It's 2026. Aside from increasing existential dread, what's new? For one, hello to the longtime friends and new ones alike.
Blogger became entirely unusable a while ago, but it's gotten worse. Comments don't show up on the back end, replying is clunky, formatting has gotten bizarre, updating the layout is nigh impossible…folks, it might be time to migrate. Incomplete has been a steady workhorse, but perhaps it needs to be put out to pasture. Where are we going? I don't fuckin' know. I spent a portion of my winter holiday looking at alternatives. Here's what I found:
- Wattpad might allow for free, serial posting, but there isn't a blogging or newsletter integration. Also, I made an account there some years ago just to experiment, and the story I put up got flagged for being smut and removed after nearly four years of existing in peace. Sure, plenty of erotica stays readable, but the risk of having my work suddenly disappear is pretty off-putting.
- Patreon has the same issue. Multiple authors have reported having their accounts or work suddenly shut down for erotic content, especially if there's a whiff of the taboo. For me, that might be the gray line of consent (aka Jesse's self-delusion) in the opening of Stay Away From Her/Power Plays, or repeatedly calling adult characters "boy" in Tanners and the Brute and The Banker's Boy despite stating that they're all at least 19 years old. The ability to interact more directly with you all is tempting, but the risk…
- Substack seems to have a better reputation with other erotica authors, but…ugh. Y'all, I'm tired. Substack has a steep learning curve, and seems to squash anything without massive readership. If I'm going to put in the work of migrating platforms, I might as well try to add a fourth reader to our ranks, right?
- Ream stories was designed for erotica authors, but I'm still trying to figure out if there's an easy way to interact with y'all beyond a newsletter. You know damn well I'm not keeping up a newsletter if it requires me to use more than one website. I was just complaining about having to go through this here blog for stray comments that slipped under the Blogger radar.
- Before you ask, moving to a Wordpress blog or Wix means no more porn, unless I pay for self-hosting. If I refuse to have a separate newsletter, you think I'm paying real money to host this free shit? Maybe if I'd made more than 35 bucks off my ebooks last year I'd have hosting money.
So I'm curious: have any of you used the aforementioned sites? Has reading, smut or no, on one of them been a better user experience than the others?
This time I'll actually be checking for comments more than once every two weeks.
