Lack of comments?

[wafflingman]

long time reader, first time author and poster here.

Put my first story up a few days ago.
https://literotica.com/s/langley-circle-s01-ch-01

Have 1500 views and 20 votes so far. Super happy with that, but no comments. I was just wondering how often to readers actually comment. I'm probably just being a bit helicopterish, refreshing my stats every few hours etc. What are other people's experience with commenters.

And Yes i ave comments turned on, and do actively ask for feedback at the bottom of my story. I am genuinely interested in feedback positive or constructively negative .

Ta.

 

[TadOverdon]

Only that the apparently most popular of my chapters, judging by ratings, has one comment and the least popular has twelve. So I don't sweat it, much. There also doesn't seem to be a relationship between number of views and number of comments.

I just pretend that my readers are too deeply absorbed in some post-orgasmic reverie to be bothered with typing.

 

[jehoram]

I am genuinely interested in feedback positive or constructively negative .

Well, the vast majority of readers don't comment at all. There are stories of mine that have done well in the ratings (whatever that means), but haven't garnered Comment One.

There is a section of the forum called "Story Feedback" where you can specifically ask for comments, but don't hold your breath.

The site isn't set up to be a real forum for critiquing other writers' work. So just keep writing, cherish the odd comment when you get one, and don't let the trolls get you down.

 

[MrPixel]

With the exception of a single story in LW which drew the brickbats normally associated with that category, I can count comments on the other dozen or so on one hand. So I, for one, don't consider comments to be a badge of honor, shame or anything. YMMV.

 

[derek00003]

Well, the vast majority of readers don't comment at all. There are stories of mine that have done well in the ratings (whatever that means), but haven't garnered Comment One.

There is a section of the forum called "Story Feedback" where you can specifically ask for comments, but don't hold your breath.

The site isn't set up to be a real forum for critiquing other writers' work. So just keep writing, cherish the odd comment when you get one, and don't let the trolls get you down.

Great advice

 

[TxRad]

Over the years I've been here, I've heard the old saw about one vote per hundred views and comments along the lines of one per a thousand.

Writing more stories can help the numbers. Writing in Loving Wives will definitely help with the numbers but not for the comments anyone wants.

 

[SimonDoom]

Your experience is not unusual. Comments, on a per-view basis, are rare. You have to be patient.

 

[TxRad]

Your experience is not unusual. Comments, on a per-view basis, are rare. You have to be patient.

As the young buzzard said, "Patience my ass. I want to kill something."

 

[lovecraft68]

Your story is in Novels and Novellas which is not a highly read category compared to others so that's part of the low comments. You're also new as an author and sometimes it takes a bit to get a following.

As others said, its a sad few amount of readers who even vote let alone comment. Don't be discouraged, just keep plugging away.

 

[wafflingman]

Many thanks for all the replies.

 

[SimonDoom]

As the young buzzard said, "Patience my ass. I want to kill something."

Now, Tx, you should know this. Buzzards don't kill things. They eat things that are already dead.

 

[TxRad]

Now, Tx, you should know this. Buzzards don't kill things. They eat things that are already dead.

Exactly my point. But patience is a learned thing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Over the years I've been here, I've heard the old saw about one vote per hundred views and comments along the lines of one per a thousand.

Writing more stories can help the numbers. Writing in Loving Wives will definitely help with the numbers but not for the comments anyone wants.

This old carpenter uses one Vote per hundred Views and one Comment per thousand as a rough rule of thumb because that's what I've got across my whole story file (which does not include any LW content and only a few I&T yarns).

As an aside, the comments are about 50/50 anons versus named accounts, and are nearly all worthwhile and intelligently expressed - and recently quite a few comments on my back catalogue, which is nice.

 

[PennameWombat]

I have 39 stories posted. The average number of comments per story is 2, but that's sort of misleading. Two stories have eight comments each, they're my 'highs,' and a quarter of my stories have zero comments. I've only ever deleted one comment, it was ridiculously abusive.

And, trying to do any sort of "comments per views" metric, it's all over the place, no average offers any clear correlation. I have no stories in LW, but there isn't a direct correlation between other Categories and comments for me.

 

[TadOverdon]

Yeah, I deleted one comment in my first month here because it was personal. And the guy reposted his story criticism later, no less unkind, but without the insult. I think that was probably a win for both of us.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Well, hell, LW(Loving Wives) is a hellhole for comments. You'll get comments from people who don't even read the story. And a 1 vote to boot. They assume a lot from the title.

Now Sci-Fi, I get a lot of comments some along the lines they want more, yet other really expressing their appreciation.

And as I have been here a long time, as if that matters, I do have a following of readers, all who comment on every story.

 

[Ada Stuart]

I am genuinely interested in feedback positive or constructively negative .

Me too! So I started asking for comments and it does help. I get a lot more comments these days, and a lot of them are constructive criticism that I've used to make improvements. So, generally a win-win, the way I see it .

I just add this line at the bottom of every story, just so they know that I'm eager to learn more:

"Please leave a comment, either public or anonymously. Whether it is praise or criticism, I'd love to hear from you and learn how to improve my writing."

Ada

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I am genuinely interested in feedback positive or constructively negative.

As one who holds a BSEE, I always found negative feedback fascinating. Not only does it stabilize the system, but if you look at the circuit from the point where the feedback comes in, the feedback is actually coming from the future ...

 

[leeanna19]

long time reader, first time author and poster here.

Put my first story up a few days ago.
https://literotica.com/s/langley-circle-s01-ch-01

Have 1500 views and 20 votes so far. Super happy with that, but no comments.

Sometimes it's not a bad thing. You look at your comments and find some failed English tutor telling you that he stopped reading your story because you missed out a comma.

I write TG fiction. Most of the sites I post on you can like without registration. I don't think you should be able to comment without registration though. It encourages trolls.

I had the same on Fictionmania. I had a story that someone complained about 2 spelling mistakes. Luckily 15 other people posted positive comments.

To be honest the only thing good about this site is the amount of views. My most on here is just under 25k. Other sites I post on the best is 13k.

I am fed up of constantly geting stuff rejected though , so I'm taking all my stuff off of here now.

Good luck with the writing, don't take trolls to heart. I've seen a few just give up after vicious comments.

 

[ChloeTzang]

This old carpenter uses one Vote per hundred Views and one Comment per thousand as a rough rule of thumb because that's what I've got across my whole story file (which does not include any LW content and only a few I&T yarns)....

That's a about my experience on average too - some ups and downs, it is an average, and some categories get more response. I find in LW, on the whole, I get more votes and comments, but they're not necessarily the votes and comments that you might want. LOL. But that's what you get for putting stories in LW.

On the other hand, I find you get more Followers from LW than from other categories, so it has its benefits.

 

[yowser]

EB is accurate over the long haul, with a couple caveats, of which Chloe has noted one.

IT and LW have high readership, the latter especially eager to provide commentary, not always particularly helpful or insightful. But viewership and comments definitely rise outside the 'normal' Lit landscape.

My readership was fairly low until a story got put in LW (not my choice but Laurel's) and increased rapidly thereafter. With about 1.6 million views total (never thought my stuff would get ever get that many views) if you take away the LW stuff it cuts almost half a million views out (these stories are less than 20% of my corpus.) And almost half of the comments.

The other arena that increases commentary involves entering challenges and contests, which produce above-average response from readers, often more authors too, which tends to be more helpful and productive.

Good luck and keep writing, momentum builds slowly.

 

[ChloeTzang]

The other arena that increases commentary involves entering challenges and contests, which produce above-average response from readers, often more authors too, which tends to be more helpful and productive....

Yes, I think that's one of the positive spinoffs of the competitions and challenges - you get readers who are rather more interested in trying something new.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

To be honest, my stories have only had about a thousand or so views.

About 20 votes at most.

1 comment on 4/5 parts.

There’s no rhyme or reason to it.

Maybe you’ll get more as more parts go on.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

long time reader, first time author and poster here.

Put my first story up a few days ago.
https://literotica.com/s/langley-circle-s01-ch-01

Have 1500 views and 20 votes so far. Super happy with that, but no comments. I was just wondering how often to readers actually comment. I'm probably just being a bit helicopterish, refreshing my stats every few hours etc. What are other people's experience with commenters.

And Yes i ave comments turned on, and do actively ask for feedback at the bottom of my story. I am genuinely interested in feedback positive or constructively negative .

Ta.

Most of my submissions are in Novels and Novellas and my comments per views range from 0.00% to 0.34%, with an average of 0.06%, but this has been increasing lately. I am also starting to receive more e-mail feedback than I am used to seeing.

I recognize that I have developed a loyal following of certain readers who tend to comment on each story, chapter, or part that I submit, and that has taken time to achieve. Even so, you can see from the percentages of comments per views, you should not expect a lot... ever.

If comments are your objective, spell a certain word wrong multiple times and use questionable grammar. You'll get lots of comments then.

 

[SimonDoom]

Most of my submissions are in Novels and Novellas and my comments per views range from 0.00% to 0.34%, with an average of 0.06%, but this has been increasing lately. I am also starting to receive more e-mail feedback than I am used to seeing.

I recognize that I have developed a loyal following of certain readers who tend to comment on each story, chapter, or part that I submit, and that has taken time to achieve. Even so, you can see from the percentages of comments per views, you should not expect a lot... ever.

If comments are your objective, spell a certain word wrong multiple times and use questionable grammar. You'll get lots of comments then.

You are doing well, comment-wise. I have a story that has over 1.28 million views and over 2100 favorites, and it has only 68 comments. That's one comment for every 18,922 views. It's .0053% comments per view. For every reader that bothered to VOTE on the story, only a little over half of one percent bothered to comment. Readers apparently like the story, but they don't want to say anything about it!

From my reading/writing experience, if you want to get comments:

1. Post a story in Loving Wives. This category gets more comments than any other. They're not always nice, but there are lots of them.
2. Write longer, more emotionally involving stories. Those will tend to get more comments. That's not the type of story I tend to read or write, but if you want reader interaction that's the thing to do.