Page To Fame Raters–I LOVE You!

“Wow.”

The raters over on WEbook’s Page To Fame contest have knocked my socks off. Seriously. Socks across the room, stuck in a plant.

As some of you may have read, I’ve been doing the Page To Fame thing over on WEbook. I have one submission that has made it to round 3 (submit 50 pages). Currently it has 7 ratings and a 72% elevation rate (that means 72% of the readers gave it a 4 or 5 out of 5 and therefore want it to go to the next level). That in itself makes me feel pretty good! But what really wows me is not only how many of the raters have plucked the very questions/thoughts, etc., I have from my mind about my work, but also wonderful, giving comments like this:

“That said, I truly admire the quality of the writing itself—-IMHO you’re writing at a professional level, which I think is rare here.”

Wow. Just Wow. What an amazing compliment. Truly. This person had issues with the format–something I have struggled with. Do I keep it all letter style or not? I tell you this: Page to Fame rocks. I get to see what readers think and how they react to my work. Maybe I will change the format. Maybe not. We’ll see what they tell me because quite honestly these wonderful readers and raters are rockin’ my socks off and giving me a much needed boost. Thank you anonymous rater–you made my week! Heck, my month!

(And yes, you may have heard through the grapevine that it took my about 2 weeks to suck up enough courage to look at these ratings. Talk about needing to grow a pair!)

In my opinion, these raters’ comments are spot on. And I really appreciate the time they have put in to not only reach the status of a round 3 rater, but how they have given up their time to rate a stranger’s work (50 pages) and provide such helpful feedback (300+ words).

Thank you, raters! You are doing a fab job–very professional and helpful and us WEbookers appreciate you and all your hard work!

WEbook Round 2

Awhile back I mentioned that my ‘experimental’ submission in the WEbook contest blew me away and got elevated to the next round in their Page To Fame contest.

A few days ago I posted the next bit of the story along with a ‘read more’ sample. Nothing happened in terms of ratings for a few days so I forgot about it. Then this morning I was editing for a client and needed a change of brain pace. So, I popped over to AgentQuery Connect and noticed people were chatting on the WEbook thread. (They were talking about a survey that was sent out to participants.) That reminded me that I hadn’t checked WEbook in awhile.

So, I popped over there and had my mind blown. Here’s what I saw:

Um, wow! 75% of the 8 current raters want it elevated to round 3. I don’t even know what to say. Well, except that ratings always change and maybe these eight were having a Drink and Rate party and were at that happy stage when they came to my story. Joking aside, these are pretty sweet stats.

As for those comments in the feedback bit (sorry the image is blurry), 2 chose the canned response “Great writing,” 5 chose “Engaging plot,” 3 chose “Love the idea,” 2 chose “Can’t wait to read more,” 4 chose “intriguing characters,” and 1 chose “Don’t like the idea.” (Raters can chose more than one reply–the first 5 are canned responses and the last one is a ‘something else’ which is filled in by the rater.)

Cool beans! I can’t wait to see what this story does.