I was put onto Stardust Literacy via a video promotion on Tiktok sent to me by a friend, who suggested I create an account and put up a book or two to increase my reach in the local market etc.
I had a look at the site and it seemed legit, a quick check revealed the site had a good reputation - at least security wise, and wasn't a scam. At least, supposedly. (I still reserve judgement on that count.)
The premise is that authors post or share their books on the site and instead of people buying the books, the authors get paid according to how many views their books get. At least, that's what the lady in the Tiktok video said. I didn't see any explanations of that on the website itself when I went there to register as an author - and not in the author dashboard either - perhaps that was a red flag?
Days later, I received an email from Stardust providing links to FAQ pages, one of which gave details of how the site is supposed to work.
Of note, the email addressed "important changes to the author policy". The question I have at this point, is whether or not I would have been sent these links had they not changed their author policy, and how would I have seen these FAQ's otherwise?
The "Author Policy" explanation at the end of the links explains that "Earnings are calculated monthly using a proprietary algorithm. Minimum payout threshold is R100.", and at least they give the option of bank EFT, but do support PayPal payments. Props to them for that at least.
There are several other platforms that share this marketing premise, to mention Wattpad and Kindle Vella as just two examples. I've been looking for local South African options to market/promote and sell my books on, rather than the increasingly iffy US-based ones, so I decided to give it a try. What have I got to lose, right?
It still didn't explain when or where or how payment details, bank account number etc. would be entered, but after all that, I assumed that it would take place when there was a first payment due. Perhaps I'm just being overly nit-picky there, but okay. Let's see how that plays out.
Registration was smooth and easy. Free as stated. First problem: I couldn't add a profile photo. I tried several times, days apart, and I got the same error message every time. I tried resizing the image as the dialog said it wanted it in square format, less than 5mb, this made no difference. This system seems to be broken.
There was also no help function. Not even a chatbot to tell me it was sorry it can't help me, but have a nice day anyway, okay?
So I started the upload/entry process of my first book as a trial run. Cover upload, no problem; entry of title and about blurb, done; it was when I tried to upload the content of the book that I encountered the second problem: It needed the story to be uploaded in separate chapters. Separate ...chapters?! With actual titles??
I suppose that's because of the incremental nature of these sites - you're supposed to release a number of new chapters at a time, so readers can follow along and keep up. But still... chapters?!
Why's that a problem? Because this is the 21st century... and anyway - who the fuck still writes in chapters? I use asterisms, and always have. Anyway, so after a bit of fancy finger work, I subdivided my 157 page novel into 22 chapters - with snazzy names I might add - and uploaded them all to the book file, and hit "publish". After all, why not? It's just a test, innit? (Yes, I used "innit" - it's sarcasm. If you want to get all condescending about my language, you can fuck right off!) "Never let it be said that I'm too stuck in my ways to avoid missing out on a potentially good thing." she says, wryly.
More issues:
I can't see how my book appears on their site from the author dashboard where you publish it from (being able to view it from the dashboard is a standard across every other publishing platform I've ever been on, btw). There's no link in my user/author profile for me to open its page or copy the link to share my book on social media or in a newsletter or whatever. To do that, you have to go to the site's homepage and manually search for the book title in the hopes of finding it - which is doable, but it is a schlepp to go the long way round. This shows poor web design and reflects poorly on the amount of consideration for authors by the admins/owners.
Next, logging in is a pain in the ass. Even though it does offer a "log in with Google" option - which does work - you have to log in again every single time you leave the site and return, even if the "remember me" checkbox is ticked.
Another issue I had was the edit function: when you edit a chapter of your book, or upload the content, the window offers the choice of manual editing, or AI editing. What sort of a writer would USE AI editing of their own work, especially at the point where you're ready to publish it? No thanks, you can keep that shit. Probably explains the sort of rubbish I see on the home page feed of the website, with spelling and grammar errors in the titles of book covers and so forth. Picture if you will, books with fancy cover images - but mangled titles such as "How Did He Changed Me?" litter the site's digital shelves. Okay, so most of the writers seem to not be English first-language speakers - fair enough. However, even the author names look unprofessional - "Ms. O" and "Precious" for example. Perhaps this site really is just geared to cater for bored students or housewife types trying their hand at writing for views to see how it goes? I didn't notice many male writer names either - which is also a bit of a red flag. Is this site a "romance-only" thing? This author wants to know!
Trying to view all the books in a particular genre shows just how unstable this site actually is. Clicking the "View all" link in the book preview cavalcade just crashes the site and produces an "Error 404 not found". Apparently there's an app you can install on your device... but given all of this, I don't think I'll be taking the risk on my PC, so - no thanks. Not until I've made my mind up about this platform being on the level.
At the bottom of my book's listing page on Stardust Literacy, there's a "More by this author" listing - which features books I've never heard of before. Nope. Those ain't mine. Never seen 'em. Perhaps this is because I haven't published any other books on this increasingly sus-looking site (and probably won't either) and well, they probably just want to direct their clients to other books? That might be plausible - but, trouble is, if people see the covers of the books they say are mine, well... it doesn't create a good impression of me - or my ACTUAL books, does it? So no - I don't like that at all. Please don't do that. Rather title it "Books similar to this one" or something else instead - even if it is also a lie.
Perhaps the biggest issue I have with this platform is that it doesn't have a real 'dashboard' to give users any reports or actual stats - how many chapters or pages were read? How many people read my book? Just two examples of info that isn't provided at all. It only lists "views".
The first red (or "read") flag for me though, is that the platform never asked for banking details - and I see nowhere to add them. How will the managers or admins or whatever they are, ever know where to send my money if my book reaches the required number of "views" to earn anything?
I have questions. Such as, at what point do they decide to pay you anything? Admittedly, I saw nothing at all on the site that explains anything for authors - how much they pay you, and for what. Or how.
How does anyone know they're not just posting your book on their site (admittedly for free) just to get "views" while the platform shares them and probably (I don't know) inserts ads between the pages and earns money that way - without paying authors anything at the end of the day?
How did it go?
By the end of the first day, "Blachart" had two views. By the following afternoon, it still only had 4 views. By that evening, 6 - and I had my first follower - whose name "spreeeeeee" didn't seem bot-like at all. There is a five star rating system at the bottom of the book's page (which I had to manually search for, it's https://stardustliteracy.com/read/book-866 incidentally) - by the end of the 2nd day, it had the 6 views and one 5-star rating. On the morning of the following day, it was still just six views and one rating, and there it stayed for the next three days. On the morning of the sixth day, my view count went up to 7.
My five minutes of Stardust Literacy "fame" seemed to be up.
I decided to give it a few more days, maybe a week, just to see how it goes. If I get any actual human interaction or something, like I don't get on Amazon, KDP or Audible - or on YouTube - it might be a little bit worth it, but ultimately I have my doubts.
And, like I said... I have questions. Lots of questions.
NINE MONTHS LATER....
As it turns out, I forgot about this site completely - for about nine whole months. Being preoccupied with my Ph.D thesis might have had something to do with that - but anyway. I just stumbled across the shortcuts I'd saved, and decided to follow up. There were 26 reads of "Blachart" - and no stats to say how many read the whole thing, or how many stopped a few pages in after realizing they were in over their heads. There was still just the one review - five stars, which I always appreciate, and no comments. There was also still no sign in my dashboard of mention of payment, or my 26 reads - or if they were worth anything in that respect.
Be that as it may, this site looks to be every bit as much a waste of time as those other similar sites I mentioned earlier - and that about sums it up.
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