How Vocal Can Help Fiction Authors Grow Their Fan Base and Earn Extra Money

What Is Vocal

Vocal is a community of creators who can easily share their stories, get discovered, and earn money as they go. Vocal is known worldwide for offering top-quality, inspiring stories for millions of readers.

Since launching on November 30, 2016, Vocal has grown exponentially by adding categories and creators to their site. With the introduction of their writing challenges in January of 2020, they created a buzz of excitement over the opportunity to win large cash prizes by submitting a short story using their writing prompt.

That’s how I found out about Vocal only one month ago. With the grand prize of 20K dangling like a juicy carrot in front of me, I had to investigate what this website was all about.

Not only was I super impressed with how easy it was to use and navigate, but I also loved that the pages weren’t filled with third-party advertisements. When people read my stories, they aren’t distracted by ads—because there aren’t any ads at all.

How Vocal Is Valuable To New And Established Fiction Authors

Vocal is perfect for gaining new readers. As a USA Today Bestselling Author with 20+ published books in fantasy, paranormal romance, and contemporary romance, I know how hard it is to build a wide and active readership.

One of the tried-and-true methods to gain new readers is to offer what’s called a “Reader Magnet.” This is where someone has to sign up for a newsletter in order to get a free story. The free story gives them a sample of my writing style and an introduction into one of my genre’s worlds so they can decide if they want to buy and read my other books.

But, what happens if they don’t want to sign up for a newsletter?

Or worse, what if they sign up for the newsletter, download the free book, and then never read it because they got distracted?

Vocal neatly solves this problem by offering the story for free—and it pays the author when people read it.

What Will Vocal Do For Authors?

Let’s say you’re a new author—no published book, no audience, no readers—but you have a draft of your story plus deleted scenes. Do you realize those deleted scenes are like gold? People love to see what could have been but didn’t make the final cut.

• Edit and polish your deleted scene or write a back-story for one of your beloved characters (between 500-2500 words work best).

You can see an example of how I did this with my Vocal story: Falling Into The Unknown. (I always intended to write a reader magnet for this character from my fantasy series, but I never got around to it until the Deep Dive Vocal Challenge fit her back-story perfectly.)

• Find a fun graphic to include with your story.
• Create a catchy title/subtitle for the scene.
• Put a call to action at the end of your story (such as your email address, a link to your pre-order, or a sign-up to your newsletter so you can notify them when the book releases).
• Post it to Vocal.
• Share the Vocal story link with your personal social media pages.

The stories your share on Vocal will give you valuable experience regarding what your readers want. If your story receives a lot of page reads, hearts, and tips, then you know you’ve hit on a subject that people are interested in reading. This will also teach you how to write a catchy title or subtitle for which people are actively searching.

The more you write, the better you get at writing. Consider these short stories as your education for getting your novels out into the world for people to buy and enjoy.

Can you think of many other places where you can get paid while you learn while also building a reader fan base?

How Do Authors Get Paid By Vocal

There are 4 ways an author can get paid on Vocal.

1. Page reads/views

The page read payout per page is negligible ($6/1000 reads), but it does add up. Not only that, it’s better than not getting paid when someone downloads your book sample. Page reads are paid out when you hit $35 as a standard Vocal member (free) or $20 as a Vocal+ member (currently $9.99/mo).

2. Tips from readers

Readers can leave a tip ranging from $1-20 at the end of the story. These tips are distributed to you immediately (minus a tiny transaction fee, depending on whether you sign up with a free or Vocal+ account).

3. Bonuses from Vocal for milestones or writing excellence (subject to change at any time)

• Vocal currently offers bonuses for publishing 5, 10, and 50 stories at $5, $10, and $50 respectively. I can’t guarantee this bonus structure will continue, but I’ve received the first two bonuses already.
• They have also offered bonuses for liking other Creators’ stories,
• tipping other Creators,
• reaching page read milestones such as 1,000 or 10,000 page views,
• getting mentioned on Vocal’s Instagram page,
• or getting your story picked by their Moderating team as a Top Story, Awesome Story, or Moderator appreciated story.

Two great Vocal articles to read more about bonuses can be found here: Vocal Milestones and Bonuses and Introducing Creator Bonuses on Vocal.

4. Prizes from Vocal’s writing challenges

Vocal has offered 114 writing challenges since January 2020. The grand prize payouts have ranged from $1,000-$22,500, with second and third place payouts as well.

As long as you follow the submission and community guidelines for each challenge, you can enter as many stories as you like.

The writing challenge topics are extremely broad which make them interesting and fun to write. Plus, the incentive of possibly winning a chunk of change is pretty amazing.

Join Fiction Authors on Vocal Facebook Group

I created a community on Facebook just for this post. Click here to join: Fiction Authors on Vocal.

In this space, we can help promote each other’s stories and encourage one another to keep writing and sharing.

Other Facebook groups for Vocal contributors that I’ve found helpful are:

1. Vocal Media Creators Hub

2. Vocal Creators Saloon

3. The Vocal Creators Lounge

I hope this article has given you some great ideas for how Vocal can enhance your author journey and I look forward to reading your stories.

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading my article! I hope this made your day a little brighter.

I appreciate your time to consider my thoughts, and I hope they help you.

If you enjoyed this article, you can let me know by adding a "heart," or by reaching out to me on Instagram at @amyproebstel!

If you want to support my writing, check out my author profile for more articles, thoughts, and short stories. Tips are never an obligation, however, they are always deeply appreciated!