We all spend a great deal of time reading. Indeed that is what shvoong.com is for. To read, to understand, and to try and
save time while doing it. So most of the time we look for reviews or abstracts and try to judge if something is worth diving into before we devote time to it.
The
internet itself is replete with many sites where you can read short stories or books. Sometimes for a fee, sometimes for a small amount of money. However, there is one such site, Tell You A Tale, which can be found at http://www.tellyouatale.com/ which goes one step better. The trick of this site is NOT for you to read short stories or poetry, but to LISTEN to them. As the header on the Home Page tell us - "The Storytelling Site That Speaks For Itself".
Though this is a fairly new site and new idea on the Internet, the owners of this site might just have caught on to a new niche for a product. Currently they encourage short stories or poetry to be sent in, which cannot take over 30 minutes in length to read and then they get a reader, (sometimes even an actor) to record the story. The story itself can go from anywhere between a couple of minutes to the maximum of thirty. They do charge their listeners to download stories, and the charge is automatically translated into points ($7.50 will buy you 50 points which can be used to download a great deal of stories). The more popular the story the more royalties the writer makes from it. This by the way seems to be the new formula for making some cash on the internet and is being used by many
legitimate sites.
Tell You A Tale is updated once a month and is new. But since they do offer some type of monetary compensation to the authors whose stories they use (albeit a small one at this stage) it may be just worth your while to check it out. You will not become a famous or rich writer by contributing to this site, but it is a legitimate way to get your story out there to the public.
Perhaps in the future they will begin to add more famous writers and actors to write and record the stories. It certainly is an idea whose time has come. If you like listening to stories, some are pretty good and their is an editing and acceptance process, or you want to write some short stories and see how your writing fares, http://www.tellyouatale.com/ is a real good place to start. In all research these people are legitimate and are trying to offer a new service to the community at large while building a viable business.
Check it out. You may begin to listen to stories, instead of just reading them.