When the topic of saving short fiction comes up, it inevitably turns to money. I don’t want to talk about money right now. Rest assured, I’ll come back to it, but right now, I want to talk about the second best thing you can do for short story or magazine that you enjoy.
Tell someone about it.
I think David de Beer made some pretty good points in his recent post about promoting and sharing. As he mentions, I installed a tool called ShareThis at Clarkesworld Magazine back in December. It’s pretty easy to find. Just look for the little green icon and the words “Share This” at the end of any story, commentary, or interview. When you click on that button, it gives you a nice little menu of places that you can share that page with. It even gives you an option to email the link to a friend. It doesn’t get much more convenient than that.
But does it help?
Definitely.
Our usage stats for ShareThis aren’t fantastic, but since adding it, I’ve seen an increase in incoming traffic from sites like StumbleUpon or Digg. The way those sites work, the more people that recommend a page, the better. A single person, even a completely friendless person, could end up sending hundreds of people to a magazine. There’s no reason we should think of this as restricted to online magazines either. Many print magazines are placing sample content online. What better way to encourage that behavior?
To wrap this up, I’d like to ask a favor of you. Create a StumbleUpon, Digg or Reddit account today. I seem to have developed a preference for StumbleUpon. Then go recommend one or two stories you’ve read online and enjoyed. Heck, get a friend to do it too.
