#iwritereadrate.com

It's been a busy month! We've been working hard to constantly improve the usability and functionality of our Beta site for you.

In addition the competition for our first 75 uploaders has been running - fantastic to see the number of ebooks increasing; also that members are beginning to read and rate other writers' work. "It's alive, it's alive!"

This is an article about what we've been doing, and why these improvements will make iWriteReadRate an even better community to be a part of.  Read more...

We're committed to you to continue enhancing our site; refining it and adding additional features as we go along now the Beta site is alive and kicking. During June we've been busy working on the site to make sure that it offers you a fantastic platform for you to upload, publicise, receive feedback on and sell your work as ebooks.

These are some of the significant improvements we've made over the last month:

Improved eBook Conversion

We've improved the conversion of your uploads to both PDF and ePUB; as well as how the site processes your cover pictures. The underlying conversion engine has hit a new milestone which means even better and faster conversion of your eBooks to our output formats. This is really important as we want to make it as simple as possible to upload and for you to get a fantastic looking ebook out the other side.

We're committed to continuing to improve this going forward, however with these enhancements we think we've made great progress. We plan to continue the work on our conversion engine to enable Kindle style .MOBI formats outputs and even better ePUB ebook covers.

All the feedback so far during the Beta has helped us to do this - thank you!

Additional Information in the eBook Info Screen

We quickly identified that we needed to add additional information to each ebook screen. We've pulled the information that you complete about your upload through so that it now sits at the top of each individual ebook info screen. An important enhancement - now your readers have more detail with which to make a decision about sampling, downloading, rating and reviewing your work.

Remember when uploading make sure you pick the right genre for your work and also that you write a compelling synopsis to draw readers in.

PayPal Adaptive Payments

Perhaps it's the geeks in us, but we're particularly pleased with this one. We've integrated PayPal Adaptive Payments which means that any paid-for downloads you receive go through the system completely automatically. Instead of your writer commission being paid after-the-fact and manually by us through PayPal, this is a completely real-time and automatic process. We think this is pretty cool!

Improved eBook Stack Algorithm

We've also improved the brains behind how the home screen best sellers ebook stack calculates which order to display our most viewed, rated, and reviewed uploads.

Watch This Space

Watch this space for our new and exciting Writer Services section coming soon. We've joined up with a number of companies to bring to our members an array of services, and with a discount simply for being an iWriteReadRate member! It's coming soon, more details will follow towards the end of July.

Remember what we said when we opened the Beta site back at the end of April? We said that this is just the beginning. We're currently working on our 12mth roadmap of enhancements (we're a restless bunch!) - more features are in the pipeline!

Don't delay, visit our Beta site today! Click here!

Happy writing, reading and rating!

The iWriteReadRate Team

Other iWriteReadRate articles you should check out:

Using our Social & Sharing Features

How to Upload your ebook

Beta Upload Competition

It's been just over a week since we opened the Beta site for uploads from pre-registered members and to start testing the site in a live environment.

This is quick post to give you an update about how it's all going, and also to mention that we'll shortly be launching an upload competition.  Read more...

Firstly, a big thank you everyone who has got involved, uploaded, and fed back to us so far - it is greatly appreciated.  You've really helped the Beta stage progress.

As a recap: we emailed out unique passwords to all pre-registered members on the 29th April, and we started having the Beta tested in a live environment.

If you pre-registered, check your email and visit our Beta.

If you have feedback on the Beta please email us at: [email protected]

This is an important stage, it's so that we can get any remaining bugs ironed out, your initial ebooks uploaded, and your feedback on the site ahead of a full launch.  It's also your opportunity to get involved from the beginning.

As an update, the Beta has been going very well.  We've had a number of initial uploads and some great feedback about the site; as well as some bits that we need to improve going forward.  This is exactly what the Beta is for: testing and improving.

We're aiming to have most of the significant patches applied by the end of this week.  Following this we'll be looking to move into Phase 2 of the Beta.  What Beta Phase 2 involves is a fully functioning, tested, site and opening up to previously unregistered people.  It will still be a testing phase, but with only minor patches remaining to be added.

Take a look at our Advice & Tips for New iWriteReadRaters and The iWriteReadRate Beta Site is Open articles for more details on the Beta.

Our New Beta Upload Competition

During Beta Stage 2 we'll also be launching an upload competition.  To qualify you need to be one of the first 75 uploads to our site.  We're presently sourcing a fantastic writer services prize - watch this space for more details coming soon!

To qualify for our Beta upload competition you must have at least one ebook uploaded.  Anyone who has already uploaded will be automatically included in this competition.

It's very exciting for us to see all the work coming together piece by piece, and we hope that you share our excitement too.

This Beta represents the first edition of our site – the beginning. We’ve tried to pack in as many great features from the start.  As writers and readers ourselves we thought hard about what we’d want from the site, and we sincerely hope that you can see the work that has gone into delivering iWriteReadRate to you.  There’s also more great stuff in the pipeline!

Happy writing, reading and rating everyone!

Best regards

The iWriteReadRate Team

Our monthly Newsletter is coming out on Wednesday this week.

If you've registered, remember to check your email on Wednesday this week!

The journey of iwritereadrate.com has been very much like that of a new writer on the verge of sending out their hard work to be viewed by people they've never met for the first time.  We started with an idea - pure and simple - we researched, had various moments of self-doubt, concern, and trepidation.  Eventually we decided to go for it, to put the idea out into the world to live on its own.

Since we launched the Registration Page, our blog, and our Social Media groups the interest and support for what we're doing has been nothing short of fantastic.  We've met some great people, learnt so much more about the industry than just through our earlier research, and begun to develop our community.  Thank you to you all for getting involved, we believe that this is the start of a vibrant online writing and reading community.

The great thing is that it's only the beginning.  With our Beta site launching in a few weeks, the idea of iwritereadrate.com is becoming a reality; sent out into the world to live and develop as an independent entity.

We're excited and enthused by everyone who has already joined us, your involvement and interaction will be crucial in making the site come alive and bloom.

If you've not registered yet you can still do so at www.iwritereadrate.com to receive:

- pre-launch Beta site access

- enter our competition to win an eReader

- our monthly newsletters

We look forward to seeing you as active and constructive members of the community soon.

Happy writing.

The iwritereadrate Team

Hello.  Still time to register on www.iwritereadrate.com to receive:

- pre-launch access to upload before anyone else

- enter competition to win an eReader

- monthly update newsletter (February due out soon)

This is a special extended version of The Story of www.iwritereadrate.com by one of our founding Directors, Adam Charles.

For me, and maybe for you too, admitting to being an unpublished writer is sort of a little bit like admitting to having contracted some disease in some bizarre circumstance. However, here I am, admitting to the wonderful readership of this blog that I am an unpublished writer; further to this that I'm oddly proud of it too. This feels good, cathartic almost, like my first night at Writer’s Anonymous.

It's been a long time coming too.  I spent most of my younger days reading all sorts of books, with a keen (perhaps unhealthy!) weighting towards counter-culture.  I’ve also had all sorts of jobs over the years but always come back to the fact that I’m just enthralled by literature - basically what I’ve learnt about myself is that the gratuitous acts of writing and reading just do it for me.

So, a few years ago I decreed that no longer would I watch from afar, no more would I be content with solely reading, I wanted to become part of the writing world, a world where ideas and images conjured by language are king. With my mission confirmed I set down to diligently sketch out an idea for a story that had been bouncing around in my head for the best part of a decade.  Whilst I knew where it began, I really didn’t know where the narrative would take me.  It went well, the words flowed, my pen moved effortlessly and almost supernaturally across the page: I was fulfilling my dream of writing. It had begun.

I reached a fair point, some 30,000 or so words and had judiciously self-edited two or three times.  I printed it off, held it, and passed it to several people to analyse and edit.  Once I’d made all the changes I decided that it was time, time to send off my baby to be critiqued by those in-the-know to see if my delusions and dreams had any substance at all.  I packaged up the first few chapters, bought an exorbitant quantity of 90p stamps and envelopes to send to a variety of publishing industry bodies.  

I waited and I waited and finally they started to return home to me.

I opened the first one with adolescent enthusiasm, tearing at the envelope.  Sadly, all that was contained inside was the returned, unmarked, extracts I had sent and a standard rejection note written on a tiny complements slip.  I, however, was not deterred.  I posted off another tranche of submissions.  The curse of the standard rejection letter continued.  

Were they even reading it?  Surely they could pass some kind of judgement?  Surely I could get more feedback than this? Doubt began to creep in - just stick with the day job, even though it provides zero intellectual or metaphysical nourishment - just stick with it.

After three batches of submissions I coalesced, none-the-wiser and somewhat baffled.  I didn’t know whether I had something entertaining - perhaps even interesting or eloquent - to say or if I should just stick to reading other people’s ideas and give up on my dream of writing.  I wasn’t upset or disappointed, I just wanted to know whether the lack of feedback was due to my work or the limitations of the system that had so effortlessly cast me aside.  I simply could not know.

Frantic research followed into all the facets of the agencies, editing, and publishing process. 

A couple of years ago I eventually hit upon an idea. If the professionals can’t tell me, then how can technology help me to find out whether my work is any good or not?  I trawled the internet but couldn’t find anything that I could use for these objectives.  This is where the first seed began to grow for our new website for unpublished writers - www.iwritereadrate.com.  At the time the proliferation of mobile and electronic reading devices was somewhat limited, so I left the idea simmering in the recesses of my mind.

In 2010 we began building out this idea; the seed began to germinate.  An online community for unpublished writers by unpublished writers.  A cyber-city where writers can upload, sell, and receive ratings and reviews on their hard work.  Where unpublished writers can sell their passion for writing as well as their stories.  A place where readers can provide direct feedback direct to writers, have access to them and become part of the writing process.  A brave new world in the dynamic between unpublished writers and readers everywhere.  I know this is altruistic - but then I’m an idealist at heart.

If we did it right we could put a new democracy into the writing process, where writers could get constant feedback from a community of other writers and readers about their work.  If we do it right then we can establish a new link in the chain and hopefully improve the quality of our members work to help them along their journey to becoming published.  We thought out and developed the idea, packing in as many features as we could that would benefit unpublished writers like us.

In the end, the only way to know if what you’ve written is any good is to have other people read it - you might not sell 1m copies but that doesn’t mean that what you have to say - the story you have to tell - isn’t worth the paper or screen it’s printed on.  It also doesn’t mean that it isn’t well written.  The only way to know is to put it out there and let other people decide. 

From my research I’m pretty sure that in this ultra-connected Internet age that even the most niche literature can find an enthusiastic readership somewhere - it’s just a matter of reaching them.  The web seems intrinsically made for this type of connection between interested parties, it’s just that it hasn’t been used quite in this way for writers at this point, although this is now changing for the better in my opinion.

With these ideas now at the forefront of my mind I assembled the team and we set to work on building the website.

I’m delighted to say that we successfully launched our Registration Page in December 2010 and are now looking to launch the full site during the first few months of 2011.  It’s been going extremely well and we’re surpassing website hits and registration targets each week - which is fantastic.  My heart-felt thanks to everyone who has already joined and supported us so far.

You can register now to be given:

- Pre-launch access to the site to upload your work before anyone else 

- Automatically entered our competition to win an eReader at the site’s full launch

- Receive our monthly update Newsletter

We look forward to having you as part of our new community. Become an iwritereadrater - what are you waiting for?