It's late, I'm tired, I can't sleep and a few thousand questions are running around in my head, centered around writing at the moment so....... I was wondering if it was possible to have a marketplace in the forums where people could hire editors, cover designers, etc. I seem to remember the occasional post "sort-of" related to these topics. It was a while ago but someone was thinking about a graphic novel (?) and they wanted to write it and team up with an artist to draw it. I think someone commented that they would charge for such work. I'd like such a "store" to be available here. It would save me so much time searching Reddit's r/commissions or Fivvr or whatever there is. People could pay a nominal fee to be advertised in that specific area and they could be rated by people who used their services. Is there a reason for/against this? I see editing and cover design at a minimum, then if that trial period was successful, maybe it could expand to something like marketing the book, professional proof-reading, etc.
I imagine that the major reasons against this are: - those sites already exist. Like, tons of those sites already exist. Upwork, 99design, reedsy, Netgalley, etc. etc. - this is mainly a writing forum. I doubt you'll find many marketers and cover designers here. - I think one of the rules of this site (and what makes this forum so great in my opinion) is no advertising...Having a marketplace in and of itself would be advertising and be against the forum's rules.
This is something we considered several years ago and opted against it do to our feelings on advertising and because there wasn’t an easy way to control spam (or charge a small fee, thus reducing spam/excessive advertising). I don’t think a marketplace is a bad idea. Honestly, I kind of like it, and think if implemented properly would be a positive thing. It’d have to be limited to legitimate services by reputable members. I’ve used boards that had a services board that worked well, but also ones that devolved into a spam-advertising cesspool it was impossible to wade through. Regardless, there are more pressing improvements that need to be addressed first before we can even consider it: other site improvements, bug fixes, and upgrading our software.
theres also a major issue about quality and liability - even if we avoided strict liability we'd still wind up refereeing shitshows where member x didn't like the work member y had done with bad feeling from that spilling out into the other boards not to mention that we've already seen problems with predators trying to get members to sign unfair contracts in collaboration, and shiz like that I've been staff on sites with sales pages and market places before and it is always a big pain in the arse
Indeed. Liability might not be a major issue with at least a reasonable attempt at vetting, but there isn't an easy way to vet them without individually researching each offering, checking reviews, etc. I think the spillover risk is greater concern. Any drama, attacks on reputation, etc. are without a doubt unhealthy. That said I would rather support small quality service providers who are also members of the forum that big box services or google advertisers (though almost no one sees ads anymore these days anyway). I guess if we wanted to we could add a services category in the resource manager and allow established members to share links to their off-site services. We wouldn't be directly facilitating the marketplace and ratings/reviews could help with reputation. Not high on the priority list.
