Categories - take 247

[Zenith77]

But wasn't it really about the friends you made along the way...

Going with that theory. We'll gloss over the fact I don't have any friends...

 

[djrip]

Going with that theory. We'll gloss over the fact I don't have any friends...

 

[ChloeTzang]

Impressive, but unsure as to the applicability to Sci-Fi .

Em

Geeky? Geeky? Thinks so hard!!!!

When I was at high school, I was the champion truck surfer...... hmmm, no, thats not really geeky.. okay, try again. When I was at uni, I sat on the lazy susan at a chinese restaurant, drank half a bottle of vodka on top of chugging more beer than I could handle, and did a helicopter....and got thrown out....okay, hmmm, not really geeky either....more party animal

Okay okay, Thinks even harder. Geeky. Geeky...oh no, I can't think of anything that counts, except maybe having a few thousand books. Does a few thousand books count?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Geeky? Geeky? Thinks so hard!!!!

When I was at high school, I was the champion truck surfer...... hmmm, no, thats not really geeky.. okay, try again. When I was at uni, I sat on the lazy susan at a chinese restaurant, drank half a bottle of vodka on top of chugging more beer than I could handle, and did a helicopter....and got thrown out....okay, hmmm, not really geeky either....more party animal

Okay okay, Thinks even harder. Geeky. Geeky...oh no, I can't think of anything that counts, except maybe having a few thousand books. Does a few thousand books count?

Your lazy Susan brings back college memories . Well sort of.

Em

 

[Zenith77]

Geeky? Geeky? Thinks so hard!!!!

Ok.

Played D&D from the age of 12.
Own getting on for about 300 computer games.
I have an MSc.
Watched the whole of STNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, some of which I had to rent from Blockbuster.
And I have a lego Dr. Strange:

 

[SimonDoom]

Geeky? Geeky? Thinks so hard!!!!

When I was at high school, I was the champion truck surfer......

I don't even know what a truck surfer is.

I can hear my kids saying, "OK Boomer."

 

[PandemicReader8]

Well, let's flex some nerd muscle... I can't even say that with a straight face...

- I've played DnD - and to many other RPGs to count - for 40 years, yep, late 70s.
- Presented seminars and taken part in panels on how to be a DM long before YouTube or Critical Role.
- Own thousands of comics books, including a damn near mint Jerry Lewis and several issues of the Three Stooges.
- Been interviewed on several radio and TV programs about the collection and the hobby. (Says a lot about program quality, actually...)
- Nominated multiple times for Origins Awards for my work in the RPG industry, never won. And isn't the nerd who is rejected by other nerds truly the king nerd?

 

[Duleigh]

Oh I like this game. It’s like Pokemon. My turn:

• Author on two papers published in high-ranking journals

Over to you .

Em

Conditional access engineer for Adelphia, Time Warner, Zito, Britehouse, and Comcast cable, in other words, if any one of over 10 million subscribers presses the purchase option on their cable box, I insured they got their porn.

Your turn

 

[FifthEstate]

Ok.

Played D&D from the age of 12.
Own getting on for about 300 computer games.
I have an MSc.
Watched the whole of STNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, some of which I had to rent from Blockbuster.
And I have a lego Dr. Strange:

View attachment 2228007

Ok Z77, you win! The Dr. Strange pez dispenser insures it!

 

[MrPixel]

Computer guy since the ENIAC. Well, not really (not that old), but close enough - I programmed an IBM 1620. Is that nerd enough to qualify for a magic decoder ring?

The jocks at school labeled me a nerd, tho'. What they didn't know is that - F 'em - I hung out with the smart cute girls. Wasn't that the objective?

 

[ChloeTzang]

I don't even know what a truck surfer is.

I can hear my kids saying, "OK Boomer."

These are NOT geeky things....lol

More often called car surfing, but where I grew up it was trucks, because that's what almost everyone drove. High school, so they were old and very used trucks... this is something you do on Friday and Saturday nights, when you're all very drunk (lets not discuss age limits - they were there to be ignored), and your IQ has plunged about 100 points, and it seems like fun rather than incredibly stupid....I was actually very good at it altho I only did it half a dozen times. No-one died, which on the face of it was pretty surprising.... if you're a wuss, you lie on the roof and hang on to something. Mostly on back roads....and the driver better know where the bumps are lol.

http://www.folomojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/11/needforspeedreview.jpg

The other pasttime of choice was prairie dog hunting from the back of a truck on someone's farm, because a lot of the guys I knew were from farming families. Except these were not your prairie dog hunting trips that you see advertised for a gazillion dollars with all the luxuries. This was half a dozen kids with rifles in the back of the truck driving across someone's farm blazing (carefully, because we were all brought up shooting) away at the pesky little things. Actually you have to stop the truck to have a chance of hitting them, they're not that big, but it's fun. Of course if you use a .308, it's pink mist time and you better always have something backstopping the little chap because the bullets do go a long ways......it's fun tho, and we got to do it for free, because they are real pests and when the population takes off, which it can really easily, they eat all the grass and spread diseases.

Where I grew up was NOT the best place to be a vegetarian and thing all animals are cuddly and cute - lol

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.wixstatic.com%2Fmedia%2Fcd7d20_d7b1bd28fc0d424e97b5e7123cb09db0~mv2.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9890ab65f85d588cc84af193859f2c338ef5eb9aa162a30e3a415c60ee9b0d3c&ipo=images

 

[Zenith77]

I wish I understood the readership of each category better, as for example i wonder whether NC/R might also be semi natural for me to. Does anybody have an impression how that compares to BDSM or Fetish?

In a few days' time my first entry into the 'Fetish' category will get published, and I'll let you know how that gets on in comparison, if you're interested.

Based on a sample of '1', I'm not sure how useful this is, but...

On the 18th April my first Fetish story went live, and 6 days on its had 4.2k views, 9 favs, 26 votes and is scoring 4.88 including a 1-bomb I tracked.

In comparison, on the 21st April chapter 8 of a series in another category went live, and has had 3k views and 25 votes after 3 days.

Generally I'd expect a stand-alone (or 'Chapter 1') to get a lot more views than a chapter 8 over the same period, so I therefore conclude that Fetish has a very low readership in comparison to other categories - which makes sense, I suppose.

That said, it's my first Fetish story, so I'm not exactly well-known in that category.

I'd also add that I would expect chapter 8 to rack up more votes-per-read than a stand-alone or chapter 1, so it's possible that the Fetishists vote proportionately more. Or maybe just felt my story needed a vote more than usual.

From my own personal experience, I'd rank the categories (in descending order of readership) as:
LW (in which I never post, read, or venture)
I/T
Romance
Most of the Rest
Non-Con
BDSM
Fetish

...and I'm interested how this tracks with others' opinions.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Generally I'd expect a stand-alone (or 'Chapter 1') to get a lot more views than a chapter 8 over the same period, so I therefore conclude that Fetish has a very low readership in comparison to other categories - which makes sense, I suppose.

I've found the Vote per View ratio stays pretty steady regardless of where in a story the chapter sits, in my case, roughly one vote per hundred views - some categories higher, others lower (I've written across seventeen categories, I think).

It's one of the oddities of Lit readership, that they might vote on a Chapter One but not go on and read the rest of the story. In my multi-chapter stories, I pay more attention to the Views from chapter three onwards, relative to the chapters around it. That can give you some idea of those chapters some people might be reading twice - there's usually a bump up in score along with a bump up in Views. I don't pay much attention to Favourites, as they're much further down into the data's noise floor.

If you want to get an idea of category popularity, all you need to do is compare the total number of stories in each category to each other - your assessment is pretty much right. If all you are interested in is high numbers, go write in Incest and LW, and be done with it. Alternatively, explore other categories and accept the numbers are smaller. The readership can be as rewarding.

 

[SimonDoom]

From my own personal experience, I'd rank the categories (in descending order of readership) as:
LW (in which I never post, read, or venture)
I/T
Romance
Most of the Rest
Non-Con
BDSM
Fetish

...and I'm interested how this tracks with others' opinions.

There's plenty of data on this. 8Letters posted a few threads a few years ago on this subject. Plus, you can check out category new story hubs or toplists and see how they compare.

I/T is the number one category in terms of views, by far. LW is second. Illustrated is up there as well. Illustrated stories are much less common, but some of them do extremely well.

To give you a rough numerical idea about this, I've published 54 stories, and not quite half are incest, and my incest stories receive more than three times on average the views that my other stories receive.

After that, there's a second set of categories that can be very popular, but usually aren't quite as popular. They can include Non-Con, Mature, Anal, Romance.

Sometimes Gay Male and Lesbian stories do very well.

Exhibitionism ranks a bit lower, usually, but sometimes those stories do very well.

Erotic Couplings is hard to predict. Every once in a while those stories do well, but it's a nondescript grab bag of stories so many stories there get few views.

Sci Fi is usually a middling category in terms of views.

Fetish and BDSM typically do not receive many views.

Celeb/fanfiction, humor, and letters receive very few views.

I have to correct EB about something: there is NO relationship between the number of stories in a category and how popular those stories are in terms of how many views the stories receive.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have to correct EB about something: there is NO relationship between the number of stories in a category and how popular those stories are in terms of how many views the stories receive.

My quick looks over the years has always suggested to me that the two most popular categories get far higher view counts than the remainder, by a large factor. The remaining categories fight amongst themselves, I'd have thought, but operate on a different playing field.

 

[Bazzle]

Based on a sample of '1', I'm not sure how useful this is, but...

On the 18th April my first Fetish story went live, and 6 days on its had 4.2k views, 9 favs, 26 votes and is scoring 4.88 including a 1-bomb I tracked.

In comparison, on the 21st April chapter 8 of a series in another category went live, and has had 3k views and 25 votes after 3 days.

Generally I'd expect a stand-alone (or 'Chapter 1') to get a lot more views than a chapter 8 over the same period, so I therefore conclude that Fetish has a very low readership in comparison to other categories - which makes sense, I suppose.

That said, it's my first Fetish story, so I'm not exactly well-known in that category.

I'd also add that I would expect chapter 8 to rack up more votes-per-read than a stand-alone or chapter 1, so it's possible that the Fetishists vote proportionately more. Or maybe just felt my story needed a vote more than usual.

From my own personal experience, I'd rank the categories (in descending order of readership) as:
LW (in which I never post, read, or venture)
I/T
Romance
Most of the Rest
Non-Con
BDSM
Fetish

...and I'm interested how this tracks with others' opinions.

Fetish is low readership and also quite fickle.
I know...99% of my stories are in there.