What is best ...

[scipioparkins]

Besides crushing your enemies, driving them before you and hearing the lamentation of their women?

In all seriousness, what are people's view on long stories - publish as a whole or publish in parts? I have a couple of very big stories, and find that subsequent parts never do as well as the initial part, so I'm tempted to publish them as one piece.

What do people like? Do people read really long pieces, or do they turn you off?

Your thoughts are welcome.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Both strategies have pros and cons, both approaches get readers. I suggest you trawl through some of the older threads here in AH, because this question comes up regularly and is always comprehensively addressed.

Every chaptered story loses readers, typically a 50% drop between chapters 1 and 2, a further 50% drop between 2 and 3, followed by some kind of steady state through to the end. My rule of thumb is that maybe 20% of those who view the first page of a chaptered story will read the whole thing.

The better the story, the higher the later chapter views, because more opening readers stick with it - so there's a quality indicator to some extent.

The main advantage of chapters as I see it: 1) convenience to readers, 2) visibility into how much of a story they read. If you have one long story you have zero idea how many actually read it all, but with a chaptered story you do know, from the last chapter stats.

The longest single submission I've seen was about 80 Lit pages - about 300,000 words. I have no idea what its stats were, it's gone now, to the marketplace, I think. I can't imagine navigating through that as a single document, not easily.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Besides crushing your enemies, driving them before you and hearing the lamentation of their women?

In all seriousness, what are people's view on long stories - publish as a whole or publish in parts? I have a couple of very big stories, and find that subsequent parts never do as well as the initial part, so I'm tempted to publish them as one piece.

What do people like? Do people read really long pieces, or do they turn you off?

Your thoughts are welcome.

If they don't follow a serial publication to the end, they won't make through the long version strung together. The difference is you just wont see they didn't finish it.

 

[KeithD]

What people's views on anything here are varies widely--tens of thousands of different readers, all with different views and wants. There is no "universal" view on anything here. What is best is to write what you want/as you want within the submission parameters and let interested readers find you.

 

[MillieDynamite]

What people's views on anything here are varies widely--tens of thousands of different readers, all with different views and wants. There is no "universal" view on anything here.

And wouldn't it be a dull world if everyone had the same likes and dislikes? How boring if there was only one to skin a cat?

 

[HeyAll]

Really long stories have mixed fates. If they're really good and/or from an established author, it works and people comment that they're glad to read them at their leasure.

But sometimes a series helps it get more views because the follow-up chapters catch new eyes, if the title/description is catchy and people go back and read it.

However, if you wait too long between chapters, the drop in views becomes a lot. A long wait means, for example, chapter 1 has 50,000 views and chapter 5 has 5,000 views.

Posting chapters is an artform.

 

[lovecraft68]

Everyone is looking for the perfect formula which does not exist.

There are people here who won't click on a story that's more than a couple pages because they're here to stroke, not get a story. There are people who won't click on two pages or less because they want a story, and not that you can't have story in two pages or a 6 page pure stroker, but that's the perception.

Just go with what you want, neither way will affect you any better or worse.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'll just echo what others are saying -- there's no such thing as one-size-fits-all at Literotica. Some people absolutely love long stories. Speaking for myself, I'm reluctant to start a story if it's over about 7 Literotica pages. I do it anyway, sometimes, but usually I don't have that patience.

My advice, for what it's worth, which isn't much, is to start your Literotica publishing career by publishing something that isn't very long, and see what happens. That's what I did. It was a good learning experience. I learned more by doing than I possibly could have from asking a lot of questions and getting answers that spanned the entire range of possible opinions. Jump in with both feet and see what happens.

 

[Handley_Page]

Besides crushing your enemies, driving them before you and hearing the lamentation of their women?

In all seriousness, what are people's view on long stories - publish as a whole or publish in parts? I have a couple of very big stories, and find that subsequent parts never do as well as the initial part, so I'm tempted to publish them as one piece.

What do people like? Do people read really long pieces, or do they turn you off?

Your thoughts are welcome.

Personally, I prefer my reading to be in the medium-length category.
Like 3-6 lit pages?

 

[scipioparkins]

I'll just echo what others are saying -- there's no such thing as one-size-fits-all at Literotica. Some people absolutely love long stories. Speaking for myself, I'm reluctant to start a story if it's over about 7 Literotica pages. I do it anyway, sometimes, but usually I don't have that patience.

My advice, for what it's worth, which isn't much, is to start your Literotica publishing career by publishing something that isn't very long, and see what happens. That's what I did. It was a good learning experience. I learned more by doing than I possibly could have from asking a lot of questions and getting answers that spanned the entire range of possible opinions. Jump in with both feet and see what happens.

Too late for that! I jumped - 20 stories later ...

 

[umamienne]

Chapters benefit you both in a lot of ways. Read counts might be misleading since people will start a long story, and possibly abandon it. Handilng a story with chapters also gives you two advantages:

- A little breathing room to think about your next steps
- Suspenseful punctuation points in the story
- A place for the reader to come back to, since modern life is a series of interruptions

 

[GinnyPPC]

Chapters benefit you both in a lot of ways. Read counts might be misleading since people will start a long story, and possibly abandon it. Handilng a story with chapters also gives you two advantages:

- A little breathing room to think about your next steps
- Suspenseful punctuation points in the story
- A place for the reader to come back to, since modern life is a series of interruptions

These are good points, and why I'm writing my novel in chapters. So far my chapters are 4 or 5 Lit pages each. I know others prefer shorter stories, but I like a good story arc with character development and drama that is hard to get with shorter stories. To each their own. I know my writing is not for everyone.

 

[Rob_Howard]

It all depends on how well you plan out the parts/chapters of the bigger story.

If all the chapters are consistent enough to captivate your readers, it doesn't matter if there's a drop in the views from the earliest chapter to the later ones. Readers hooked up in the first chapter will follow you, which means multi-chapter stories will fetch you more followers than a single long story.

Also, if the interval between the publication of chapters is regular enough, besides the consistency in the quality of your chapters, readers are surely gonna come back to read them.

If you're more concerned about views and you are interested in writing long pieces, you can write them for Annual Contests in Literotica. Stories that you submit for the Annual Contests will be some of your top viewed stories for sure.

 

[TadOverdon]

I prefer a chapter at a time.

When your story goes up you likely have a short window in which to get much attention. Ten stories gives you ten windows. Someone who likes chapter six may then look up one through five.

Maybe.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I have done both. It's a mixed bag.

Chaptered series will get fewer readers as you go along, but each new chapter will serve as an advertisement for a story that would be off the radar otherwise. When I finished Mary and Alvin, which is 36 chapters long, I saw a bump in readership of the previous chapters.

Also, as the readership declines, the majority of those following along will be people predisposed toward liking the story and your ratings will rise. Many people scoff at ratings and are only interested in getting as many views as possible, but high ratings draw new readers.

My new release,The Adventures of Ranger Ramona, is the longest stand alone I have written, and it is doing quite well. The bottom line is, write the story in the manner that seems right to you. High readership is good, high ratings are good. Be grateful that people give you the honor of reading your work at all.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

If they don't follow a serial publication to the end, they won't make through the long version strung together. The difference is you just wont see they didn't finish it.

This isn't true. I have several looooonnnnnngggggg stories here and though some of the readers complained about the length, they all like the one big gulp of the slushy.

I also have a bunch of serials out there. And I can tell by the number of clicks that most of them never made it to the end.

 

[MillieDynamite]

This isn't true. I have several looooonnnnnngggggg stories here and though some of the readers complained about the length, they all like the one big gulp of the slushy.

I also have a bunch of serials out there. And I can tell by the number of clicks that most of them never made it to the end.

Riddle me this, how many read the first chapter of your several looooonnnnnngggggg stories, and continued, the second, the third, and so on? You can't because there is no tracking of that. The total is only the number of times the story was opened, not if they read a single word of the actual story or just closed the window on the title. So pat yourself on the back for the number of times it was opened; however, don't pretend to know they all made it to the end, but cause you can't.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Riddle me this, how many read the first chapter of your several looooonnnnnngggggg stories, and continued, the second, the third, and so on? You can't because there is no tracking of that. The total is only the number of times the story was opened, not if they read a single word of the actual story or just closed the window on the title. So pat yourself on the back for the number of times it was opened; however, don't pretend to know they all made it to the end, but cause you can't.

Views are not unique either. If the same reader goes back and rereads favorite chapters, those count as separate views.

 

[SimonDoom]

Riddle me this, how many read the first chapter of your several looooonnnnnngggggg stories, and continued, the second, the third, and so on? You can't because there is no tracking of that. The total is only the number of times the story was opened, not if they read a single word of the actual story or just closed the window on the title. So pat yourself on the back for the number of times it was opened; however, don't pretend to know they all made it to the end, but cause you can't.

You can be fairly certain that the total number of readers lies between the number of views and the number of votes, and by looking at view:vote ratios you can infer to some extent the degree to which some stories have been read to the end more than others.

I've noticed a few things:

The view:vote ratio grows, a little, as stories get longer. That means it's somewhat less likely that a reader will finish a longer story. But this change isn't as significant as I would have thought. There are very long stories at Literotica with very good view:vote ratios.

I tend to like to read stories of between 2 and 6 Literotica pages -- 7500 to about 20,000 words -- and I tend to write stories or chapters of that length as well. But some like really short stories, and some really like very long stories. There's every possible taste, here.

My view on that: write the way you like to read. You'll probably enjoy writing more that way and you'll pick up readers who think like you and enjoy your stuff. That's what I do and it works for me.

Short stories at Literotica tend to be rather long compared to the short stories you'll find in, for instance, The New Yorker. Many of the most famous and highest regarded short stories of all time are no more than 3000 to 5000 words, but that's short by Lit standards.

There is a significant drop-off in views and votes from one chapter to the next. It's common for chapter 2 to have half the views and votes of chapter 1, and for the final chapter in a longer series to have no more than one quarter of the views and votes of the first chapter. The drop-off is so significant I'm inclined to think you're better off publishing a long story as a single story than in chapters, even though I personally prefer to read long stories in discrete chapters.

But as others have pointed out, offsetting this last consideration is the clear fact (I've seen it prominently with my own chaptered stories) that every time you publish a new chapter you call attention to the entire series. Publishing in chapters may get the story more attention over time. So this might outweigh what I said in the last paragraph. I'm not sure.

People vary in their opinions about how long you should space out the time between chapters. I personally think about a week is best, because it doesn't tax the reader's attention too much AND it gives your chapters more total time on the new story hub pages to get attention. If you publish one chapter a day, it doesn't give your story enough time on the boards. Don't wait too long, though, or you'll see more readers drop out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Views are not unique either. If the same reader goes back and rereads favorite chapters, those count as separate views.

Yes, the pick up in a chapter's viewcount can give you a clue as to the raunch factor of that chapter. In my long Arthurian thing there's a gay male chapter that Jason Clearwater recommended to a bunch of his followers, it has a noticeable kick up in views (and the rating). Either that, or a bunch of the other readers read it twice .

There is a significant drop-off in views and votes from one chapter to the next. It's common for chapter 2 to have half the views and votes of chapter 1, and for the final chapter in a longer series to have no more than one quarter of the views and votes of the first chapter. The drop-off is so significant I'm inclined to think you're better off publishing a long story as a single story than in chapters, even though I personally prefer to read long stories in discrete chapters.

Why do you think the drop-off would be any different for a single long story?

I reckon the actual read rate will be the same - based upon my chaptered story stats about one in five will finish a long story. I think those who say, "Look at all the people reading my story" based on a stand-alone story's view count are deluding themselves.

Having said that, my experimental extension of a 750 Word Anthology story had 18k reads on the 750 word first chapter, 6k reads on the fifth, and 12k reads on the (longer) sixth chapter, where they got the full pay-off. My take on that is that nearly everyone read the final chapter twice - the number of votes for the fifth and sixth stories is nearly the same.

People vary in their opinions about how long you should space out the time between chapters. I personally think about a week is best, because it doesn't tax the reader's attention too much AND it gives your chapters more total time on the new story hub pages to get attention. If you publish one chapter a day, it doesn't give your story enough time on the boards. Don't wait too long, though, or you'll see more readers drop out.

Folk fuss too much about the original pull in. Once the whole story is up, it doesn't matter, and user friendliness is what counts later on.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Sometimes my poor little head spins from the generous amount of information offered up in the threads. Sometimes it swirls about like a dervish whirling out of control with the conflicting intelligence.

 

[Spencerfiction]

I have placed long stories complete and also in chapters. I don’t follow up analysing stats, so I don’t know if it makes much difference, but I do find with part-works that most of the comments and the scores come near the end, and my complete works tend to score higher that any individual chapter.

I tend to use chapters now as an incentive to complete stories which have frustrated me for years. The longest piece was a story I had been writing for 28 years and never been happy to publish the whole, changing the ending 3 times over about 6 years. So I published it in parts, which focussed me on completing the last chapter in a matter of weeks.

My latest story (published in parts on another site) gave me three months to write the last 3 chapters, publishing the first 12 chapters in weekly instalments. Unfortunately I had to stretch those last 3 chapters to 2/3 week intervals in order to complete and I know that by losing that repeat rhythm has cost me a lot of readers. But at least it enabled me to complete in 6 months a book that took over 6 years to write.

So part-works do have a place but they definitely shed readers during the process.

 

[8letters]

From a thread here. I looked at how 28 days' worth of stories did statistically. Results:
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[/td][/tr][tr][td]Ch01[/td][td]

232​

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11.6K​

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18.1​

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4.14​

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4.2​

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24%​

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1.9​

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37​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]Ch2+[/td][td]

1036​

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6.1K​

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8.5​

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4.35​

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3.3​

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47%​

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2.4​

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56​

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895​

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15.4K​

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17.4​

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4.07​

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6.1​

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2.0​

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40​

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First chapters got 75% of the views that stand-alone stories got, and subsequent chapters got on average 40% of the views that stand-alone stories got.

To me, don't do chapters unless there is a strong reason for doing so as you're losing 25% of your audience in your first chapter, and more in later chapters.

The best reason I see for doing chapters is that you can see the response to the story before you sink all the time into finishing it. I've got a story that I've written 43K on, and I'm about half done. I could package what I've written up into 3 or 4 chapters and see how people like. If it doesn't get a good response, I'd move on to another story.

My readers might not like that idea.

 

[SimonDoom]

Why do you think the drop-off would be any different for a single long story?

.

Because I don't see it from the data.

Consider two of the most-viewed and most favorited stories at Literotica: Threads, and One Who Understands.

Both incest stories. Threads was published in 2011 and One was published in 2015. Threads is 42 Literotica pages long. That's enormous. That's the length of a decent novel. One is 32 pages, also the length of a decent novel. To put them in perspective, One if over twice as long as The Great Gatsby, and Thread is over three times as long.

Threads has a view:vote ratio of 143:1.

One has a view:vote ratio of 162:1.

Those ratios are higher than for the average 1 to 2 page story, but not THAT much higher. My average is around 90:1 or so, but most of my stories are fewer than 5 Lit pages.

29126 people have cast votes for Threads. 14572 people have cast votes for One. Those are huge numbers for Literotica, yet these are by Literotica standards extremely long standalone stories. My most-viewed story has just under 10,000 votes but is only 3 Lit pages long. It has a view:vote ratio of 110:1. That's better than those other two stories, but it's not THAT much better, when you consider it's less than one-tenth the length of those stories.

These stories suggest that if readers like the stories they will stick them out to the end even if they are very long.

8Letters previously has presented data in his statistics threads that standalone stories will get more views than stories designated "Chapter 1." Many people don't read chapter stories. They don't even start them. If you start a story by publishing a chapter in the form "My Story Ch. 1", right off the bat you will lose significant numbers of readers.

So if you tell a story in chapters, you have two disadvantages. One is that many readers will never start reading the story, and the other is the extremely heavy level of attrition. The attrition is somewhat set off by the continued exposure that newly published chapters bring. The long standalone story has the disadvantage that some people don't want to read long stories, but I'm inclined, based on what I can see, to believe that the long standalone story option one will yield more readers who finish the story than the multi-chapter option.

None of this is very scientific, I admit.

 

[8letters]

My view:vote ratio on average is 74:1. Ignoring my very first story, I have one series, which is 53K words spread over five chapters. Here are those chapters have done:
A Week at the Lake with My Sister Ch. 01 - 230,738 views, 77:1
A Week at the Lake with My Sister Ch. 02 - 93,928 views, 41:1
A Week at the Lake with My Sister Ch. 03 - 87,117 views, 39:1
A Week at the Lake with My Sister Ch. 04 - 76,364 views, 37:1
A Week at the Lake with My Sister Ch. 05 - 88,928 views, 38:1

My most recent story is almost (52K) as big as the above series. It's results:
My Mom Competes with my Stepmom - 185,474 views, 79:1

It's not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison because of the difference when they were published, but I'm not seeing a big drop off in voting on my largest story to date.