Share your poetry and all your writing Get feedback for your writing

I have come away feeling incredibly disillusioned with this website, and would warn anybody who thinks that they will 'improve' their writing and meet serious, professional people on this website to enrol in a writing course at an institute or university instead. I was primarily attracted to this website for its writing contests and the hope of encountering some good writing, but soon discovered its ugly side. Although the site claims that contests can be entered "for free", this is false and misleading. The site runs on a little capitalist system, where its members each have an account made up of a virtual currency - called "member dollars". These dollars can be earned by writing reviews on newly-posted stories or poems from other users, with new content paying a larger amount of currency to the reviewer (as an incentive for their input) in comparison to an older poem, which pays almost nothing and is thus pointless to review. This is how the 'five-minute feedback' promise by the website is achieved, but I find it utterly exploitative - reviewers of new content are motivated by the amount of currency they will be paid, and will hastily write a comment, often vague, positive and offering no real criticism, in order to earn the proffered amount of currency so they can pay the fees required to submit entries to contests or 'promote' their writing on the website. Thus, they are not actually reviewing the material for its merit, but for the virtual money it pays. The amount earned by a user in reviewing a piece, whether old or new, is disproportionately low in comparison to the fees required to enter a contest - a review will pay around 40-70 member cents, for example, but an entry fee for a contest will typically be around 5.00 member dollars for more. This means that you'll be reviewing other people's work more than what you'd paid your membership fee to do - writing and sharing your own work, and thus the membership becomes more of a job or responsibility than a source of fun or satisfaction. The only alternative to reviewing is to buy virtual currency over PayPal with real money, which should ring alarm bells about the nature this website. The content I was made to review to earn a decent amount of currency was almost always poor or downright atrocious, and I often felt embarrassed and slightly sickened to be reading it. Many poems I read that had won contests were often clichéd and lame, and would not merit publication or praise in any decent or professional literary circle. The website also appeared largely composed of retirees or housewives who wanted to dabble in writing, rather than improve their craft or write on serious subjects, producing repetitive and boring poetry preoccupied with subjects such as fields of flowers, the ocean, loving embraces, ad infinitum... it is definitely not a place that will produce the next Sylvia Plath or Robert Frost! I made a comment on my profile complaining of the poor quality of the writing on the website and the positive reviews it got, only to be firmly reproved by one user who invoked the example of Dan Brown as proof that "one man's trash can be another's treasure". Be that as it may, it still provided no excuse as to why many writers on the website were using improper grammar and clichéd, sentimental themes. Other users agreed with thIS user's claims of the subjectivity of writing. However, I still think my concerns were founded and well-evidenced and that Dan Brown is complete rubbish, not serious literature. To conclude, I must say that this website completely violates the creative spirit of writing - it will try to claim a profit from its users regardless of the quality or merit of their work. While FanStory sounds like a nice idea, it still has all the faults of a business firm - exploitation of its members (who effectively get sucked in to become workers), those who are willing to spend money have the most power and benefits etc. Even though you will pay quite a hefty membership fee considering what you get out of the website, it requires you to give back time and effort in doing something you didn't pay to do. As an example, it's like if YouTube suddenly required its users to review random videos from others, in order for us to be allowed to post our own videos. Wouldn't that encourage people to leave vacuous and pointless comments when reviewing, such as "This is good", as they are forced to watch content they are not interested in in order to make a personal gain? This is exactly what happens on FanStory - things are reviewed for the profit, not because a user likes a poem and wants to review it on its own merit. All in all, it is a business designed to extract maximum profit from its users with little concern for creative merit or quality of writing. It's features may sound attractive and it may sound like a website genuinely interested in helping writers and making a collaborative community, but it completely hides the fact that it is a profit-making scheme.

Before signing up, I had a serious look at this site and was frankly horrified. I came away thinking there had to be some reason this guy is still in business. After a quick look at Alexa, I see that the majority of members are older people who have somehow been tricked into thinking writers should pay to publish their work. No, no, no. Sites like this are using people. They are NOT doing you a favor by publishing your work. If you want to learn how to write, you shouldn't be listening to reviews from others with no idea. If you want to be a writer, take a real course, learn your craft, and get paid for your work. If you don't care about quality and want people to stroke your ego for bad work, then maybe this is the site for you but it's going to cost you plenty in time and dollars.

I came here placed some of my work, and to find that the only way to move up your work is to pay for it with Member dollars or CASH, this poet will not pay to have his poetry read. I've removed my work and I'm done here. Waste of my time and membership fee! I should have read more of the Negative reviews about this site before I dropped my dollars here, but lesson learned. I couldn't believe that one has to build up member dollars, which can take ages and to read lots of poorly written poetry. Now of course they are hoping that you will be bored with that so you can pay REAL CASH dollars to buy what they call member dollars to pump your views up on their ladder, I wonder how much REAL CASH had to be paid to be in the top 10 on their list. After reading much of their top ten poets?? I found much of the poetry substandard to say the least. I've asked for a refund and would caution everyone to read about them first, they say FREE, yes FREE TO REGISTER only then you have to pay their monthly membership fee. Very misleading indeed. Stay away REAL WRITERS.