How About A Magazine Feature For Creators On Vocal?

I love reading magazines.

I find lots of interesting stories from real-life to fiction, and they keep me happy for hours.

I also publish on Medium where I have my own publication called The Chocolate River.

The idea behind my publication was to give creators a creative space where they could publish creative fiction, and now poetry in a space free from extreme horror and sexual content.

They are challenged to write friendly and meaningful stories. They can write stories in fiction that include certain events such as childhood bullying as long as the story has context, is not overly violent, and has a moral at the end of it.

I wrote one such story myself called Rena which is about a child who didn't understand that what she was doing was bullying, and the moral is this,

Children have to be taught to understand their actions in order to become aware of their consequences. In other words her Mother realized that she had to be taught the act of kindness in order for her to learn not to be a bully.

I also write for other publications.

It gave me an idea.

What if vocal added a tool that creators could use to create their own magazine where they could add and showcase their own works while also showcasing the works of other creators stories that have inspired them.

A link that allowed them to share this magazine could be added, so that they could also showcase the stories they have added on social media or with friends.

This would help creators to drive more traffic to Vocal whilst enabling them to increase their earnings, alongside helping others to earn from their work too.

It would be a win/win situation.

Here in the United Kingdom, when I tell people that I read and write on Vocal, many do not know what I am talking about, and when I perform a search for Vocal on the internet, it is extremely difficult to find.

This means that a creator would have to work harder to drive traffic to Vocal. Plus Vocal does not drive traffic to itself, meaning it is left to us as creators to do so.

This means that when we promote our stories to people who may never have heard of Vocal, they are often reluctant to click that link because they view it as spam or do not think that the site is legitimate, and as paying members here, we do deserve to get more for our money, especially if you are a yearly subscriber like myself.

Another good reason for allowing the creation of magazines by creators on Vocal is that creators love to get creative with their work.

If tools were available for them to do so, they could create their own designs, feature stories they love to read, and maybe create one that features the niche they write in if they want to.

Recently a 'save story' feature was added to Vocal, which allows us to save stories we can read later.

When I use this feature, I have to remove the stories I have read, because I end up with too many. Another problem with this is that when you remove a story, and search for new ones to read you can't tell whether you have already read that story until you click on it and see a heart that you may have read there, resulting in reading the story twice.

Readers would be able to tell that they have read a story more easily if they could create their own magazine, because they will have already read the story before adding it; and there could be a feature where the magazine owners could create a feature list of stories they have read with a space for them to write a little about why they enjoyed reading a particular story which would encourage other readers to read it.

Many of writers and readers on Vocal are very enthusiastic about what they do here on Vocal.

Allowing them to create a magazine gives back to a vocal community who make this site an amazing place for creators to read and write.

Vocals biggest downfall is traffic. Even when I share a story outside of vocal, I find the majority of my reads come from inside, and I find that we get very few reads here on Vocal too, where as I get quite a few on Medium.

Vocal needs to offer creators more innovative ways to work with the platform if they truly want their readers to earn from their writing.

The challenges are good, but not everyone wants to enter them, and they are not simple to win.

I'm qualified in writing, and I have been writing all of my life, and even I can't win them which I find amusing!

Adding a magazine feature would be money well spent by Vocal, and it would be an innovative feature that would greatly improve the platform.

Writers write because they love writing, just as readers read because they love reading, and while we do like writing for free,

We should also be able to earn for the time and effort that we put in, especially if we are paying members.

It's about giving back. See it as a way of improving how the site works.

When you give something back to the readers and writers, they are more likely to engage with the platform, and they are more likely to stay.