Kaylynx: A Preface?

What is The Prose?

Seriously, I'm still trying to figure it out.

A friend suggested it to me. As someone who has tried all the typical platforms, from Wattpad to FictionPress, Royal Road, Quora, and literally everything in between, I immediately cringed at this suggestion.

While some places have value, a majority of them are cringe fests with angsty teenage writers who don't know our from are.

Still. I am quite literally a starving artist who has been working for 10+ years trying to make it as an author. So I said, what's one more website to try.

I've been here for... a week? Almost two? And here's what I've seen so far.

The people behind The Prose. Who tf are they and wtf do they do?

Well, according to their profile, they have made 535 posts, have 125.4k followers, and are following 69 people.

Their last 'update' post was April 10th of this year, mainly addressing bugs.

They supposedly have some kind of publishing service, last mentioned in March, announced in February. But their press page has literally 0 information on what they offer as a supposed publisher. While I have literally no opinions on this website so far, I would say as a seasoned writer who has been in the publishing arena for a long time, this is not exactly a reassuring sign and I would caution anyone who thinks they're going to get some big break out of this press.

But, again, I literally have no opinion yet on this website and also have no other information about the press to go off of, just basing this off the information that is publicly available.

Maybe I'll make it a point to look into it just for my own curiosity, but that kind of circles us back around to my first point of discussion...

Who are the people behind The Prose? And thus, that leads me to a second topic...

Is this even an active website?

Sure. On the one hand, I see a lot of content being posted and shared daily. So, for the users, it certainly is active.

But, again, back to point 1: what even is this website? Who's running it? Is anyone from the team actually keeping things up to date here? Or was it a Covid pet project that they ultimately got tired of and just happen to have enough money to keep the domain going while people continue to write and post on this otherwise unknown website? (I actually did go pretty far down their page to the end and saw posts from 2014 so clearly this place has been around a while... but dying out now, perhaps?)

I realize that may sound negative and harsh. These are just thoughts in my head as I actually take a little time to explore. Truly, I have no solid opinion on this website yet. Simply, some things I have noticed and that cause me to question.

What really began my questioning was the fact that I joined, published a few chapters of my novel, then got a bunch of followers.

Naturally, this was exciting, so I signed it to see what the fuss was about.

But here's the thing: my chapters have no views, no comments, no likes.

And one of my followers is... The Prose?!?!?! I am one of their 69 followers????

Heh. Nice.

Okay, but for real. WHAT??? Why would they only follow certain users. Am I *Special*?

lmao right?

Anywho. I have a pretty decent understanding of how these places work. But to get followers with no actual views, likes, or comments on what I had posted is... odd. And not that I'm one to judge, but some of the names of these followers are... odd. Spam/bots, perhaps? I don't know. I haven't been here long enough to figure that out.

Which, really, is why I started this post. I thought - hey, if these people are legit - if this site is legit - maybe I can try one of these posts things and see if anyone reads it and has anything to say about my thoughts here.

Maybe things work differently here than what I'm used to. Maybe my stats are off? Maybe they are bots. Or maybe I could actually find more success here then I will on any of those other crappy websites.

I'd be happy to hear people's thoughts, successes, failures, things they learned, etc, on this mysterious place. If anything, it'll just go to prove if these things are actually read, particularly by my 10 new followers or whatever the number is at the moment. And if the number continues to go up, hey, it'll be good for my self confidence, anyway. So thanks for that xD

Happy reading!