A Small Part,

[LK]

The biggest questions I see him wrestling with are:
1) Is there an audience interested in this idea?
2) Is this worth my time to do?

The first is a no-brainer. You are on a fetish forum. Of course there are always going to be SOME people who are interested in the idea or what you are writing about that they will purchase it, regardless of quality. Their imagination will ignore any flaws in the work in the same way a comic book fan will forgive technical flaws in order to see what they paid for.

Further, you are going to have an issue of sampling and confirmation bias with the responses here.

Your main issue, and where I see a fundamental problem, is the second question. Rephrased, you're asking "Is there an audience large enough that, if I put in the time, I won't feel I have wasted my efforts?"

Creativity is about experimentation and play, not success or failure on the market. There's a good reason to keep the creatives in a company separate from the business and marketing guys.

I have a friend interested in photography who keeps making it about the idea he can sell and that people will be interested in so he can make a return on his investment of time. What I hear is that he is so focused on whether his project will also be a product with a market that he can't even get started and do photography for photography's sake. He thinks inside the box.

The cynical part of me thinks he posted this to get straight to the praise, recognition, and positive feedback from creating something people like. That's unearned, and I will viciously shut that down.

[qzar9999]

LK has a point: you may give people the impression that you're only interested in making money off of this. Might sound cynical, but you started off with a mention of selling e-books.

As someone who has written and sold multiple e-books in this genre, let me give you the best possible advice for this situation:

If you're doing this for the art, because you genuinely like SW stories, try posting a story or two for free before you jump right to selling. It'll help you get recognition, build an audience, and receive useful feedback, all of which will help you a lot when it's time to start selling.
If you're doing it solely (or primarily) for commercial reasons, get out now. I've been doing this a long time, I already had fans before I started selling, I've been told repeatedly that my work is high-quality, and I have multiple titles available...and I STILL don't make all that much money. I think my best month was still under $400. This is *not* something you should do primarily for profit.

[LK]

That.

Edit: You think I am being a dick, but I don't think you understand how outrageous and offensive your post was in its implications. How you write is a reflection on who you are and what you know. It is as much about the words you choose as it is the ideas and information communicated by them.

From what I see, you don't give a shit about writing and you know very little about people beyond acting like sex objects for your / the audience's gratification. There is even the possibility that you are underage.

So, instead of shifting the focus away from you and your god-awful writing and onto me because I Am Mean, why don't you tell us what you are really about?

[Prof_Sai]

If your first work isn't that great, stop immediately! Michelangelo was farting lifelike paintings in his diaper as a baby.

[qzar9999]

Originally Posted by Prof_Sai

If your first work isn't that great, stop immediately! Michelangelo was farting lifelike paintings in his diaper as a baby.

I feel like the message was "don't try to SELL your work until you've improved, and don't do this solely as a commercial venture." A pretty sound message in this particular genre.

[Anotherfetishguy]

Can't tell if on fetish board or /b/

[Anotherfetishguy]

Personally I had no problem with the story, grant it I had Bonzi Buddy read it to me (if you want to criticize that may I remind you of the fact you are on a forum dedicated to impractical fetishes) and I was playing games while listening, but hey I can overlook it if I enjoy the overall content. Which was... Well, slow, really slow. Why release the first chapters when little to no shrinking is happening!? How are we supposed to be interested by the shrinking if all of it happens outside of the readers know how, you're writing a shrinking process story with jack all process, and I could forgive that if the story itself had good characters and interesting scenes to fill the gap (see Withdraw Symptoms on DeviantART) but this has bland undeveloped characters, the main character is one sided, an aspiring actress who can't get work after growing up, like a mix of every actress on Disney and Penny from Big Bang Theory, the supporting characters are just forgettable and this would all be fine if there were some good process so I could forget the problems but since you fucked up the main thing I read erotica for all I'm left with is a shitty story that looks like a script for an amateur porno!

Also how I noted the deviantART story, a FREE story with better story, I get it it's a draft but this is the base of your story and it shows nothing promising.

Also I love how I made a joke about how this forum is salty than made this long ass post LOL

[qzar9999]

Originally Posted by Anotherfetishguy

Personally I had no problem with the story... [proceeds to list the many problems he had with the story]

Lol WTF?

[mtshrink]

Originally Posted by qzar9999

Lol WTF?

I think what's the real question, is Bonzi Buddy really still a thing? Did i just time travel to 1999?

[OhZone]

12 monkeys was on tonight.

[LK]

Originally Posted by Prof Sai

Michelangelo was farting lifelike paintings in his diaper as a baby.

Dear Prof Sai [Salutation to clarify who is the recipient],

If Michelangelo was born today, he'd be an ADD-riddled tryhard with an over-inflated opinion of his own worth who would never have been able to develop his inborn talent because of all the distractions, bad parenting, and pop culture messaging replacing discipline, knowledge and experimentation with branding and paint-by-numbers. His environment would WRECK his potential. He'd end up an embittered lost cause who can't see beyond his resentment.

Were you making a point that we should be supportive of everyone's creative efforts regardless of what stage of the process they are at because you never know where talent might bloom and reward us with its fruits?

I agree! I absolutely agree! Oh, but not here! Not on a FETISH FORUM. Not when the author already believes their work is worth selling before they've even dropped a sample of their work for public evaluation. Not with his attitude and the shortcuts he's taken. It would be like a fat, socially-awkward nerd going to a strip club looking for dating advice. He's already gone.

There are more appropriate places to develop your skills, like workshops and classes. Any other fucking place on the planet but a fetish forum. It would be like someone going to furries to be a writer, learning everything from furries, then all they can write is furry porn because that's all they learned how to write.

But maybe he can't take what he wants to write about to the normal places, like schools, writing classes, or his parents. By the way, how old is he again?

See, he knows well enough that I am being a dick and to bitch at me when receiving criticism he doesn't like the taste of. He's not even shocked or playing victim; he went on the offensive. He doesn't seem particularly bothered or ashamed at showing people what would be considered remedial-level spelling and grammar. Neither do any of you, it seems, and I wonder why you feed delusions that he isn't YEARS away from what he wants, and that what he wants already showcases a fundamental flaw in attitude and methodology that would undermine his efforts.

He comes off as a tool of American capitalist culture rather than an artist who works with the capitalist system to pursue their passions. I am convinced that publishing what he did and how he did was more about feeding his ego.

Ever think you learn more about a person and what they're about by testing them? I swear some of you would be just fine getting raped in the ass so long as the rapist was saying Please and Thank You.

Man, I can paint a picture. So, is everyone having a good time with the conversation and the ideas being discussed? Because I know I am.

[LK]

Heh, we already went through all this in March 2015 with whyamihere, and look how that turned out.

By the way, the first stories I wrote up that you appeared to want to dig up and mock were under a different pen name in a completely different subculture. They were decently written, but, like most works, were about gratification of interest than a serious exercise in writing.

I did get some praise for the stuff, but were I to dive back in, I would pattern myself after works of mine like Discipline and Transmute: Gnome that are tight, focused, and about a singular scene or premise on superficial elements. I am a one-shot man.