Posting Rules and Agreement
All stories are acceptable for posting on Finestories.com as long as they follow the guidelines as presented here. Please take the time to read through this page carefully before submitting. It will help gain a better understanding on how things work on Finestories.com and help you avoid common mistakes that cause delays in posting. This is a binding contract between authors and World Literature Publishing Co. (WLPC)
By submitting your work for posting on Finestories.com you certify that the following conditions are true and you agree to all the terms outlined here:
You are the creator/co-creator of the work or you have explicit written permission from its author to post the work online. OR Submission is in the public domain (copyright has expired - which you may be asked to prove.)
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You grant Finestories, its parent company 'World Literature Company (WLPC)' and its affiliated sites unlimited rights to publish the work in any format that it supports, on any of its sites for as long as WLPC exists or until you withdraw the work with a written request for removal.
You retain all copyrights that you may have for your stories' text.
All other material (meta data related to your stories) becomes the property of Finestories and WLPC
Finestories and WLPC reserves the right to a grace period of 14 days to comply with any copyrighted contents removal request.
You allow Finestories.com and WLPC to make the necessary changes to make your work suitable for publishing on our sites. (Your contents will not be changed, just simple formatting changes and file structure changes if necessary. We may divide your work into multiple files, and move sections into their own files.)
Also, by submitting your work to Finestories.com you acknowledge and certify that you understand the following:
Stories may not contain explicit sex; and must not have a sex theme, revolves around nudity or sex in general.
Stories may not contain foul language. Some words may be mildly censored.
Finestories.com has the right to refuse the posting of any work, for any reason.
Finestories.com may remove your works at any time at the discretion of the moderators. (We'll notify you if that happens and the reason.)
Teasers and blackmail are absolutely prohibited. (Teasers are any story parts that compel readers to read preceding or following parts on other sites or purchase those parts or sending money for further postings.)
Illustrated stories must not contain photographs, only illustrations and you must have explicit permission to use the artwork. (You assume the responsibility of using the pictures)
Illustrations are handled at the discretion of the moderator. Pictures maybe shrunk or converted into another format to bring the file size down (our bandwidth is limited). Usually pictures are shrunk to below 400 pixel in any dimension, or kept to a size below 20 KB. And if the pictures don't add any value to the story, they may be deleted completely from the submission.Copyright infringement and plagiarism are not tolerated. If complaints are received about copyright/plagiarism on your part, all your work will be removed from the site, and your author account will be closed.
For those vague on the meanings of copyright infringement or plagiarism, it's simple, here it means 'Unauthorized use of the material, partial or complete'. No vague interpretation and your personal views on the issue do not matter, the definition is not up for debate.Finestories.com has general disclaimer and copyright notice that covers all the site's contents including what works you may post on the site. Each reader has to agree to disclaimer and copyright notice before they use the site. If your work contains very similar copyright and disclaimer notices, the moderator will remove the disclaimer from your work for redundancy. (to save on bandwidth)
Advertisements in stories or blogs are not allowed. (especially for other story sites)
Links in stories are handled at the discretion of the moderator. (links to commercial sites, banner sites are not allowed)
Only stories and poems are accepted for posting. The site's moderators may make exceptions if contacted about the issue ahead of submitting.
An author's first effort for posting on the site must be at least 750 words.
If you have your own stories site and you post your stories here on Finestories too, you give permission to Finestories to take necessary action to keep your stories on WLPC's sites up-to-date and in sync with the versions on your own site at our discretion.
If you have your own stories site (or stories page on another site) and you post your stories here on Finestories too, you give permission to Finestories to take necessary action to keep your stories on WLPC's sites up-to-date and in sync with the versions on your own site or other sites at our discretion.
You must keep your contact information current. Any change/deletion requests will be honored only when coming from the account that posted the story. Your email address should be valid and current. Announcement and notices regarding your stories (if any) will be emailed to you, and verification of your requests may require contacting you at the email address listed under your account in Finestories's database. So make sure that you don't lose your log-in information and keep your contact information current.
If you don't log into Finestories for more than 3 years, your stories will get moved into the archives which are accessible to premier members only. We may give interested authors permission to finish any work you left unfinished.
Promotions: All promotions must be compliant with rule #6. No teasers. No permanently partial postings. If you start posting a book/story on the site, you must complete it if it's fully written. Failure to comply with these rules will result in a permanent ban on posting on Finestories.
Book Sales: Any promotional links or text to sell your complete books are allowed only if they point to our book shop Bookapy.com. Progress must be made at least bi-weekly until the work is complete on Finestories. You authorize WLPC to complete the posting on Finestories in case you are unable to do it yourself.
Writer support (Patreon, Subscribestar etc...): If you promote your writing on Finestories and ask for financial support, you must keep the progress on Finestories relatively close to your postings on your support site. You must keep the work on Finestories within two instalments of the work on the support site. If the work is completed on the support site, then it must be completed on Finestories within two weeks of the completion on the support site. Failure to keep up the progress will result in one of the following:
- Your works being hidden until updated with new parts.
- Your links being removed.
- Your works being deleted from the site.
You are allowed two (2) ads at the end of your stories here pointing to works on Bookapy.com. You can manage ads using the Finestories's 'Manage Stories' functionality.
Blog Posts: Posts on your blog deemed as non-compliant with the promotion rules will be deleted.
Sending readers to competing story sites is not allowed. Posts of all kinds (blogs, forum, stories, story notes, etc...) containing referrals to other story sites will be deleted partially or in whole.
Covers: No nudity allowed in custom covers. Final decision on covers is up to the moderators.
This agreement may be changed/altered without prior notice. Changes will apply to all posted works retroactively. It's your responsibility to keep up with changes to this agreement. You may request the removal of your works at any time if you don't agree with any change to this agreement.
File Formats:
File formats accepted for submission of works through the site are: Plain Text (.txt, .asc), Markdown (.md.txt) and HTML files (.htm, .html). (All open formats, no proprietary formats are accepted -- No Word, Wordperfect, MS Works, AppleWorks, or Lotus Word) If you need to submit styled text like italics and bold, convert your document to HTML. All the popular word processors support one of these two.
Some text formatting from your files is retained on the site; also some formatting power is given to you (as long as you use it wisely). Please read the Formatting Guide for more about what you can use and what you can't use and the advantage of each file format and what's retained, depending on which format you use to submit your text. You must check the appropriate box in the submission forms to have your formatting retained; otherwise, all formatting will be stripped from your files.
Submission Tips:
Always put the story's title and the author name at the beginning of each file that you submit. That would help us avoid confusion, if something were to go wrong with the submission.
The submission wizard on the site was designed to be as easy to use as possible and as helpful as possible.
At each step of the submission process, make sure that you select the appropriate choice and if in doubt read all the instructions on screen.
Try to use as few files as possible. If you have a story with multiple parts, try to paste all the parts into one file and upload it.
The submissions wizard's final step which is where you upload your files, has a time window of 5 minutes and a file size limit of 2 MB.
Make sure that your submission does not exceed these limits at your connections upload speed limit.
Chapter/Part/Story length:
Due to various technical reasons, we try to keep the length of each file served from the site below 55,000 characters (approximately 12,000 words). Any story or chapter longer than 55,000 characters will be served in pages on the site, just like in a book. The page breaks are created by a script, so you never know where your file will be divided. If you don't like the idea of page breaks in unexpected places, then divide your own text into smaller chunks.
Good Submission Practices:
As you can see on the site, each story has a description and a bunch of codes to categorize it. Please follow these guidelines to ensure that your story reaches the right audience.
If you want your story to have a good score, then you must do several things:
Good Text:
Make sure the text is clear and easy to read. Run your work through a spell checker and a grammar checker if you have it. Make sure that your paragraphs are reasonable, overly long paragraphs are hard to read, and poorly punctuated text could deliver the wrong meaning.
Better yet, send your text to one of the volunteer editors on the site for help, they'll proof read your text and help you where you need it.
Story files without any paragraph separations will be rejected.
Story files with exceedingly long paragraphs will be rejected.
Story files written in ALL CAPS will be rejected.
When posting a serial, at least the first chapter should be posted, can't post just a prologue or preface for the story and later post chapter/part 1.
Proper Description:
A good description is key to attracting readers. Few people will read a story without knowing what it's about, so if you want wider readership you need to have an attractive story description; that's your invitation to the reader to read your work.
Story description should tell something about the story's subject, it's supposed to make the story appealing to your audience. It's not the place to say why you wrote the story. It's not the place to ask for comments and feedback and it's not the place for you to introduce yourself. Your author's profile is the place for these things or even the story's text itself.
Correct, Precise Codes:
Correct codes are extremely important. Most people use the codes to decide whether they want to read a story or not. The more precise your codes are the better your scores will be. If you put the wrong codes or you miss some codes or even put extra codes, you risk the chance of people retaliating by giving you low scores.
For example, if you put the romance code in your story's codes, while your story is a rape story, then you'll attract those people that are looking for romance and when they find the rape in there then they'll be shocked and the result is usually a vote of 1. And by not labeling the rape, you won't attract those interested in reading about a rape who would give your story a higher score. So it's all about attracting the right audience.
Precise coding is also important. Excessive coding is bad. If something is mentioned in the story but not described, then it shouldn't coded for. Anything that happens offscreen shouldn't be coded for. For example, if a woman gets raped, and the story doesn't contain the rape scene, only a mention that the woman was raped, then the story doesn't need the 'Rape' code. Use your judgement and try to see it from the readers point. If you see a code in the story what would it mean to you? Code accordingly.
Make sure that you read the Code FAQ to have a clear understanding of what each code means. If you have codes that are crucial to your story and are not in the list then email me.
Miscellaneous
For now, English Language stories only. A story may contain phrases in other languages but the story must be fully readable and comprehendible by english-only readers. (Other languages maybe supported in the future.)
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