Is this the new record?

[AwkwardlySet]

It's Sunday, the day meant for lazing about.

So I thought I could browse the categories that generally interest me to check the new stories. It took me a while to notice that I was scrolling more than usual. So I counted the stories in the categories that I usually check. Surprised, I then checked the most popular categories. Even more surprised, I decided to count the stories that were published today in all categories.

I believe you will find the results overwhelming.

Erotic Horror 2
Toys 2
Interracial 2
Non-erotic 3
Anal 5
Humor 5
Non-human 6
Novels 6
Lesbian 6
Mind Control 7
First Time 9
Celebrities 9
Audio 11
Mature 12
Romance 14
Group Sex 14
Exhibitionist 17
Transgender 18
Fetish 21
Gay Male 27
SciFi&Fantasy 29
NonCon 30
BDSM 36
Loving Wives 37
Erotic Couplings 46
Incest Taboo 46

And it all totals to a whooping 420 stories published today!

I'll spare you my usual rant. But I would like to hear your genuine opinions about this trend and about questions such as How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything? How can your story reach the readership?

As I said, I am not going to criticize Literotica and I know none of this is up to us, so I would like to hear your honest feelings about this trend and maybe even projections. Will the daily story count continue to increase indefinitely and do you think that's a good thing for your own writing? I am genuinely curious about your opinions.

I don't wish to rant as I sometimes do, and I would also like to hear some honest thoughts and not platitudes.

 

[nice90sguy]

I don't wish to rant as I sometimes do

(leaves thread)

 

[alohadave]

How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything?

It takes about 10 minutes to browse through each day's new stories. I do it every day.

420 is unusually high. Slightly less than 225 is normal (just less than 3 full pages). But there is always variation.

 

[lovecraft68]

It's Sunday, the day meant for lazing about.

So I thought I could browse the categories that generally interest me to check the new stories. It took me a while to notice that I was scrolling more than usual. So I counted the stories in the categories that I usually check. Surprised, I then checked the most popular categories. Even more surprised, I decided to count the stories that were published today in all categories.

I believe you will find the results overwhelming.

Erotic Horror 2
Toys 2
Interracial 2
Non-erotic 3
Anal 5
Humor 5
Non-human 6
Novels 6
Lesbian 6
Mind Control 7
First Time 9
Celebrities 9
Audio 11
Mature 12
Romance 14
Group Sex 14
Exhibitionist 17
Transgender 18
Fetish 21
Gay Male 27
SciFi&Fantasy 29
NonCon 30
BDSM 36
Loving Wives 37
Erotic Couplings 46
Incest Taboo 46

And it all totals to a whooping 420 stories published today!

I'll spare you my usual rant. But I would like to hear your genuine opinions about this trend and about questions such as How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything? How can your story reach the readership?

As I said, I am not going to criticize Literotica and I know none of this is up to us, so I would like to hear your honest feelings about this trend and maybe even projections. Will the daily story count continue to increase indefinitely and do you think that's a good thing for your own writing? I am genuinely curious about your opinions.

I don't wish to rant as I sometimes do, and I would also like to hear some honest thoughts and not platitudes.

I am not a stat geek here and couldn't tell you what the average number of new stories a day is, but that does seem very high.

My thought on the number is going by recent number of complaints, the site is behind on publishing and maybe Laurel is catching up? If that's the case I wouldn't see this as happening all the time, maybe just a few days until the backlog is wiped out?

TBH, I blame part of the backlog on the ever increasing amount of author challenges that get pushed up to the top of the file, pushing standard offerings further down, the worst of which is the 750-word challenges where people are writing multiples of these things the readers seem to have proven they have little interest in, but get top billing and clog the file. But I;m sure there is more to it than that, but it is a factor.

Lit seems to continue to grow, but also thinks that no matter how much it grows, the same two people can continue to run it, and this is an effect of that. Is what it is.

As for how someone can read these in one glut, not everyone reads every category and there is always the favorite/bookmark feature

But I do imagine that in the categories that saw large numbers like I/T LW and Sci Fi those authors are going to see lower than average numbers with that much to browse at once. No, wait, most of sci fi will be another installment of a bunch of endless series, so they'll probably be okay.

To be snarky I think its great that the site that doesn't allow 'real' non con stories has 30 coming out today along with 7 in 'there is no way this isn't rape' Mind Control.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It takes about 10 minutes to browse through each day's new stories. I do it every day.

420 is unusually high. Slightly less than 225 is normal (just less than 3 full pages). But there is always variation.

Until today, my estimate was always around 150 new daily stories.

How do you do it all in ten minutes? I mean, I know you are hardly the average reader, but you must have some strict criteria you use to discard the stories without even clicking on them, because just clicking on a story and then immediately clicking back 420 times would take more than ten minutes.

 

[TheLobster]

And it all totals to a whooping 420 stories published today!

Truly a blazing high!

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

And it all totals to a whooping 420 stories published today!

I'll spare you my usual rant. But I would like to hear your genuine opinions about this trend and about questions such as How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything? How can your story reach the readership?

I'm WAY too lazy to do this for all of today's stories, but I just checked the thirty-seven submissions in LW.

A whopping TWENTY of those stories were less than one full page long. And another seven were less than two full pages long. This means, there's only ten submissions that take more than five minutes to actually read, which I reckon the average Lit user will reduce even further by looking at the ratings before clicking on them.

After taking a quick glance, I/T with its forty-six submissions seems to be the same. So... yeah. That's how the average reader can sift through all of those "stories".

 

[jaF0]

I can never see past the first page of new stories in any category.

 

[alohadave]

Until today, my estimate was always around 150 new daily stories.

How do you do it all in ten minutes? I mean, I know you are hardly the average reader, but you must have some strict criteria you use to discard the stories without even clicking on them, because just clicking on a story and then immediately clicking back 420 times would take more than ten minutes.

It's just my daily routine. I browse through the list and ignore categories I don't like, open stories that look interesting in a new tab, and read them at my leisure.

I don't open every story, because I know there is plenty that I'll never be interested in.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It's just my daily routine. I browse through the list and ignore categories I don't like, open stories that look interesting in a new tab, and read them at my leisure.

I don't open every story, because I know there is plenty that I'll never be interested in.

Ahaa, so it's the first pass that takes 10 minutes, and then you check out the couple of stories you opened in a new tab and give them a chance? This is remarkably similar to my own approach, although I can't say that I do it every day.

 

[rteny3245]

I'm currently following 149 authors, so I usually don't even check the new story page unless none of the authors I follow have published something I'm interested in that day. As a new author, I'm honestly surprised my stories get read at all, but I've been thrilled to pick up a few followers and receive appreciative comments from readers.

Here’s how I approach finding new stories, and seeing things from the other side as a new author has been pretty eye-opening. I don’t usually browse entire categories, which helps narrow down the options. At least half of the new stories are in categories I wouldn’t even look at, so I skip those titles altogether.

I prioritize stories with red H’s in certain categories. Then, I check the word count to see if it matches my current mood—usually somewhere between 6,000 and 15,000 words. Titles and descriptions play a big role in catching my interest. I’ve recently learned about tags, but I’m cautious about spoilers, so I don’t check them too often.

Ironically, my first story is part of a series that I probably wouldn’t have read myself. It’s in a category I don’t usually explore, and the first chapter is longer than I typically prefer. But I wrote it to get a thought out of my head and into some form, and it’s been interesting to see how readers have responded.

It would be fascinating to see this data tracked over time. It’s only been about 14 days since I submitted my first story, but watching the process—from waiting for approval, to having my third story sent back for errors, to seeing the publish date—has been really interesting.

My final anecdote is that I’ve been feeling a bit down lately, and the weather has been terrible, so I’ve had the time to write and edit. I’m about to publish my third story in just 14 days. I know I won’t be able to keep up this pace, but it feels good to finally put out the story I’ve been writing in my head every night before bed for over a year.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I prioritize stories with red H’s in certain categories.

I tried doing that:

https://forum.literotica.com/thread...e-new-stories-over-the-last-few-days.1618139/

 

[ronde]

I'll spare you my usual rant. But I would like to hear your genuine opinions about this trend and about questions such as How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything? How can your story reach the readership?

I don't think there are many readers who look at the new story list and read a story or two from each category. The "average reader" is a reader who has a few categories that interest them and a few authors in those categories who they follow. I think that's reflected in the number of new stories in each category. Anything under 10 new stories is probably a niche category with a few loyal followers who read all the stories in that category. They don't usually browse anything else until they've had their fill of their favorites. My own stories seem to support this theory. If I drift out of my own favorite categories, my number of reads, votes, comments, and ratings go down.

From what I've seen here over the years, the best way to help your story reach a lot of readers is to pick a few categories you enjoy writing and have enough knowledge about to write stories that seem to be real or at least plausible. If you don't like the category or if you don't know enough about it to write intelligently, it will show in your work and readers won't like it. It isn't volume, it's quality that keeps readers looking for your newest story. The second best way is to enter contests, but again in your chosen categories. Readers seem to be willing to browse outside their normal fare for contest entries.

Another thing that is important to do is to compare how your story metrics do in each category in which you write. You'll never attract a significant number of followers unless you're writing in categories favored by a significant number of readers.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'll spare you my usual rant. But I would like to hear your genuine opinions about this trend and about questions such as How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything? How can your story reach the readership?

I don't think many readers sift through the full list of new stories. They check out stories from their favorited authors, they just scan their favorites few categories or they only consider the highest scoring new offers.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I don't think many readers sift through the full list of new stories. They check out stories from their favorited authors, they just scan their favorites few categories or they only consider the highest scoring new offers.

I think there is truth in your words. But that doesn't bode well for new authors or those who don't have many devoted followers who can boost their story rating early enough.

I don't think there are many readers who look at the new story list and read a story or two from each category. The "average reader" is a reader who has a few categories that interest them and a few authors in those categories who they follow.

I don't know. I am definitely a reader with narrow taste, but my experience with followers showed me that plenty of avid readers read almost every category more or less. I don't know if they qualify as the average reader though.

Anything under 10 new stories is probably a niche category with a few loyal followers who read all the stories in that category.

I don't think I agree with this either. Mature and First Time categories have a huge readership but not so many daily stories, almost always under ten. On the other hand. SciFi&Fantasy is an insanely popular category for authors with like 15-20 daily stories on average but with a mediocre readership.
I know it seems counterintuitive, but in some cases, there is a stark discrepancy in the popularity of a category among authors and among readers.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm WAY too lazy to do this for all of today's stories, but I just checked the thirty-seven submissions in LW.

A whopping TWENTY of those stories were less than one full page long. And another seven were less than two full pages long. This means, there's only ten submissions that take more than five minutes to actually read, which I reckon the average Lit user will reduce even further by looking at the ratings before clicking on them.

After taking a quick glance, I/T with its forty-six submissions seems to be the same. So... yeah. That's how the average reader can sift through all of those "stories".

This reminds me of when the Survivor contest was in full swing in its prime and people were just flooding the site with short meh stories just to get the points for the categories. That just started up again, but its on a small level compared to before because its not site backed and there's no prize.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

TBH, I blame part of the backlog on the ever increasing amount of author challenges that get pushed up to the top of the file, pushing standard offerings further down, the worst of which is the 750-word challenges where people are writing multiples of these things the readers seem to have proven they have little interest in, but get top billing and clog the file. But I;m sure there is more to it than that, but it is a factor.

I agree. This 750 thing has become nonsense and needs to be shut down.

Aside from that, the higher the volume of submissions, the harder it is to find what we want to read. Therefore we need to increase the ability to find stuff. The simplest way to do that is to split up and create new categories.

Incest can easily be split up into mom/son, dad/dau, siblings, ext fam, ste, etc and each of those categories would have enough traffic on its own.

LW could easily be broken down into hotwife/sharing, couples/swinging, infidelity, etc. Even BtB could have its own category. Why not?

BDSM could be broken into Master/Slave, Caring, Cruelty, Humil, Dungeons, Rigging, etc

SciFi/Fantasy could be split into 2.

Mature could be Cougars, Silver Men, Older Couples

Fetish could group up some of the kinks like Bathroom (all poop. pee, vomit etc), Texture (leather, latex, hose, etc), Body Fetish (size queens, BBW, boobs, size diff, Hirsute, etc).

Interracial could easily break into BBC and everything else non-BBC. Or it could go BBC, Asian, Ginger, Indian, etc. Although some of those might be quite small categories.

Group could be Harems, Trains, Bi-group, Straight-group, Orgies, no problem there.

New categories like ... Oral ... hello? No oral category??

I could go on and on and on. If there's too much stuff, just break it down into manageable groups. Simple. It;s the reason that categories even started in the first place. The bigger the reading stock, the more categories to keep the groups manageable. Not rocket science at all.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Until today, my estimate was always around 150 new daily stories.

Every time that I've bothered to count it has been about 200 minimum. I think the lowest was 189. Usually around 250.

 

[NoTalentHack]

It's Sunday, the day meant for lazing about.

So I thought I could browse the categories that generally interest me to check the new stories. It took me a while to notice that I was scrolling more than usual. So I counted the stories in the categories that I usually check. Surprised, I then checked the most popular categories. Even more surprised, I decided to count the stories that were published today in all categories.

I believe you will find the results overwhelming.

Erotic Horror 2
Toys 2
Interracial 2
Non-erotic 3
Anal 5
Humor 5
Non-human 6
Novels 6
Lesbian 6
Mind Control 7
First Time 9
Celebrities 9
Audio 11
Mature 12
Romance 14
Group Sex 14
Exhibitionist 17
Transgender 18
Fetish 21
Gay Male 27
SciFi&Fantasy 29
NonCon 30
BDSM 36
Loving Wives 37
Erotic Couplings 46
Incest Taboo 46

And it all totals to a whooping 420 stories published today!

I'll spare you my usual rant. But I would like to hear your genuine opinions about this trend and about questions such as How can the average reader sift through so many daily stories and find anything? How can your story reach the readership?

As I said, I am not going to criticize Literotica and I know none of this is up to us, so I would like to hear your honest feelings about this trend and maybe even projections. Will the daily story count continue to increase indefinitely and do you think that's a good thing for your own writing? I am genuinely curious about your opinions.

I don't wish to rant as I sometimes do, and I would also like to hear some honest thoughts and not platitudes.

There were a TON of stories out today. You have to flip to the second page of LW to see all the new ones. On the other hand, the last week has also been very light in there, with only a handful of stories a day. I think this day was kind of a blip, honestly.

 

[lovecraft68]

I agree. This 750 thing has become nonsense and needs to be shut down.

Aside from that, the higher the volume of submissions, the harder it is to find what we want to read. Therefore we need to increase the ability to find stuff. The simplest way to do that is to split up and create new categories.

Incest can easily be split up into mom/son, dad/dau, siblings, ext fam, ste, etc and each of those categories would have enough traffic on its own.

LW could easily be broken down into hotwife/sharing, couples/swinging, infidelity, etc. Even BtB could have its own category. Why not?

BDSM could be broken into Master/Slave, Caring, Cruelty, Humil, Dungeons, Rigging, etc

SciFi/Fantasy could be split into 2.

Mature could be Cougars, Silver Men, Older Couples

Fetish could group up some of the kinks like Bathroom (all poop. pee, vomit etc), Texture (leather, latex, hose, etc), Body Fetish (size queens, BBW, boobs, size diff, Hirsute, etc).

Interracial could easily break into BBC and everything else non-BBC. Or it could go BBC, Asian, Ginger, Indian, etc. Although some of those might be quite small categories.

Group could be Harems, Trains, Bi-group, Straight-group, Orgies, no problem there.

New categories like ... Oral ... hello? No oral category??

I could go on and on and on. If there's too much stuff, just break it down into manageable groups. Simple. It;s the reason that categories even started in the first place. The bigger the reading stock, the more categories to keep the groups manageable. Not rocket science at all.

I think some of the main categories have too many sub-factions to expect the site to further break them down, that's what the tags are supposed to be for. Not too mention they won't create any new categories-that could alleviate some traffic from the ones they're stuck in now-I'm thinking bi-sexual for one long ago request from many here-and have categories that have so little traffic its pointless to have them.

As for the 750 word contest, I'm fine with it being a challenge, the issue is limit it to one entry, I believe last year someone published 16. Cheap way to pad the story file. keep your name on the new lists, keep other stories off that list. Yeah, no wonder its being abused.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

As for the 750 word contest, I'm fine with it being a challenge, the issue is limit it to one entry, I believe last year someone published 16. Cheap way to pad the story file. keep your name on the new lists, keep other stories off that list. Yeah, no wonder its being abused.

I think it was more than 16. And I think it was a lot more than just one writer.

I suppose, but knowing what little effort the admin put into these things, I think it would be easier to just drop it and chalk it up to one of those "reasons that we can't have shiny things" lists.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I agree. This 750 thing has become nonsense and needs to be shut down.

Aside from that, the higher the volume of submissions, the harder it is to find what we want to read. Therefore we need to increase the ability to find stuff.

I agree with all of this but I don't think that creating more categories would make things easier in general. If anything I would reduce the number of categories but strengthen the tag system by introducing major and minor tags, etc. More categories would definitely make things easier for readers with defined and narrow tastes but I believe they would create even more chaos for those with varied tastes.
And I would definitely introduce the division of stories based on length.

Anyway, this is all wishful thinking. We know none of this will happen so I am more curious about navigating the website in the future assuming nothing changes in the story system and assuming the steady rise of daily new stories.

 

[jaF0]

Incest can easily be split up

LW could easily be broken down into

A site this size cannot be 'easily' changed at all.

 

[MelissaBaby]

As for the 750 word contest, I'm fine with it being a challenge, the issue is limit it to one entry, I believe last year someone published 16. Cheap way to pad the story file. keep your name on the new lists, keep other stories off that list. Yeah, no wonder its being abused.

In my opinion, “challenge” means “take your shot”, not “flood the zone.”

 

[pink_silk_glove]

More categories would definitely make things easier for readers with defined and narrow tastes but I believe they would create even more chaos for those with varied tastes.
And I would definitely introduce the division of stories based on length.

Disagree. If a reader has wider tastes, or different tastes on different days, more specific categories is not going to slow him down.

Advanced tagging would be amazing (I am totally FOR it), but also difficult to implement. It would be awesome for those readers advanced enough to search by them but also probably a bit harder for those who aren't so inclined. There is a learning curve to using a tag engine. No learning curve with categories. Admin-wise, adding categories is simple. Simple to implement and easy for the lowest common denominator to understand. It's also much easier to take for the people who hate change. (Personally I'm okay with change, but the majority hate it, no matter how poorly the unchanged serves them).

As for length, ALL THAT THE ADMIN HAS TO DO IS PUT THE WORD COUNT ON THE STORY CARD ALREADY FFS!!! 10 mins of coding. @Manu They just overhauled the story card last year and DIDN'T put in this simple super awesome helpful feature! And how many people have been asking for this for how long??? Including in last year's feedback!!! Jeez!! Looking for a story on your lunch break? This looks interesting. Open it up. Oh shit, it's 22 pages. Back out. Now the views ratio is distorted. And it's really annoying to keep backing out of stories that are just too long or too short. And there is no excuse for this whatsoever. Just bad lazy site design. The data is already there. You just have to text output it to the card.

There is also no reason why the tags can't be on the card. The story cards were purposely made BIG last year to help people tap them on their phone screens, even tho the desktop users hate all the extra scrolling now. There is more than enough space on those cards to add the tags. The data is there. All you have to do is text output it. Super easy. I don't know what the problem is other than cheap lazy coding. This all could be coded in 20 minutes and tested in an afternoon.

I'm sorry if this sounds rude. Yes it's a free site, but it's just such a headshake it's ridiculous.

That out of the way, on to categories.

Categories should be based on content only. Novels/Novellas should be scrapped. Longer stories (chaptered series or whole) should just go into the appropriate content category and word count on the card will handle that dimension completely.

Reviews and Essays could be combined with non-E perhaps. Maybe, maybe not. They're not hurting anything being separate. They're just really small.

Because chains are not content specific, Chain Stories should be replaced by a series feature open to multiple authors. The series starter can invite and/or approve specific authors or leave an open invite. Then each chapter of the chain would submit to its appropriate content category. Or they could be scrapped altogether since no one writes them. Kinda sad to see it go because it is a cool idea.

Audio and Illustrated categories should be scrapped, as they are not content specific. Just give these stories a marking on the card for Audio or Illustrated, and submit to appropriate content category.

Discontinued categories should remain as legacies not open to new submissions. Authors of stories in legacy categories should have the one-time option to move their submissions.

Categories that are subdivided can remain as an overarching legacy and authors of stories would have a one-time option of moving their stories into the appropriate sub-cat.

Monthly contests can be held for categories based on rough submission sizes. If mom/son sub-cat still gets large traffic on its own, it can have its own contest. If extended fam and step each have smaller traffic, one contest can cover them both. If all the little sub-fetish cats are too small, then the contest would be held for the overarching Fetish category total.

I got it all figured out. ; )