WriteOn Shutting Down

The "Powered By Amazon" writing community, WriteOn announced today that it will be closing as of March 22nd--a little over two years after initially opening to writers. The platform opened on March 11, 2014 and was meant to be Amazon's answer to Wattpad.

I think it's easy to get caught up in feeling that Amazon is unfair or cruel for taking away the community it had only started to build--and maybe it is, on some level. But I also think that those posting in the forums in anger about the news miss a vital fact about this and every other free online community: they don't owe you anything. This was a free experiment open to writers, and now that experiment is over. We may never get an explanation as to why it's ending so abruptly--but neither do we deserve one.

Shops, cafes, and restaurants close all the time when the customer base cannot support their rent--and online spaces are no different. In the past, online communities have simply withered as the next new thing came along. For example, Myspace was quietly left for Facebook, not being revamped until most of the user-base had lost interest anyway. However, with the recent shut down of Vine came the stark lesson that a company may make a harsh executive decision regardless of how interested the community is in a platform, if that platform is unsustainable.

I started an account on WriteOn as soon as the beta version opened up. I love writing communities, and WriteOn seemed like a great opportunity to expose my serial novel to new readers. Turned out I was right, and even managed to get a whopping 563 reads for Weather Vane Island. It may not sound like much, but it's a lot for me! Once, I was even featured on the site--a first for me on any platform. I'm sad to see it go.

As the PSA goes: always back up your work. That work should include the social connections you make to other writers, as well as the connection you might make to readers. I've already taken the opportunity to download my comments and take screenshots of my reads (you know, for those moments of intense self-doubt). To all the writers who focused on making WriteOn the welcoming community that it is: keep it going. Those people migrate, they don't disappear.
For now, I will be leaving my eggs in the baskets of Wattpad and Jukepop. If you read my serial, Weather Vane Island on WriteOn, you can continue to find it on those other websites. I should, after over a year of not contributing, be adding new chapters soon. Stay tuned. Write on.