FanStory

I was a member of FanStory for 3 years and have now joined the All Poetry website.
I found FanStory to be filled with cronyism and vote buying. They repeat the same contests over and over again, and the same people keep winning all the time.The reviews are carried out on a very friendly basis and you seldom find any constructive criticism that is really helpful. I won 16 contests during my time at Fanstory, all of which were blind i. E no one knows whose poem is being displayed, but as soon as the poets names were displayed against their poems I did not receive one single vote in 3 years. Numerous poems thar came last in FanStory have won multiple gold medals in All Poetry, which is free to join and all postings are free. They also have a far greater variety of contests to choose from and I have earned over 1900 awards in a little over 3 years,. And would never consider returning to Fanstory, which is a costly website as opposed to All Poetry, which is free.

Here's the good and the bad about FanStory. FS is a great place to post your poetry, short stories, novels, and scripts, and receive feedback from other members on the site. It also has numerous contests, both site-sponsored and member-sponsored, and these can be fun to enter. The cost to be a member allowed to post your writing is not prohibitive.

So what's the downside?

In order to have your writing reviewed, it needs to be "promoted". All your postings will have a free initial certificate which expires after two reviews. To give your work visibility, you must buy a certificate which will cost you between six and ten dollars. But wait! That will only get you a place far down on the list, where you might only get one or two more reviews. To move your work higher, you need to buy "pump" certificates that pump your work up the list. This costs another $3, but you may need several to move you piece up where it will get a lot of visibility.

You can either whip out your credit card to purchase certificates and pumps, or earn member dollars by reviewing the work of other writers. In order to avoid spending "real" money to promote their work, other writers review, review, review. Of course, the volume of reviews they need to do results in some reviews being virtually worthless "fluff".

Ratings are based on the volume of work you post, and the review ratings given them. The top-rated poets on FS are not by any means the best poets on the site, but they are the most prolific, some with literally hundreds of (sometimes remarkably) mundane works that get numerous "fluff" reviews, and therefore move them up the ranks. Some of the highest rated poets do have talent, but even again, the driver is volume, which of course requires - you guessed it - that people buy certificates to promote their volumes of work.

But here's the real danger to serious writers, and a well-kept secret that the owner doesn't want potential (or current) members to know. Many publications consider a work posted on FanStory as having been published online, which disqualifies it from being considered for publication elsewhere. FanStory will tell you that by making your profile "private" and setting "content sharing" to off, your work is only visible to members, and therefore that rule does not apply. This is not true in all cases, and reputable submission services may refuse to consider any work that has been posted on FanStory because it is considered "previously published".
If you are looking for a supportive writing community, recognition within that community, and fun contests that will inspire you to write, FanStory is a fine place to go.

If you are a serious writer looking to be published, DO NOT put your work in risk by posting it on FS and opening up the possibility that your opportunity to be published will be lost.

There are many testimonials about writers cuttting their teeth on FS and their experience there helping them to get published. But the opportunities to get published are, as we all know, hard to come by. If your goal is to publish, don't risk having your work disqualified from being accepted because it has appeared on FS.