category popularity rankings?

[yibala2]

Hi all,

I assume this has been discussed at length, but I haven't seen it yet. Does anyone have a feel for how the categories are ranked in terms of readership?

I gather that Incest and Romance are relatively high. Maybe incest is the highest? SFF and Erotic Horror I am guessing are on the lower end.

Curious as to what other authors have found, and if they consider this as a factor in choosing categories. I note SFF, Romance and Erotic Horror because those are probably the best fits for most of my work, but I am curious about others too.

-Yib

 

[SimonDoom]

8Letters and Hector Bidon have done some analysis of this issue. One of 8Letters's threads is here:


https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1488161&highlight=statistical+analysis


Incest/Taboo has, by far, the highest readership of any category. I've published 32 stories, about half of which are Incest, and they get more than three times the readership of my other stories, on average.


Loving Wives is in second place. It has a lot of readers, although the readership is divided into antagonistic camps. Some people love stories about wives who have sex outside marriage, and some people hate them.

Illustrated stories also get a lot of readers. Attaching a few pictures to your story is a good way to boost the number of readers you get, and to attract followers.

Other categories that rank relatively high are nonconsent, anal, first time, and a few others.

There are authors who've achieved popularity by publishing in other categories, though, like gay male, or lesbian, or sci fi, or romance. It's all relative, and that's an important thing to remember. Categories that do not get as many readers at Literotica still get more readers than at other sites.

 

[yibala2]

oh, that's perfect

There are some surprises there. I didn't realize Romance and SFF were that low.

Thank you!

-Yib

 

[SimonDoom]

There are some surprises there. I didn't realize Romance and SFF were that low.

Thank you!

-Yib

Keep in mind that this is just a sampling of stories over a short period of time. There are SFF and Romance stories that have been extremely popular.


SFF is an odd category -- a category apart. Despite what those numbers appear to show there's a very large number of dedicated Literotica SFF readers. So no one should shy away from posting stories there.

Same thing with Romance.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It wasn't until I joined Literotica more than two years ago that I realized how much interest there is in incest. I was already sixty-two-years-old and I thought I had heard it all. It didn't occur to me - it just isn't my thing - that relations between parents and children, between siblings, and so forth, would arouse so many people. I suppose there are some granny and grandpa stories in there as well.

 

[vanmyers86]

Hi all,

I assume this has been discussed at length, but I haven't seen it yet. Does anyone have a feel for how the categories are ranked in terms of readership?

I gather that Incest and Romance are relatively high. Maybe incest is the highest? SFF and Erotic Horror I am guessing are on the lower end.

Curious as to what other authors have found, and if they consider this as a factor in choosing categories. I note SFF, Romance and Erotic Horror because those are probably the best fits for most of my work, but I am curious about others too.

-Yib

Not that you asked, but another factor in capturing views is entering contests and challenges. A number of other writers here find entering contests bolsters their stories' views - enough that I made sure my first story was a contest entry. In fact, of my 11 stories here on Lit, only three were not contest or authors' challenge entries - and those three have the fewest views by far.

My two stories in the "first time" category (both contest entries) have way more views than anything else in my catalog, with a recent contest winner in the romance category in a distant third place.

I wish you well as you find your niche here! I enjoy writing for the audience here and have gotten some great advice and support on the Authors' Hangout forum.

 

[yibala2]

Not that you asked, but another factor in capturing views is entering contests and challenges. A number of other writers here find entering contests bolsters their stories' views - enough that I made sure my first story was a contest entry. In fact, of my 11 stories here on Lit, only three were not contest or authors' challenge entries - and those three have the fewest views by far.

My two stories in the "first time" category (both contest entries) have way more views than anything else in my catalog, with a recent contest winner in the romance category in a distant third place.

I wish you well as you find your niche here! I enjoy writing for the audience here and have gotten some great advice and support on the Authors' Hangout forum.

Thanks! Yes, I am keeping an eye on contests for that reason!

-Yib

 

[yibala2]

It wasn't until I joined Literotica more than two years ago that I realized how much interest there is in incest. I was already sixty-two-years-old and I thought I had heard it all. It didn't occur to me - it just isn't my thing - that relations between parents and children, between siblings, and so forth, would arouse so many people. I suppose there are some granny and grandpa stories in there as well.

Oh yes, there are.

It isn't my thing either, but I can see the attraction. Taboo, familiarity, accessibility. I doubt I'll ever write an incest story, but I understand fantasizing about that tantalizing person that is right in front of you yet at the same time forbidden.

-Yib

 

[SisterJezabel]

I think H&S is one of the harder categories to crack. I have read some hilarious writing that literally has had me spurting tea across my screen. Usually they send up tropes and/or stereotypes, but not always. Sadly there are few readers and not many who 'get' everyone else's sense of humour- my two in the category didn't crack 4.5, yet one was a monthly winner in the category (not overall which didn't surprise me!)

Another area I haven't written in is IR- it can be very fickle- sometimes the LW trolls head over and hate cheating wife narratives, other times they ignore them and the wife getting a BBC is apparently hot as!

 

[gunhilltrain]

Oh yes, there are.

It isn't my thing either, but I can see the attraction. Taboo, familiarity, accessibility. I doubt I'll ever write an incest story, but I understand fantasizing about that tantalizing person that is right in front of you yet at the same time forbidden.

-Yib

I get it yet on another level I don't. I know I've said one's own predictions seem merely "kinky" or "interesting," while those of other people - if one doesn't share them - seem weird.

The one incest story I'm trying to write is about a young guy with his uncle's new young wife. Even the previous wife, who was not a blood relative either, was not attractive to this guy because he had known her his whole life as his aunt.

 

[ChasPHX]

Curious as to what other authors have found, and if they consider this as a factor in choosing categories. I note SFF, Romance and Erotic Horror because those are probably the best fits for most of my work, but I am curious about others too.

I've started paying more attention to the ratio of favorites to views as a way to mark readers' appreciation. But it depends on what you're after. Would you rather have high views, or a more appreciative readership? (You can have both, of course.)

My least read story at only 1000 views (not counting the story that just went up today) has 3 favorites. The f/v ratio is .3, which is my second highest ratio. It's in the Celebrities & Fanfic category, but it's essentially erotic horror.

My most read story, which has 30K views in I/T category, has 44 favs. That seems decent, but the f/v ratio is 0.15. So that story was viewed 30x more than the other one, but it was liked half as much (using the word "liked" as equivalent to "favorite").

For reference, the f/v ratio is simply favorites divided by views times 100.

The reason I would be cautious about putting a lot of stock in pure views is that many people could be reading your story and abandoning it after just a couple of paragraphs. I can say that I start way, way more stories than I actually finish, and yet my views still count.

I like to be a hard ass with the numbers. I don't consider a view to be a "read." I consider the number of people who actually rated the story to be the definitive "read" count.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've started paying more attention to the ratio of favorites to views as a way to mark readers' appreciation. But it depends on what you're after. Would you rather have high views, or a more appreciative readership? (You can have both, of course.)

.

I think this "choice" is trickier than it may seem. Too many authors, I think, believe that a high score correlates with reader appreciation. It may, and there's definitely a correlation between high scores and story quality, but it's not a perfect correlation, and there are many factors that can drive story scores up or down that have little to do with how good the story is, or how well it's appreciated.

Consider a story about a hot wife published in Loving Wives. That story probably will have many readers, and high view numbers. We can infer that there will be many readers who enjoy and appreciate the story. Let's say 50,000 viewers, with 500 votes, and let's say 5,000 actually read the story and enjoyed it. But some readers who hate those kinds of stories also have downvoted it, so its score is only 4.45.

Is that story less appreciated than a story published in BDSM that has 5000 views and a score of 4.8? I would say no. You have connected with a greater number of appreciative readers with the Loving Wives story than with the BDSM story. It's just that the appreciation is obscured somewhat by the lower score, reflecting readers who don't like the subject matter. My attitude is to focus on the positive: take pleasure in those who like your story, and ignore those who don't (unless they have something constructive to tell me about my story or my writing).

This is why I don't get worked up about scores. Don't get me wrong -- all things being equal, a high score is better than the alternative, and I like to see one of my stories get a good score. But all things are not equal here, and it's useful to keep that in mind.

 

[ChasPHX]

Yep. Agree with all that (what SimonDoom said). Lots of nuance and it'll never be a foolproof system.

I find the scores to be particularly unhelpful, pretty much for the reasons cited above. I don't factor them in. I feel more confident relying on favorites and the number of ratings as "hard" evidence a story was a) read to completion and b) liked a lot. At least that way I know I'm not overestimating the story's appeal.

Will I ever use that info to direct my story decisions, content, category etc.? Very, very unlikely. In fact I confess to getting off a bit on stretching category limits, essentially provoking weaker ratings from those who like their categories clean. But I'm in marketing, and so I find slicing and dicing the data kind of fun and interesting in and of itself.

 

[yibala2]

hmm

This is really interesting.

It seems to me that so much of our drive as writers comes from the need to truly connect with our audience, large or small. The favorites-to-views ratio is a smart way to gauge that connection. It means more that someone has favorited my story than given it 5 stars on a 1-5 scale. There's more significance in clicking on the heart, identifying yourself, and selecting that story as one of the best you've read.

When I look at views, I am basically measuring exposure. Since my stories have relatively low views, I figure I'm not even reaching all of my potential audience. If I can reach more viewers, then I can find more of my 'natural' audience. I'll probably also reach that many more readers that don't like what I'm writing, and so my scores might suffer.

That seems to be what's happening routinely in Loving Wives. There are two very different audiences there. The average LW scoring in 8Letters's analysis and SimonDoom's example of scoring reflect those contrasting audiences.

I believe all of us here have natural audiences, whatever the relative quality of our writing is.

When I feel I've gotten more exposure, I will be more interested in favorites to views ratio. Because once I am reaching my natural audience, it seems like it will be easier to gauge what readers think of quality. Maybe I am naive in thinking that, but even now, I look back at some of my higher-rated stories or most-favorited stories and think that some of my other stories were better written. It's hard to get clear feedback from readers as to how good a story is, or even why it 'worked' or didn't work for them individually.

One of the things I am doing to get more exposure is try other categories. All of my stories could easily fit in SFF, but I wrote the latest one purposefully as a Romance, to see how it does in that category. It's in the queue now. We'll see how that turns out.

-Yib

 

[SimonDoom]

Yep. Agree with all that (what SimonDoom said). Lots of nuance and it'll never be a foolproof system.

I find the scores to be particularly unhelpful, pretty much for the reasons cited above. I don't factor them in. I feel more confident relying on favorites and the number of ratings as "hard" evidence a story was a) read to completion and b) liked a lot. At least that way I know I'm not overestimating the story's appeal.

Will I ever use that info to direct my story decisions, content, category etc.? Very, very unlikely. In fact I confess to getting off a bit on stretching category limits, essentially provoking weaker ratings from those who like their categories clean. But I'm in marketing, and so I find slicing and dicing the data kind of fun and interesting in and of itself.

My philosophy/strategy is a bit different. It's a two-parter.

Number 1 is to write the story I want to write, according to my standards. Don't worry too much about what anyone will think of it. One of the most satisfying stories I've written is the one with the lowest score and the worst favorite:view ratio.

Number 2 is that with regard to everything else I try to be ruthlessly pragmatic. I want to maximize the number of people that see the story, so with respect to story title, tags, taglines, and category choice I ask myself: how can I maximize the number of people that will read my story?

 

[jaF0]

Does anyone have a feel for how the categories are ranked in terms of readership?

Why are people so hung up on rankings and ratings? Put your stories in the most appropriate categories. Don't worry about what others think.

 

[NotWise]

I've started paying more attention to the ratio of favorites to views as a way to mark readers' appreciation. But it depends on what you're after. Would you rather have high views, or a more appreciative readership? (You can have both, of course.)

For my stories, the ratio of favorites to views varies sharply from category to category, which makes it hard to use as a general indicator. Both of my Romance stories and all but one of my I/T stories are above the median ratio. All but one of my EC stories is below the median ratio.

 

[sirhugs]

Mature also has a good audience that are generally supportive.

 

[ChasPHX]

Why are people so hung up on rankings and ratings? Put your stories in the most appropriate categories. Don't worry about what others think.

I don't think "hung up" and "worry" are accurate words to describe the nature of this conversation; certainly not for me. It's fun and interesting (for some people) to work the numbers.

 

[Omenainen]

Well, I follow views as an indicator of exposure, however inaccurate it might be. Number of votes is interesting, and favorites, yes, although there's those readers who have hundreds if not thousands in their favorites, or those that use favs as "to read"-list and also remove them, so I don't really know how much that counts. Score is very nice if it's good, but it's also something that can go down as well as up, so it's not like it's an achievement that is done once and then stays.

But comments. Really. I'm so hooked on comments. I've had comments that are so wonderful, I can't imagine numbers that would make me happier.

 

[ChasPHX]

although there's those readers who have hundreds if not thousands in their favorites, or those that use favs as "to read"-list and also remove them, so I don't really know how much that counts.

Ooh. And I thought my list of how the favorite indicator could be used was complete! That's a new one for me.

There's also this other use...unless I favorite a story or keep an external log, how will I know if I've read a particular story or not? Once you start really diving in, it's pretty much impossible to remember what you've read based on title and summary alone. I wonder if some of the heavy users of the fav button are using it simply to record what they've read, even if they hated the story.

I would never use it that way, as I would prefer my fav catalogue to act as a reliable source of quality work for other readers looking for a way into the site. When I read a story I like, I look up the author and see what their faves are in hopes of following a thread of quality from author to author.

And yes, I agree that views are an excellent indicator of exposure. The trap not to fall into is equating views with reads. I probably only read (to the end) one out of every ten stories I view. But in the end that's better for the author, because if I've gotten that far, I'm pretty damn motivated to rate a 4 or 5 and also leave a comment. I never rate low and I never comment on a story I don't like, because I would never have got past the first dozen paragraphs anyway.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

My philosophy/strategy is a bit different. It's a two-parter.

Number 1 is to write the story I want to write, according to my standards. Don't worry too much about what anyone will think of it. One of the most satisfying stories I've written is the one with the lowest score and the worst favorite:view ratio.

Number 2 is that with regard to everything else I try to be ruthlessly pragmatic. I want to maximize the number of people that see the story, so with respect to story title, tags, taglines, and category choice I ask myself: how can I maximize the number of people that will read my story?

I have the same philosophy. I also contribute photos to an online image agency and the captioning, tags etc is to me the hardest part to maximise viewership. The act of producing the story/image is the fun part.

The chore is trying to make it visible to the clammering masses out there!

Strange that whilst the photos make me the occasional few dollars, I am more concerned with the reaction to my musings here!

 

[ChasPHX]

Number 2 is that with regard to everything else I try to be ruthlessly pragmatic. I want to maximize the number of people that see the story, so with respect to story title, tags, taglines, and category choice I ask myself: how can I maximize the number of people that will read my story?

I'm interested in how far you'd go here. This is not meant to challenge, just my curiosity as I tackle the same issues. If you've written the story exactly how you want, and then you come to this second step of your strategy, how likely are you to revisit the story and make changes if you see that pragmatic considerations would either a) get you wider readership or b) not piss off category purists? I can see there might be some potentially tough choices. Do "market demands" and "audience expectations" drive any editing decisions for you?

 

[8letters]

My philosophy/strategy is a bit different. It's a two-parter.

Number 1 is to write the story I want to write, according to my standards. Don't worry too much about what anyone will think of it. One of the most satisfying stories I've written is the one with the lowest score and the worst favorite:view ratio.

Number 2 is that with regard to everything else I try to be ruthlessly pragmatic. I want to maximize the number of people that see the story, so with respect to story title, tags, taglines, and category choice I ask myself: how can I maximize the number of people that will read my story?

I'm a slow writer and I come up with more story ideas than I can write. I've got a Story Ideas file that is quite long and growing. I've got over two dozen stories that are partially written.

Most of the time, I get an idea for a story that I start playing with in my head. If it's a fantasy I real enjoy, I'll start writing it. Doesn't matter if I'm in the middle of writing another story. There's a big burst of writing energy initially as I write. But that initial excitement will eventually wear off. Sometimes I continue the story, sometimes I move on to the next story idea that's grabbed my fancy.

So when I'm not in the grip of a particular story idea, I have a lot of choices of what to write about. What I think the response will be to each story idea definitely impacts what I choose to write on. I've got three stories that I've published just because I felt like writing them. But those stories are short. If I'm going to sink a large amount of time into a story, I want it to get a high rating, lots of comments, etc that make publishing on LitE so much fun for me.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I like to be a hard ass with the numbers. I don't consider a view to be a "read." I consider the number of people who actually rated the story to be the definitive "read" count.

Even then, that's not "definitive," because you can't assume every reader votes. You can get a better idea of "reads" vs "views" from chaptered stories, because you can see the numbers through to the end. From my own story file, I reckon no more than one in five who open a story will read the whole thing. With a stand-alone story there's no way of knowing how many finish.

I personally don't pay much attention to faves - mainly because they were being used as bookmarks when I first arrived on Lit, so I never saw them as indicators of anything much.