This has inevitably been done before. If so, someone please link me to it. This forum, as made clear, is for critique. Not showing off your work. It's for feedback. There are many other forums for showcasing. What I propose, is a more direct way of showing off your work, having it be read by people. I'm not sure how it'd work, but I imagine you create a "Series", which could either be continuing work or just standalone short stories. Other users could "Subscribe" to a series which would mean every time a new instalment is posted, it'd go straight to their inbox or main page. A lot of focus would go to presentation as well, encouraging custom covers and illustrations. Feedback and comments would go straight to the author's inbox, allowing them to review and respond to the messages individually, personally. What do we think? This feels too obvious, I'm hoping there's something very similar around.
This is exactly what FictionPress does. www.fictionpress.com I had a few stories on there that people could 'subscribe' to and they would get an e-mail everytime I added a chapter. Pretty much the same thing. ~ J. J.
It's an idea that would transform this site. In my opinion, it would not be a change for the better. This site has never pretended to be a publishing medium. There are, as JJ hinted, plenty of those to be found. The strength of this site is the focus on growth of a writer, the never ending quest to improve one's writing. There is no endpoint to the quest, although certainly a first publication is a monumental milestone. Changing the focus by opening the site to open publication would detract from the developmental focus.
Exactly what Cog said. Though it isn't a bad idea per se, it's not something that would conform to WF's mission statement, and might even be counter-productive. Plenty of sites already exist for things like that (FictionPress being probably the best-known).
