Super quick question about sotry length

[MelanieShaman]

IK am in the middle of rewriting all of my submitted works with better spelling, grammer and such. Should i devide them up as before or put them up as a whole? They are typically about 8000 words a part and most stories are 6-8 parts. So likely 50,000 words or more... Does the system even allow for stories of that size? or should i split em up?

(Would they be too long if i am able to post them in one go? Like readers losing interest.

 

[AchtungNight]

I recommend you keep to about the same length if it has worked well for you in the past. Post a link, and if I like what I see, maybe I’ll give you feedback.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone does.

I have followers who say they are put off reading either of my two 30k word stories. Then I have people who say “size matters”.

At the end of the day, it has to be what feels right for you.

Em

 

[GlennJenko]

I've seen stories of more than 50,000 words be published as one, so there's no problem there. As for splitting them, I'd say that's up to you. Do you think the story works better split off that way, or as a unified whole?

Personally, I'd be more inclined to read 6-8 8k word chapters than one 50k stonker because there's clear break points established, but that's just me. I know others feel differently.

 

[MelanieShaman]

Cool! thanks guys...oh one more question. SHould i just delete the stories i originally posted before i start posting so there is no confusion??

 

[RejectReality]

There are some massive stories posted as single submissions. Naturally, there's probably some sort of technical limit with how long a story can be, but 50k words isn't even in the ballpark. No worries there.

As to whether it's better to post in chapters or as a 1-shot... There's no definitive answer there. Do what works best for the story. If you originally wrote it as chapters, it may very well function best when presented in that way.

 

[RejectReality]

Cool! thanks guys...oh one more question. SHould i just delete the stories i originally posted before i start posting so there is no confusion??

You can't have duplicate stories, so you'll either have to edit the originals or remove the originals and repost.

If you choose to repost rather than edit, I strongly suggest you put an author's note at the top of the reposts stating such. It's not uncommon for people to recognize a story, but not remember the author, and accuse you of plagiarizing your own work when they see something appear as "New" when they've read it before.

Some also just frown upon reposting a story so it appears as new. They consider it cheating the system and will downrate you for that alone. If you combine a multi-submission story into a one-shot, that might provide some cover from this thinking. If you're simply replacing chapters with updated versions, I'd go the edit route to avoid the potential downside.

 

[MelanieShaman]

You can't have duplicate stories, so you'll either have to edit the originals or remove the originals and repost.

If you choose to repost rather than edit, I strongly suggest you put an author's note at the top of the reposts stating such. It's not uncommon for people to recognize a story, but not remember the author, and accuse you of plagiarizing your own work when they see something appear as "New" when they've read it before.

Some also just frown upon reposting a story so it appears as new. They consider it cheating the system and will downrate you for that alone. If you combine a multi-submission story into a one-shot, that might provide some cover from this thinking. If you're simply replacing chapters with updated versions, I'd go the edit route to avoid the potential downside.

Okay, i didn't know all that. I didn't realize you could edit stories already published up here.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

If a story is long, I prefer chapters. Then I can read a chapter and come back and read some more. Though I have written some long stories, I sometimes find it daunting to dig into a 50k word story, when I know it'll take me hours to read.

But as others have said, the choice is yours.

 

[RejectReality]

Okay, i didn't know all that. I didn't realize you could edit stories already published up here.

The editing process isn't intuitive, takes some getting used to, and there's a long lead time from submission to publication, but it does work.

The basic process is that you create a new submission with the same title ( or as much as will fit ) plus a notation such as *EDIT*. If the title is too long to include the notation, cut off just enough characters to include the notation, and put the full, original title ( including Ch. 01 and such ) in the Notes section of the submission form.

Since you're editing story text, you need to put the full edited text in there — not just the edited sections. Say in the notes section that you're updating the story text. If you make any other changes to the description, keywords, etc., then it's best to make a note of that in the notes section as well.

The lag time has been as much as a month or more from submission to publication of late. Edits have low priority. Once it does post, be aware that the site is cached, so the changes won't appear in public immediately, and may not even appear all at once. Page 1 may update to the new version, and then page 2 may take a while to catch up. It typically takes 24-48 hours for the cache to refresh with the full updated versions.

 

[JGittes]

I can only write long stories, 20k to 40k words. I am certain that I get far fewer reads on my stories (reads contrasted with views) because my view-to-vote averages decrease substantially with increased length. My longer stories average one vote per 250-300 views. Most authors report one vote per 100 views, and their stories are more in the 8k to 12k range.

 

[RejectReality]

I can only write long stories, 20k to 40k words. I am certain that I get far fewer reads on my stories (reads contrasted with views) because my view-to-vote averages decrease substantially with increased length. My longer stories average one vote per 250-300 views. Most authors report one vote per 100 views, and their stories are more in the 8k to 12k range.

When posting in chapters, the declining views are what keeps ( or boosts ) the vote per view. You can see the decline in views from chapter to chapter. In a single long submission, the people who bow out partway through are only visible from the "worse" vote per view.

You may get a few more people who get to the bottom of page 1, see the list of page numbers, and go "Oh hell no!" compared to chapters, but I'd say it's the natural attrition of long stories regardless of format that's responsible for most of it.

 

[alohadave]

You may get a few more people who get to the bottom of page 1, see the list of page numbers, and go "Oh hell no!" compared to chapters

I've done that a couple times. It's part of why I think that the listings should show either the word count or page count.

I don't mind reading longer works, but I have to be in the right mood for them.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

IK am in the middle of rewriting all of my submitted works with better spelling, grammer and such. Should i devide them up as before or put them up as a whole? They are typically about 8000 words a part and most stories are 6-8 parts. So likely 50,000 words or more... Does the system even allow for stories of that size? or should i split em up?

(Would they be too long if i am able to post them in one go? Like readers losing interest.

I believe that this is very category specific. The tolerance for a long story posted in Novel/Novellas is going to be much higher than in many other categories.

I had four stories in N/N that I originally broke up into smaller submissions when I posted them. After a few years and enough feedback from readers, I combined all of the parts for each and resubmitted them all as single submissions, ranging from 31 to 81 Lit pages. The stats for views, rating and feedback have improved for all of them.

 

[HordHolm]

I've done that a couple times. It's part of why I think that the listings should show either the word count or page count.

I don't mind reading longer works, but I have to be in the right mood for them.

There's a time issue, too. I have meetings and lessons and parental responsibilities broken up into chunks all over the place, and sometimes I have perhaps 30/45 minutes somewhere in the middle of the day to read something. Yes, I know I could bookmark it and come back to it, but I also know that either the mood might be gone, or I'll be too tired later, or any number of other things might crop up and get in the way. A page count might be useful (less so a word count - we might have a pretty clear idea of the words to pages ratio, but most readers are unlikely to).

 

[8letters]

Your stories are in T&C, I/T, and LS. I'd guess you'll get 50% more views by combining your chapters into a stand-alone story versus having them as chapters. A lot of people don't bother with chapter series.

I recommended deleting your old stories and posting the revised stories as new. I'm reposting my stories, and I've been putting a little intro at the start of each that says the date of the original posting, a couple of sentences on the stories and the comments it got, when I took it down, and what edits I made in the new version. I've had a lot of success with that.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

IK am in the middle of rewriting all of my submitted works with better spelling, grammer and such. Should i devide them up as before or put them up as a whole? They are typically about 8000 words a part and most stories are 6-8 parts. So likely 50,000 words or more... Does the system even allow for stories of that size? or should i split em up?

(Would they be too long if i am able to post them in one go? Like readers losing interest.

The system will take a story that is 2,000,000,000,000 bytes long, in English that two trillion letters long for an eight bit system, one trillion for a 16 bit system, 5 billion for a 32 bit system, 2.5 billion for a 64 bit system. You could write the longest story in history and still have enough room for all the footnotes.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone does.

I have followers who say they are put off reading either of my two 30k word stories. Then I have people who say “size matters”.

At the end of the day, it has to be what feels right for you.

Em

Hmm... I have a couple in the 100,000 word, one almost 200,000 words.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Cool! thanks guys...oh one more question. SHould i just delete the stories i originally posted before i start posting so there is no confusion??

It would be better to submit the parts, if you're going to do that, as EDITs to the originals. You do that by adding -EDIT to the end of the title. Then if the title is to long put as much as you can of the title allowing to enough room for the -EDIT. Than put the entire title in the Note to Admin test box. And if the Title it the same as the old ones, Laurel won't post the a new with the same title. if they are the same text.

 

[alohadave]

The system will take a story that is 2,000,000,000,000 bytes long, in English that two trillion letters long for an eight bit system,

Approximately 350 billion words (average length of words in English: 4.7 letters). It'd be 93 million Lit pages.

2.5 billion for a 64 bit system. You could write the longest story in history and still have enough room for all the footnotes.

Approximately 438 million words. 116 thousand Lit pages.

The world record for longest book is Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" at 9,609,000 characters (each letter counts as one character. Spaces are also counted, as one character each).

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-novel

 

[MelanieShaman]

Your stories are in T&C, I/T, and LS. I'd guess you'll get 50% more views by combining your chapters into a stand-alone story versus having them as chapters. A lot of people don't bother with chapter series.

I recommended deleting your old stories and posting the revised stories as new. I'm reposting my stories, and I've been putting a little intro at the start of each that says the date of the original posting, a couple of sentences on the stories and the comments it got, when I took it down, and what edits I made in the new version. I've had a lot of success with that.

This is actually the direction I am leaning.

 

[AmberSolis]

IK am in the middle of rewriting all of my submitted works with better spelling, grammer and such. Should i devide them up as before or put them up as a whole? They are typically about 8000 words a part and most stories are 6-8 parts. So likely 50,000 words or more... Does the system even allow for stories of that size? or should i split em up?

(Would they be too long if i am able to post them in one go? Like readers losing interest.

https://www.literotica.com/faq/publishing/editing-published-work

This will take you to Literotica's link on editing and re-submitting a story for correctional edits (spelling, grammar, etc.)

Specifically, though, I cut and pasted this excerpt from the link:

"Simply submit the new version using the same method you submitted the previous one (as a new story), only adding the word “EDITED” to the title (ex. “My Sexy Firefighter Ch. 03 - EDITED”) so that we know to replace the old text with the new text. We will then replace the original text with the new text. Your story will retain its previous voting score, views, favorites, and comments.

"Note: If “Story Title - EDITED” does not fit in the title field, simply type “STORY EDIT” in the title field. In the Note to Admin field, type the full title of the story to which the new edit should be applied."

I can personally vouch that this works. As the very first story I posted, it was supposed to be a warm summer night, 80 degrees F. But I missed one critical little error in editing, and had my characters running around naked on a night when it was ... 8 degrees. I don't care if you're a member of the Polar Bear Club, nobody goes running around naked at 8 degrees! Well, not for long, anyway! That's cold in Celsius, even.

I used the process above, re-submitted it, and it posted, and kept all the stats it had earned up to that point.