Crititque Partner Matching Program

[hulagirl]

On Monday, April 18, I paid $40 and upgraded my account so I could join the Partner Matching Program and get a Critique Partner. My account is now showing that I upgraded and have a premium account. I have tried to join the Partner Matching Program every day since then and keep getting the response that I'm not eligible because I need to upgrade my account. I DID upgrade my account. I have submitted the Contact Us Form asking for help in rectifying this and have gotten no response.

Does anyone have an suggestions or a solution for me? I'd really like to join the program and have a critique partner. That's the whole reason I upgraded my account.

Thank you so much for any help anyone might be able to give me.

Jeanne

 

[Leslie]

Hi Jeanne
Apologies for this. We are finishing up the last bit of testing before pushing out the new changes before going live. Dawn will be running the next match either end of this week or early next week. However, you should be able to select your match options. Just not opt-in yet. I'll let you know when the match will be run.
Thanks!

 

[Leslie]

Oh also, did you submit the contact form via the link in the footer of the site? I have searched and do not see anything from you, which definitely concerns me!
Thanks!

 

[hulagirl]

Hi Jeanne
Apologies for this. We are finishing up the last bit of testing before pushing out the new changes before going live. Dawn will be running the next match either end of this week or early next week. However, you should be able to select your match options. Just not opt-in yet. I'll let you know when the match will be run.
Thanks!

Thank you, Leslie! I am looking forward to participating in the program.

I did submit the contact from from the bottom of the site and did get a confirmation that my message had been sent.

Jeanne

 

[John Berkowitz]

I've joined twice, but it never told me I had to be a premium member to participate.

I am concerned that all of the genres are basically just different kinds of Romance. What about Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Mystery? What about different age groups; middle grade, young adult, adult, etc? I have a middle grade historic fantasy. What am I supposed to check for the match? My only option is Historic Fiction, but I need a partner who is familiar with middle grade and fantasy.

I think this needs waaaaaaaaaaay more categories, and maybe just one for Romance.

 

[Leslie]

I've joined twice, but it never told me I had to be a premium member to participate.

I am concerned that all of the genres are basically just different kinds of Romance. What about Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Mystery? What about different age groups; middle grade, young adult, adult, etc? I have a middle grade historic fantasy. What am I supposed to check for the match? My only option is Historic Fiction, but I need a partner who is familiar with middle grade and fantasy.

I think this needs waaaaaaaaaaay more categories, and maybe just one for Romance.

Hi John
Right now CritMatch is free. We have been running this as a public Beta for a year now and will continue until we work out all the issues. We are happy to add additional genres. We have tailored this to the folks who were participating. I think I did add Mystery, SF and Fantasy last week. And YA. We have not added MG because we did not have any requests for that. All the romance subcategories were requested. Happy to add more!
thanks
Leslie

 

[John Berkowitz]

Hi John
Right now CritMatch is free. We have been running this as a public Beta for a year now and will continue until we work out all the issues. We are happy to add additional genres. We have tailored this to the folks who were participating. I think I did add Mystery, SF and Fantasy last week. And YA. We have not added MG because we did not have any requests for that. All the romance subcategories were requested. Happy to add more!
thanks
Leslie

Thanks for the swift reply and the clarification.

I've been doing this for quite awhile, and at the risk of making more work for you, any such matching system really needs TWO criteria: Genre and Age Group. Romance, Mystery, etc. are genres. Young Adult and Middle Grade are age groups. You need to be able to sort for both. Every book has both if these categories, and it makes a huge difference. And adult Sci-Fi book will be very different and have very different tropes, language, pacing, etc. from an Adult Sci-Fi. Same with Fantasy. Even Romance can be for adults and YA.

You have 11 genres, and of those 11, 7 are various forms of Romance. If you go into a book store, Romance is on one little shelf and the rest of the store is filled with a mix of all of the other genres. If your list is based on requests, then I fairly certain there will not be a match for me. It looks like everyone is writing Romance, and nobody is writing for children.

To be effective and accurate, a Critique Partner Match should have several levels of choice:
1) Fiction or Non-Fiction
2) Picture Book / Chapter Book/ Middle Grade / Young Adult / New Adult / Adult
3) Fiction Genre (Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Historic, Contemporary, Historic, Dystopian, Western, Men's Adventure, and more) You should be able to pick 2 or 3 (Mystery Romance, Historic Fantasy, Western Thriller, etc.)
4) Fiction Sub-genres. This is for fine-tuning, so optional. But there are really a half-dozen or more different flavors of Fantasy (Paranormal, Fairytale Retelling, Swords & Sorcery, Urban, Myth-based, etc), and the same for Sci-Fi (Military, Time Travel, Space Travel, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Post-Apocalyptic, etc.). There are Cozy Mysteries and Police Procedural Mysteries and Horror Mysteries. Here's an example: 144 Genres and Subgenres for Fiction Writing

Hope this is helpful.

 

[Leslie]

Hi John
Thanks for the suggestions, the age range is great idea and I will add that to the roadmap. Since this is in beta test still and is a completely new service for us we definitely welcome all suggestions. I can definitely add yours to the list of things we are considering for next updates. Some of what you are suggesting will make more sense when we more than a thousand people in the match pool. We are not quite there yet! But! We have big plans to get there soon!
Best
Leslie

 

[Cathie Dunn]

Hi Leslie,
I just tried to sign up, but when I clicked ’Save’, it sent me back to the top of the page. I ticked the opt-in boxes and one genre. It wouldn't let me choose more than one, though. I use Safari, if that helps.
Did you receive notification of my opt-in?
Many thanks,
Cathie

 

[Leslie]

Hi Leslie,
I just tried to sign up, but when I clicked ’Save’, it sent me back to the top of the page. I ticked the opt-in boxes and one genre. It wouldn't let me choose more than one, though. I use Safari, if that helps.
Did you receive notification of my opt-in?
Many thanks,
Cathie

Hi Cathie
I see that you are enrolled and have selected Historical Romance. You are all good! We only allow you to select one genre for each match. I you want to find a CP for the other genre we will be running this again every two weeks!
Thanks

 

[Cathie Dunn]

Hi Cathie
I see that you are enrolled and have selected Historical Romance. You are all good! We only allow you to select one genre for each match. I you want to find a CP for the other genre we will be running this again every two weeks!
Thanks

Hi Leslie,

That's great. Thank you very much.

Best,
Cathie

 

[JasonWrench]

Hello!

I've been really lucky with the Crit Program a few times. I do wish we had the ability to select multiple genres. I often have multiple writing projects across genres at any given time, so I wish I wasn't forced into one genre since they don't always match.

Also, is there a better way to reach out to members than using SavvyAuthors messaging? I don't always seem to have the best of luck contacting Crit Partners that way.

Jason

 

[ZoeMcKay]

Hi John
Thanks for the suggestions, the age range is great idea and I will add that to the roadmap. Since this is in beta test still and is a completely new service for us we definitely welcome all suggestions. I can definitely add yours to the list of things we are considering for next updates. Some of what you are suggesting will make more sense when we more than a thousand people in the match pool. We are not quite there yet! But! We have big plans to get there soon!
Best
Leslie

Hi, Leslie! Thank you for all you do! I definitely believe we need more options to choose from. Mine rarely fits what you have listed. I write YA and NA. Not everyone wants to critique those. Plus I'm writing a paranormal reverse harem. I selected paranormal romance, but not sure if everyone will be willing to critique RH.

Maybe a selection for heat levels as well? Some only do clean. Some only do steamy. I'm somewhere in the middle. So a heat rating of 1 to 5 would be optimal.

Thanks!
Zoe

 

[Suzanne Lazear]

Hi, Leslie! Thank you for all you do! I definitely believe we need more options to choose from. Mine rarely fits what you have listed. I write YA and NA. Not everyone wants to critique those. Plus I'm writing a paranormal reverse harem. I selected paranormal romance, but not sure if everyone will be willing to critique RH.

Maybe a selection for heat levels as well? Some only do clean. Some only do steamy. I'm somewhere in the middle. So a heat rating of 1 to 5 would be optimal.

Thanks!
Zoe

Zoe, I write the same stuff -- YA, NA, Paranormal and RH!

If it doesn't get too into the weeds algorithm wise I also think heat levels would be helpful as well as 'no romance.' Like my YAs have no romance because my MCs are too busy saving the world. I absolutely think we need all the flavors of romance, maybe even more, since I also was trying to figure out where I'd put my RH since yeah, that's not everyone's jam.

 

[Leslie]

Thanks for all of this. The concern I have right now, is that we would have so many categories that it would be unlikely to find a good match. right now we have most of our matches have good reviews that indicate that the match/crit is useful, so even the imperfect matching that we have now is is mostly working. That said, I don't want to discourage folks in other genres. How about if I set up a poll where you can both vote on and add new categories? Once a category gets a certain number of votes, then it gets added. That way we know that we have interest in other genres and therefore there is support for adding them?

Oh and sorry about the delay in response, I have been traveling and slammed.

 

[John Berkowitz]

Thanks for all of this. The concern I have right now, is that we would have so many categories that it would be unlikely to find a good match. right now we have most of our matches have good reviews that indicate that the match/crit is useful, so even the imperfect matching that we have now is is mostly working. That said, I don't want to discourage folks in other genres. How about if I set up a poll where you can both vote on and add new categories? Once a category gets a certain number of votes, then it gets added. That way we know that we have interest in other genres and therefore there is support for adding them?

Oh and sorry about the delay in response, I have been traveling and slammed.

Happy to give unsolicited advice! Actually, I think we need fewer categories, not more. If you look at the current list from inside the crit match settings, you'll see that most of those Romance categories have 0 people signed up for them. Just make it Romance. Maybe, if you can only choose one choice, add Historical Romance. But all of the others are just variations on the same genre. A Romance author aught to be able to crit a slightly different flavor of Romance. The more choices you add, the fewer matches you're going to get. So, rather than add dozens of flavors or the other genres, simplify the list and just use the main genres:

Romance
Historical Romance
Fantasy
Sci-Fi
Contemporary
Historical
Mystery
Horror
Adventure
Women's Fiction
Non-Fiction

If you can't program the system to accept two inputs (age + genre), maybe you could list the main genres for Adult, then list them again for YA, then list them again for MG (excluding the Romances and Women's Fiction).