Vocal Media Added to Cart

Vocal Media Added to Cart

Between Google, FaceBook, Yahoo, Amazon, and myriad store accounts, there is little about me that the sellers don’t know. The result, of course is targeted advertising based on shopping patterns, miscellaneous searches, GPS coordinates, personal data, and group data. For the most part, I kind of like targeted advertising, especially when it helps me find alternative sources, competing prices, competing brands and such that I would not know to search out without the help of my Big Merchant digital Brother.

However, Vocal Media, my most recent cart addition, was proffered to me second hand. My daughter’s social media included a Vocal Media promo about their challenge to write a story about A Little Black Book and the acquisition of $20,000. She knew that a challenge to do some creative writing and competing for a prize, regardless of the long shot possibility of winning, would interest me, so she forwarded the promo to me in late February.

To compete required a subscription starting off with three months at half price and subsequent months at a very acceptable full price of less than $10 a month. The web page for sign up was a bit wonky with the half price button elusive and my forging ahead assuming the offer would show up at checkout proving to be a wrong assumption. A couple of emails later straightened it out but I won’t know for sure until a couple of monthly re-ups occur.

I wrote my first story for the Little Black Book challenge, A Really Good Friend, directly on the Vocal Media site using my android tablet, and though I finished it there, it required a lot of proofing, deleting, backing up and a modicum of swearing when the software would not respond as expected. To bypass the software problems, I wrote my next three stories for the challenge, TOD: Time of Death, The Luck of the Draw, and Mabel on Her Own, using Google Docs, and that old reliable standby of Copy and Paste. Problem solved.

When you consider that in less than a month I am submitting my 16th piece for publication, it is safe to assume that I value my subscription to Vocal Media and find our relationship pleasing. They give me a platform for my ideas, a mechanism for sharing my words and ideas with my friends on Face Book and hopefully, over time, to a broader audience. I will be pleased if others stumble upon one of my stories, and give my stories the gift of their time in exchange for a smile or a pause to think upon my words, or click on other of my titles.

Based on my very short time and experience on Vocal Media, so long as their business model keeps them viable, I believe it represents a good platform for expressing oneself. Some people will be monetarily rewarded for their efforts, just as some lottery scratch off tickets reward some people. The majority of us will have to count our pleasures in the number of reads we get and the occasional positive feedback received from a reader of our stories or poems.

One important feature for serious writers is that you own your product. That short story remains yours, and you can expand it into a novel, rework it as a play or TV script, or sell it elsewhere. Vocal Media is a studio for writers. Just as a loft with good lighting is a studio for painting.

I am glad that I put Vocal Media in my shopping cart. It is serving me well and gives far better value for dollar spent than I anticipated when I signed up. I wish them and all the creators well.

Now, off to the next Challenge!