More Suggestions for Vocal

Awhile back I wrote a piece sharing a few ideas I had to improve Vocal. You can read them by clicking here. Ever since that warm reception I have jotted down ideas as they came to me to help improve the site (Or at least give me something to publish and get those juicy reads.). I hope no one working at Vocal will take these ideas as a criticism I really do enjoy the site and the community I’ve found here but I think improvements can always be made. Also sorry in advance if any of these features do presently exist and I’m just too technologically illiterate to notice them.

From scrolling to page turning

They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover but I destinctly remember my teachers judging me on whatever format I used to write essays in. Which makes me think about the way Vocal is set up now. Currently no matter the length of your peice, the only way to reach the end is too scroll to the bottom. Nothing wrong with this approach but a cool addition would be to change the format to something you’d be more accustomed to seeing on a Kindle, Nook, or other Ereader. A page format that allows you move forward or backward at the tap of a button (Or screen.) instead of scrolling. Maybe I’m just old fashioned but using this option when I’m reading all the great fiction published on Vocal would be particularly appealing to me, just so it has a more nice look to it (What do you want I grew up reading paperbacks.). If something like this were to be implemented I think a writer should be able to set a standard format for each story but still have an option for readers to change it at anytime. Allowing a toggle to set a standard for both reading and writing stories on Vocal.

Read time/word count

Sometimes I really want to sit down and get transported to another world letting the seconds turn into minutes to than become hours… other times I’m just waiting to pick up food and just browsing to keep myself entertained in the interim. With Vocal its impossible to know before hand what I’m getting myself into. Is it a long epic or something the writer had to really stretch to reach that six hundred word count? I got no way of know until I click on a title and try to scrolling, even than it’s a kinda guessing game. Having somewhere near the title a word count and/or estimated read time would really help readers manage their time. The timer doesn’t have to be exact just a little heads up so you know what your getting yourself into is all I’m asking.

An app dammit!

I mean come on it’s 2022 (At least when I’m writing this.) we need to have an app. There’s an app for everything, I’m actually kinda impressed Vocal has survived this long without one. I would imagine much of the groundwork is already laid, I already read Vocal on my phone all the time, heck I’m writing this on my phone right now! So I can’t imagine coding an app would be too difficult. This would also put Vocal on peoples screens all the time integrating it into their daily routines. Worthwhile if we want to grow the amount of readers.

Where my new reads at?

I don’t know about you but I love seeing that I’ve gotten more reads. Even if you aren’t doing this for money or even if your loaded, it’s nice to see that someone took the time to read something you spend effort creating. I just wish our stats page would take it a step further and show us which story is eating us those new reads. This would be especially helpful for those who take their work seriously and are determined to be one of the greats. It would be so helpful to see what your audience is enjoying and which might need some extra work. All I know is I am having a harder and harder time keeping track of we’re my audience is at the more stories I publish.

Conclusion

If you’ve read this far just let me star off by saying thank you. I hope you found it at least mildly amusing and it inspires you to think and send in your own suggestions to make Vocal a place more hospitable to readers and writers alike. Also don’t forget to check out my previous suggestions for more inspiration. Again thank you for reading and I hope you’ll keep reading so long as I keep putting things out.