HectorBidon
Should know better
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2010
- Posts
- 428
The Story Tags Portal says that as of today this site contains 533,682 stories by 94,815 authors. (Per a fairly recent discussion, it's probably more accurate to say 94,815 "accounts," since this number probably doesn't factor in that some authors have more than one account.) In any event, that's a lot of accounts, and it dawned on me that I don't think I've ever come across anywhere near that many authors here on the AH.
To investigate this more fully, I looked at the 100 most recently published stories as of today. This included 90 stories published on 10/17/2022 and 10 stories published on 10/16/2022. I looked the author of each story up on the Member Search Page and the Forum Search Page to find the number of his or her stories, followers, and forum posts.
There turned out to be 92 distinct authors in all (some had had more than one story come out). Of these, only 18 had ever posted on one of the forums. There were two heavy posters: SusanJillParker (2,155 posts, 675 stories, 8501 followers) and Pixiehoff (10,197 posts, 330 stories, 907 followers). The next three highest posters had 64, 23, and 17 posts, and all the rest had less than 10. A full 74 authors had never posted on a forum at all. I didn't analyze which forums were posted to, but it's pretty clear that at least 90 of the 92 authors were not regular contributors to the AH.
Many of the authors were quite prolific. 27 had more than 50 stories, and 11 had more than 100. Notable were rawlyrawls (157 stories, 3995 followers), imhapless (205 stories, 2957 followers), and mypenname3000 (555 stories, 4917 followers), none of whom have ever posted to any forum.
I have to say I was a bit surprised by the results. When I think of a Lit author, I tend to think of someone whom I've encountered here on the AH. But, in fact, it seems that the lion's share of Lit authors don't come here at all. They publish and are read and have their fans and get their comments, but they don't show up here, not to brag, or to rant, or to ask for advice, or to give it. (This point has been made here on the forum before, but I've never realized it so starkly.)
Now granted, this was a small sample—just one day's worth of stories. I'm sure that we AH regulars might have had a better showing if I'd picked some other random day last week. And, it's entirely possible that some of the authors on my list do follow the AH without posting or are really AH regulars themselves just publishing under different accounts.
But I think it's an undeniable fact that an awful lot of Lit stories are being written and published without our even being aware of them. Kind of makes me wonder whether all those authors are missing anything at all by not being privy to our pontification, and what we're missing by not being privy to theirs.
To investigate this more fully, I looked at the 100 most recently published stories as of today. This included 90 stories published on 10/17/2022 and 10 stories published on 10/16/2022. I looked the author of each story up on the Member Search Page and the Forum Search Page to find the number of his or her stories, followers, and forum posts.
There turned out to be 92 distinct authors in all (some had had more than one story come out). Of these, only 18 had ever posted on one of the forums. There were two heavy posters: SusanJillParker (2,155 posts, 675 stories, 8501 followers) and Pixiehoff (10,197 posts, 330 stories, 907 followers). The next three highest posters had 64, 23, and 17 posts, and all the rest had less than 10. A full 74 authors had never posted on a forum at all. I didn't analyze which forums were posted to, but it's pretty clear that at least 90 of the 92 authors were not regular contributors to the AH.
Many of the authors were quite prolific. 27 had more than 50 stories, and 11 had more than 100. Notable were rawlyrawls (157 stories, 3995 followers), imhapless (205 stories, 2957 followers), and mypenname3000 (555 stories, 4917 followers), none of whom have ever posted to any forum.
I have to say I was a bit surprised by the results. When I think of a Lit author, I tend to think of someone whom I've encountered here on the AH. But, in fact, it seems that the lion's share of Lit authors don't come here at all. They publish and are read and have their fans and get their comments, but they don't show up here, not to brag, or to rant, or to ask for advice, or to give it. (This point has been made here on the forum before, but I've never realized it so starkly.)
Now granted, this was a small sample—just one day's worth of stories. I'm sure that we AH regulars might have had a better showing if I'd picked some other random day last week. And, it's entirely possible that some of the authors on my list do follow the AH without posting or are really AH regulars themselves just publishing under different accounts.
But I think it's an undeniable fact that an awful lot of Lit stories are being written and published without our even being aware of them. Kind of makes me wonder whether all those authors are missing anything at all by not being privy to our pontification, and what we're missing by not being privy to theirs.
