Should I do a final (30 STEEM) beta-reading contest/lottery for "Ragnarok Conspiracy" ?

in #contest7 years ago

The epilogue to Ragnarok Conspiracy has been a bit of a pain to write, and is taken way longer than any of my other chapters to write, but if things go well, this final chapter should be ready soon, finishing the draft of my first novel.

My novel is divided into five main parts of approximately 8 chapters each, some a few chapters more, some a few chapters less, and up until part four I've been running beta reading contests:

As I had only one contestant for most of the chapters of the part four lottery, I got a bit disillusioned and thought running the fifth and final beta reading lottery would be pointless. I'm reconsidering now though after my last two chapters did really well I'm hoping some new readers might be interested in competing this time. My question to you. If I ran another beta-reading contest, for part five, the final part of my novel, consisting of ten regular chapters, one extra long chapter, and an epilogue, would you compete? If at least five people commit to competing in my beta reading contest, I'll be running it after posting my epilogue.

Index

  1. Perseus-Pisces
  2. Holocene Past
  3. Jötnar
  4. Flushed
  5. G-Foil
  6. New Allies
  7. Old Enemies
  8. Whack-a-mole
  9. Antifragile
  10. Sisters (extra long chapter)
  11. Aesir
  12. Cold Start (epilogue)

Prospect prizes

If I'll run this final beta reading lottery, the total prize money will be 30 STEEM divided as follows:

  • Eleven 1.5 STEEM prizes. One for each of the chapters 1 .. 9, 11 and 12
  • One 3.5 STEEM prize for the extra long chapter 10
  • One 10.0 STEEM prize for part five of Ragnarok Conspiracy as a whole.

Finally, if I'll run this lottery, there will be one more prize. A prize however where contestants from the previous four beta reading lotteries will compete for as well:

  • A prize consisting of 500 SP, delegated for six weeks, for the book as a whole.This price will go to the suggestion that I would consider hardest to find. Especially suggestions pointing out cross-chapter internal inconsistencies should have the biggest chance of winning this prize.

Would you commit to competing in this beta reading lottery?

Please comment on this post if you can commit to competing in this beta reading competition/lottery if I'll end up running it. If at least five people commit to competing before march 13th, I'll run the competition.

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No, and you should never have done that in first place.
It is already too much that you share your content for free.
People whom love your stories would have capitalized on the opportunity to read them for free, and share their impressions with you.
You can reward engaging comments by upvoting them, no need to donate further.
In a case like I described you already reward these people in two different ways and likely reward yourself too with some curation rewards while doing so, without transferring any funds to anyone directly.
And also, upvoting is easier and quicker than fund transferring.

You got a 100.00% upvote from @greengrowth thanks to @fersher! You too can use @GreenGrowth by sending your post URL in the memo field to the bot. Minimum bid is 0.01.

If you feel this post is spammy or not worthy of @Greengrowth you can contact a moderator in our Discord Channel https://discord.gg/6DhnVTQ.

Would I commit? Absolutely. Based on the history of the previous rounds of this contest it would be a no-brainer for me. That being said, @fersher has made good points regarding the comment-upvote-curation interaction, plus conditions on Steemit have changed significantly since the days of the EPROM review contest.

Going way back to that review contest, STEEM and SBD were relatively cheap, bidbots hadn't taken over Steemit yet, and you were looking to acquire feedback on that literary work. The beta-reading concept that you then presented for Ragnarok Conspiracy was not only a logical evolution to the EPROM contest, but it also sounded brilliant to me from a business standpoint. Had there been wider participation as [I believe] we were both expecting but never saw materialize, you would have effectively crowdsourced the editing work at a total cost (in prizes) of far less than hiring a professional editor. I entered not only for the prize prospects, but I was also interested in seeing how it would all play out -- would you successfully get that crowdsourced editing? If so, it would have been, in my opinion, a new revolutionary way for authors to write -- and potentially, a complete disruption to the business model of authoring and publishing. Whether you had intended to or not, I thought you were onto something and I wanted to play a part in it.

Then those rounds of beta-reading lotteries came and went, and we know what happened there -- SBD skyrocketed, and I'm sure you still remember how I tried to hand out drawing tickets on a silver platter in round 4, and yet no other Steemian was willing to put in the minimal effort needed to read one specific paragraph and point out any mistake in it.

Anyway, I'll be around and make time for round 5 if you run it. But I can easily understand if that 5th round doesn't happen. Hopefully the new Steemian blood that's been coming in [as Steemit's popularity grows] lately will be more diligent than previous generations.

Part five beta reading lottery/contest is up now. Looking forward to your entries.

No, don't! It's super sweet, but you don't have to! Just power up and support good content! :)

If you would still like to have a chance at winning one of the prizes, part five is up now.

Hi @pibara from @super-grand-ad

What every you decide in the end you have a great book

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Part five beta reading lottery/contest is up now. Hope you will choose to compete.

Not sure what the contest would entail so I can't say that I personally will commit, but I can commit to adding this contest to my daily Writing Contests List - and I think that by itself might get you 5 people. I am 99.9% certain it will get at least 1.

Great. The simplest way to explain what the contest is about is probably by example. here is a chapter from part one on what I ran an earlier contest.

Look at the comments, then I hope the below makes sense.

Basically, I ask contestants to read the chapters and find problems or potential points of improvement and make each point a separate comment (up to a maximum number per contestant). I will then upvote all non-duplicate comments. My upvotes will act as lottery tickets when I call in croupierbot to draw a winner for each chapter.

There will also be an overall draw, for what every chapter commented on by a contestant equates a lottery ticket.

Have a look at the comments on the chapter I linked to above, and look at croupierbot in particular.

That makes perfect sense. I can commit to participating.

Part five beta reading lottery/contest is up now. Can I take you up on inclusion in that Writing Contests List?

Absolutely! You're right at the top of Issue #49 out later today :-)

I agree with #fersher

I have done what I can for your next post (the final 44/44). It should remove any need for rewards (I do not want a reward, all I want is to read the final draft of the complete book (if I still find glaring errors, you know me, I'll speak up - so I suggest you do not set it in stone yet...)

I'm sorry I was hacked! I have deleted the spam and working on clean up! xo

I know of the problem by #kilbride and it is true. Actually, she makes some good posts, so I don't know why they chose to try and damage her.