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KeithD said:
Yes, it would, but that would have to come from the author, wouldn't it? (I declare off the top how many chapters there are and put "-FINI-" at the bottom of the last one.) Laurel/Manu aren't going to be able to determine when a series is finished when we have writers not marking them finished and sometimes coming back years later to add to them.

And on the crack by another poster (not MelissaB) that I don't read many of the stories, therefore I shouldn't care about the "reading time" feature, I've invested well over a thousand stories here to connect with readers and I care about my readers--and what they think they're getting in bells and whistles when it may not be what they think they're getting. I think wordage is a lot more useful to everyone involved than some hocus-pocus reading time stat.
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Am I right to assume you mean that you note the number of chapters in the first chapter description, or do you mean by some other method?

The description space is pretty precious real estate for that purpose.
 
MelissaBaby said:
Am I right to assume you mean that you note the number of chapters in the first chapter description, or do you mean by some other method?

The description space is pretty precious real estate for that purpose.
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I provide an Ed Note at the top of the first chapter in a series, saying the work is completed, identifying how many chapters there are, and estimating when it will finish posting. That gives the reader an idea on whether they want to invest their time in reading it and assuring them that it won't just disappear one of these years without being wrapped up. And then as soon as one chapter posts, I submit the next one, which means, for my stories, it moves at a pace of a chapter posting every two or three days until it's done.

A recent example can be found here: https://www.literotica.com/s/pretenders-fate-ch-01

This doesn't work for open-ended, continuing series, but, with those, the author isn't giving any help to the reader and the Web site can't either.
 
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KeithD said:
I provide an Ed Note at the top of the first chapter in a series, saying the work is completed, identifying how many chapters there are, and estimating when it will finish posting. That gives the reader an idea on whether they want to invest their time in reading it and assuring them that it won't just disappear one of these years without being wrapped up. And then as soon as one chapter posts, I submit the next one, which means, for my stories, it moves at a pace of a chapter posting every two or three days until it's done.

A recent example can be found here: https://www.literotica.com/s/pretenders-fate-ch-01

This doesn't work for open-ended, continuing series, but, with those, the author isn't giving any help to the reader and the Web site can't either.
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Thank you. The only drawback I see to that is that the reader has to open the story to see it. If it were possible for the author to somehow check off that a story is complete, so instead of it saying "Part 1 of a 10 part series" is said "Part 1 of a compete 10 part series" or something like that, it would be helpful.
 
MelissaBaby said:
Thank you. The only drawback I see to that is that the reader has to open the story to see it. If it were possible for the author to somehow check off that a story is complete, so instead of it saying "Part 1 of a 10 part series" is said "Part 1 of a compete 10 part series" or something like that, it would be helpful.
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Yep, that would be helpful. This was as helpful as I could be under the constraints of the existing system, though, because, as you noted, Literotica doesn't allow enough characters in the description to do much describing. At another Web site I post on, I put the information in the description that shows on the top listings.
 
Is there any way to make the story text a little more narrow? To me, the width makes it a little more difficult to read, but that's my opinion.
 
HeyAll said:
Is there any way to make the story text a little more narrow? To me, the width makes it a little more difficult to read, but that's my opinion.
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Tastes, they do differ. The wider column of text is one of the things I like the most.

Being able to select the width would be nice. But if it remains fixed width, I prefer the new layout.
 
KeithD said:
I think wordage is a lot more useful to everyone involved than some hocus-pocus reading time stat.
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I agree with the other people, before I started writing I thought about books in terms of pages rather than wordcount. If I'd seen on amazon that a book was say... 120k words, I wouldn't really know how long that would take me to read at all. Just because that's not a stat that's very accessible to the general reader, as opposed to just checking the number on the last page.

I think a good middle ground would be putting the total amount of pages on this site at the top of the story as well. Most readers should have a good estimation of how fast they read a page, and how long of a story they're willing to read. Probably a more understandable metric than wordcount (or reading time for that matter) as it's something the readers have already been using to measure stories for ages.

Also still think that the average words per minute used for the read time calculation should be included, like "90 minutes (at 200 wpm)" or something. That makes it very clear what metric is being used in the calculation, and if you know your reading speed you can easily make a guess about your own reading time if you're interested in that.
 
Manu:

I just tried reading a story changing the reading view in Edge to the two page reading layout. It splits the page into two but once you get to the end of the first page there are no links to go anywhere else. Pages 2-5 were lost.

None of the other information or options show up. No voting, no comments no reading speed. It's just the first page of the story.
 
ThisNameIsntTakenYet said:
I agree with the other people, before I started writing I thought about books in terms of pages rather than wordcount. If I'd seen on amazon that a book was say... 120k words, I wouldn't really know how long that would take me to read at all. Just because that's not a stat that's very accessible to the general reader, as opposed to just checking the number on the last page.

I think a good middle ground would be putting the total amount of pages on this site at the top of the story as well. Most readers should have a good estimation of how fast they read a page, and how long of a story they're willing to read. Probably a more understandable metric than wordcount (or reading time for that matter) as it's something the readers have already been using to measure stories for ages.

Also still think that the average words per minute used for the read time calculation should be included, like "90 minutes (at 200 wpm)" or something. That makes it very clear what metric is being used in the calculation, and if you know your reading speed you can easily make a guess about your own reading time if you're interested in that.
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The last page of a Literotica posting could have only nineteen words on it. That leaves over a 3,700 word difference in length when only number of Lit. pages is given, not an insignificant amont of difference in possible reading time.

I don't really care how Lit. does it. Opinions were asked, and, as a top ten prolific author here, I gave an opinion on something, but I'll live with what is provided. When they went to the current author page, I had to open a new account name to manage my story file and it still takes four times as long to scroll through my holdings under the new account--but I'm making the adjustment because what they're going to provide is what they're going to provide.

Giving reading times isn't going to mean anything to me and I sort of think, as someone else noted, that what it means to a reader who thinks about opening one of my seven Lit pagers and sees the estimated number of hours they're (maybe) going to have to devote to reading it is that they won't start reading it when they otherwise would have. Time is money and time often isn't taken into account when time needed isn't waved under your nose.
 
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MelissaBaby said:
Thank you. The only drawback I see to that is that the reader has to open the story to see it. If it were possible for the author to somehow check off that a story is complete, so instead of it saying "Part 1 of a 10 part series" is said "Part 1 of a compete 10 part series" or something like that, it would be helpful.
Click to expand...

Having thought about this some more, I think you are right. An author could have an option when submitting, say, chapter 10, to indicate that it's the last chapter in the series. Then when the reader finds a chapter the reader would see a symbol or words indicating the story is complete or incomplete.
 
Are you taking advantage of the new features provided? You can type in the search box to target a specific submission by title. If you want to watch that story, you can refresh your browser window and it will maintain the search term you entered.

Refreshes of an existing search also load far faster than a normal refresh.

You can also backspace and start typing a new title to jump to something else after looking at the first.

If it's your latest release, clicking to sort by date also shows your most recent submissions at the top.

On your activity page, if you click on the title of your submission when someone has left a comment, it jumps to the final page and the comment section, rather than the beginning.

For the most common activities related to viewing your submissions, there are features to eliminate the need to click through the pages to find something deeper in the alphabetical listing.

KeithD said:
When they went to the current author page, I had to open a new account name to manage my story file and it still takes four times as long to scroll through my holdings under the new account--but I'm making the adjustment because what they're going to provide is what they're going to provide.
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Probably should be an option to select "Open Ended" for the never-ending stories as well, with its own indicator.

The indicators would be quite useful for readers, giving them a sense of what they're getting into without having to open the submission first.

SimonDoom said:
Having thought about this some more, I think you are right. An author could have an option when submitting, say, chapter 10, to indicate that it's the last chapter in the series. Then when the reader finds a chapter the reader would see a symbol or words indicating the story is complete or incomplete.
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RejectReality said:
Are you taking advantage of the new features provided?
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Perhaps when you reach 1,000 stories here, you'll realize you can't remember exact titles for an old story you're looking for.

And no, absolutely not, the new system does not load the separate storage pages on an author's page anywhere as fast as the old system opened one scrolled page.

Weigh in again when you've reached 1,000 submissions here.
 
It doesn't have to be exact, either. If you remember even one word of the title, that will probably get you there. It apparently searches descriptions as well. I don't have "Sister" in any title in this name, but that search pops up stories where it's in the description line.

Give it a shot. Any detail you can come up with will probably narrow it down enough to find what you're looking for. I'm not saying you have to be happy with the change. I'm just offering some ideas of how to make the transition less frustrating with the available features.

KeithD said:
Perhaps when you reach 1,000 stories here, you'll realize you can't remember exact titles for an old story you're looking for.

And no, absolutely not, the new system does not load the separate storage pages on an author's page anywhere as fast as the old system opened one scrolled page.

Weigh in again when you've reached 1,000 submissions here.
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I shot the hell out of it before doing what I did. As I've posted, I'm just adjusting to what is given.

Again, get back to me when you're got a 1,000-submission file to manage.
 
SimonDoom said:
Having thought about this some more, I think you are right. An author could have an option when submitting, say, chapter 10, to indicate that it's the last chapter in the series. Then when the reader finds a chapter the reader would see a symbol or words indicating the story is complete or incomplete.
Click to expand...

That's how StoriesOnline handles the submission process. When you're getting ready to submit, you'll input the usual meta data (story name, tags, description) and have to pick from a drop-down box with "Story is ongoing/finished." Stories on their site have a clear indicator if they're ongoing or not. Shouldn't be too hard to implement in Lit's submission system, it's a simple yes/no variable.

I like the way how things are handled over there. Along with a host of other creature comforts like grouping stories by universe/series, manual chaptering or scheduled uploads which I'd LOVE to see here on Lit as well. Also, treating serials as one entity keeps the top lists open for more than just a few stories at a time. Just saying.

Since Manu is doing a site revamp anyway, it would be a good idea to crib the best ideas from the competition, see what they're doing better and how to make it work on Lit. As much as I like the reach I have here, other sites out there have it beat in terms of usability and reaction time.

The new reading view is a good step in the right direction. I really like where this is going. A similar look and feel for the profile page would be very welcome.
 
It also separates those lists by complete and in-progress, so one-shots don't have to compete against multi-chapter epics until that epic comes to a close, and is a complete story.

Toplists for older stories are also divided between long and short, which is nice on a site that's even more epic-length oriented than it is here.

Lush's ability to reorder your list of submissions any way you wish is also really nice. You can stick that big-draw story at the top so it's the first thing folks see when they check out your list.

Blind_Justice said:
I like the way how things are handled over there. Along with a host of other creature comforts like grouping stories by universe/series, manual chaptering or scheduled uploads which I'd LOVE to see here on Lit as well. Also, treating serials as one entity keeps the top lists open for more than just a few stories at a time. Just saying.
Click to expand...
 
Blind_Justice said:
... Along with a host of other creature comforts like grouping stories by universe/series, manual chaptering or scheduled uploads which I'd LOVE to see here on Lit as well. Also, treating serials as one entity keeps the top lists open for more than just a few stories at a time. Just saying.

Since Manu is doing a site revamp anyway, it would be a good idea to crib the best ideas from the competition, see what they're doing better and how to make it work on Lit. ...

The new reading view is a good step in the right direction. I really like where this is going. A similar look and feel for the profile page would be very welcome.
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I've often thought about this same idea. I have four stories in three different genres with three different titles that are part of one series. My followers probably have no trouble putting them together. But I wish there was a way to indicate (other than telling the readers, at the beginning or the end of a story, that if they enjoy the current story then search for the following titles) that the story they are reading is part of a series. Like an 'S' icon, indicating series, somewhere on the new story page, that they can click and would link the stories I choose for the series to all show up.

As far as the new look and layout... I love it, Manu.
 
An extra level of grouping on your story list could be useful indeed, one that the writer can actually control as opposed to the way chapters are grouped for you. But that way a writer can choose how to use it. Subdivide by genre, universe or story type, for example, or dividing between long and short stories. Whatever they think is best for their readers.
 
ThisNameIsntTakenYet said:
I'm not sure how many readers would actually use this, but maybe add an additional setting in the control panel where you can set your own average words per minute that it uses for the calculation of reading time? Like, it defaults to 200 or whatever it is using now, but you can override that if you wish. With a tooltip or little info icon next to the the amount of minutes to point people to the setting, it might be something people would actually use.
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As we continue to get more feedback on the reading time, it does seem like it's causing confusion for some people since it can't be accurate for everyone. Although it does give you a standardized story length measure, it's possible that we should start with number of words and then later allow users to turn on the reading time, either with a default calculation or with their own custom reading speed. We are thinking about it now and might try to tweak that data on the page before it gets out of BETA.

Thank you for the suggestion.
 
RubenR said:
What is the use of only showing a few of the reader-names who added a story to their favorites?

If you'd ask me, either (make it possible to) show them all, for example like the old version where the other names became visible by moving your mouse over 'XXX other people", or don't show any names at all, but only provide the number of Favorites.
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It should show the most recent members who have Favorited the story right now. In the future, we plan to make the full list available either in a modal or on a separate page. We did not prioritize the feature, but it is in the roadmap. :D
 
MelissaBaby said:
It would be nice if it also indicated whether or not a series was complete.
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This is part of the new Series feature, and will appear in the Story Info Box once the Series feature is rolled out in the Author Control Panel. :D
 
HeyAll said:
Is there any way to make the story text a little more narrow? To me, the width makes it a little more difficult to read, but that's my opinion.
Click to expand...

The new page is fully responsive, so you can pull the browser in to any narrow width you prefer. We set a maximum width based on standards used by many long read type sites, so we hope that it's a max width that users are comfortable with. It's possible we could add a custom max width for registered users in the future, but that would depend on user feedback. We'll consider your feedback a vote for the ability to customize it. :D
 
ThisNameIsntTakenYet said:
An extra level of grouping on your story list could be useful indeed, one that the writer can actually control as opposed to the way chapters are grouped for you. But that way a writer can choose how to use it. Subdivide by genre, universe or story type, for example, or dividing between long and short stories. Whatever they think is best for their readers.
Click to expand...

The new Series feature allows authors full control of their Series. The first version was actually completed along with the new Control Panel and it worked very much like the Lists feature. We haven't rolled it out because we decided to rethink how it works, both in the Control Panel, and for readers. Since the new site interface is rolling out, we can soon roll out the new Series (with improvements over the unreleased version) as well.

We plan to eventually allow readers to "collapse" series on all of the main Lit hubs so that they can either see what is new/popular by individual story (chapters) or with series folded into a single listing. It's not a simple thing to do, because if you're a reader looking for popular Erotic Couplings stories, we can easily show popular single parts. But if we collapse all series into individual series listings, we need to show them that there is a full series, but that series has a popular chapter in this category. There are also issues with how we should show scores on series vs one part stories, etc. We've been working on it for a long time, with a lot of feedback from authors and readers, and it will be part of the new site.
 
Manu said:
The new page is fully responsive, so you can pull the browser in to any narrow width you prefer. We set a maximum width based on standards used by many long read type sites, so we hope that it's a max width that users are comfortable with. It's possible we could add a custom max width for registered users in the future, but that would depend on user feedback. We'll consider your feedback a vote for the ability to customize it. :D
Click to expand...

I don't know how useful user settings are, because again, a huge part of the readers are visiting the site without being logged in. Maybe a simple toggle button on the story page itself that switches between two (or three) width options might work better?
 
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