Do we have any success stories yet? I want to read them!

Question

This community has been around long enough that some of us just must have gotten to the point of having a fully developed product of their efforts. Whether it be a novel, game, short story, or whatever. For example, I have two shorts in the polish-up stages, although I have no idea what I will do with them. My point however, is that I have read so many fascinating ideas from others here, and I really want to see what the final outcome has been. I want to read your works.

Now, I know the SE network generally discourages anything dealing with advertising or promotion, but can we somehow find an exception in this particular community? Is is that bad to have posts in some appropriate location that reads, "Thanks to the answers I received on these three questions, I am published. Here's a link to it on Amazon ...."

My real question then, is what is that appropriate location? Here on meta, a dedicated chat, something in the blog?

Further, once we have that answer straightened out, might I humbly request our mods to make it happen?

Answer 1

I agree with the suggestions in this answer to use your profile and (responsible) promotion in relevant answers. In addition, I don't see why we couldn't have a "what are your success stories?" question here on meta, where people can add answers saying what they've made and where to get it (if it's published).

The community blog also welcomes fiction, if you're not trying to sell your work.

Answer 2

Now, I know the SE network generally discourages anything dealing with advertising or promotion, but can we somehow find an exception in this particular community?

That's not true. Properly used, advertising and promotion are fine and supported. For example, every profile has a webpage link that can be used for promotion (it could go to a blog or author page).

The problem comes when people advertise or promote instead of answering:

Hi! It's only tangentially related to your question, but you mentioned one of my critical keywords. So to harvest some page rank, I'm going to post about my super duper Snake Oil.

And it doesn't have to be snake oil. A legitimate product posted not as a real answer but purely for promotional reasons is problematic.

That said, on some Stacks people can post things like "My product Foo does exactly what you need! Here are its capabilities: ..." That's fine so long as it is responsive to the question and the person doesn't hide the affiliation.

Anyway, to get back to your real question, it is entirely appropriate to post a link to some web page that shows your published works in your profile. That will work regardless of stack.

I personally would be fine with a meta question with a unique tag (e.g. graduated-works) so that people could hide it. People could post a link to say something like "Woo hoo! I'm going to be published as [Title] by [Author]. [Link] Here's the blurb: ..." Personally, I'd like to see that, but it should get community consensus first.

I don't participate in chat or on the blog, so I'll leave that up to those communities. If there's going to be just one place, I'd prefer Meta because then I'd see it.