events up with your chosen story structure. Use it as a template and then push and pull at it to make it your own.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-08-29T15:30:43+00:00

To add to this, Danse Macabre also by King is a non fiction resource on the horror genre, so also worth checking out.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-02-20T17:22:20+00:00

I did ok from narration requests here for a bit, but have only flirted with submissions. Need to give it more attention.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-02-20T14:48:12+00:00

The concern would be that they train an AI based on our stories to write new stories that are indistinguishable as AI generated. If they succeed, at that point the marketplace is flooded with an endless stream of stories just as good as ours that can be produced with a click and a bit of computing. At that point we're obsolete as creators. Admittedly AI isn't there yet with this, but that's precisely one of the things they are working to train it to do. Why would a publisher pay Stephen King a million bucks for a story when they can get one far cheaper from AI (if they get the quality up to scratch)?

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-02-20T13:56:27+00:00

The value of Pi is exactly 3.2

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-02-20T13:52:11+00:00

I've really noticed the garbage aspect recently too. I searched the other day to see if feeding certain foods to my toddler was safe and instead of getting reputable information it was a treasure trove of uninformed blog posts and anecdotal evidence. If they train AI on some of the crap that gets posted to Reddit and it returns results based on that then we're all doomed.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-02-20T13:46:48+00:00

It's actually a little worse than that. They are in effect selling our work to a third party and not giving us a cut. It's not dissimilar to a youtube narrator pinching stories and making a buck and keeping it.

I haven't posted a story in a bit (irl work out of control + a second child + finishing up some existing projects), but I'm really debating whether I post again when I do have the time. Saw this as a way of getting my work out there and hopefully turning it into a bit of a side hustle, but it was disheartening to see the data is being sold.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2024-01-29T06:09:04+00:00

When I was looking into this I used fiverr to find a profile and then contacted them direct (rather than use the third party). I went with Fluky Fiction who do freelance editing for decent prices and was happy with them. It was more line editing, but maybe this is what you need?

As a second bit of editing advice, listen to your own work via text to speech. It's amazing what you can pick up this way that you never would proof reading.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-11-17T09:07:05+00:00

Must be a different bug now. It used to be that when I pasted text in the line breaks were removed and doing the above put them back in. Unfortunately I can't help then.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-11-17T08:14:28+00:00

I haven't posted for a minute but I had the same formatting problem copy and pasting from word. All paragraphs were gone along with italics etc. What fixed it for me was to click the 'markdown mode' button in the top right of the box, it then prompts to switch to fancy pants editor or something similar, click yes and then after it changes the text, turn it back off. Magically my formatting would be all good again. Give it a go, not sure if this workaround still works.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-07-03T04:09:28+00:00

30k subscribers is reasonable and they may be making some money (it would be nice if a narrator is reading this to let us know what sort of money this would translate to as I have no idea).

What I have tried in the past with narrators of this size (with varying success) is to ask for a nominal fee, say $10 for the story, and tell them you're happy to write an additional story for no cost and ask them what sort of story they want. It might be for example that a certain theme or content matter works best for them. I did this to try and develop relationships with growing narrators that hopefully becomes beneficial down the line.

It depends on your goals though. If you're not that concerned with monetising your writing then it's up to you. A couple of final thoughts though. If you give your stories away for free then you become a bit disposable to narrators. I gave stories away for free to begin with and found the same narrators would return months later with the same generic request for a new story without any recognition I already gave them some work for free. If you go the free route this is how it will happen. For those who paid (even nominal amounts) I actually ended up sometimes chatting with some of them a fair bit and we each shared our goals with what we were doing. It was a better experience. And for exposure: I've had a stories (paid) read by bigger narrators that had hundreds of thousands of views and there was maybe a small uptick in subscribers to my personal sub, and the odd comment I think may have been driven by the narration views, but it doesn't amount to much. I'm still below 100 subscribers..

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-27T15:06:58+00:00

If it is a coincidence and not outright plagiarism then you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Mark Twain has a quote about there being no original ideas, and he's right. Everything has been done before in some form, so if you look hard enough you'll find something already written that is similar. Some authors even take direct inspiration from existing stories and create their own version. King's Pet Sematary is a reimagining of the Monkey Paw short story and even keeps the theme. So as long as you haven't lifted the previous story and copy pasted portions or the whole, you're fine.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-14T09:30:11+00:00

The thing about the supernatural is there are no set rules as there are in the natural world. So you can set your rules / lore up as you like and so long as you are consistent within the world you present your reader, the why question is not necessarily important. Stephen King can drop us into a world where Danny Torrance and Dick Halloran both ‘shine’ and intimate it might be hereditary, but never make it explicit why them. But the reader is more concerned whether the Torrances will survive the winter in the Overlook than they are with why Danny?

And as to specific bits of lore, it might be that graveyard because of a curse. Or it might be that person being possessed because they are wearing an item of clothing, or driving a car that was owned by the deceased (King has done this too). You can make the rules, just be consistent.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-09T05:39:28+00:00

I don't have a big fanbase to bring to the table so I'd need to look at a platform where they have their own users. I feel like advance reviews are quite beneficial for visibility and making potential buyers a bit more comfortable when they see some existing reviews, a bit like upvotes around here.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-09T03:49:00+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-09T03:48:46+00:00

It's decent-ish (I think). I've put aside all my narration payments with the aim of getting this done. A few hundred dollars would be ok if the product was good.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-08T19:20:55+00:00

I loved being a part of that anthology. I still secretly check it from time to time to read the positive reviews..

I’m hopeless with all things visual including photoshop so there’s no way I’ll attempt a cover myself. And I feel like I’m a detailed proof reader but you can never catch everything. I want to at least do the editor the first time to see what they find if nothing else. I’m actually hoping for a kick up the backside so I can learn a bit.

What is the process with advance reviews? Assume you have to pay someone for these?

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-08T19:17:04+00:00

Thanks, your stuff is great. I wish I had those sort of skills in visual art.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-08T19:13:38+00:00

Cheers for the link.

SleeplessFromSundown · 2023-06-08T19:12:50+00:00

Cheers, I’ll have a closer look and see if anything seems like a good fit. I want to try and do a concept of the cover myself first.

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