"Christmas With Summer" series questions

[stevieraygovan]

Wanted to check with people here as to a couple questions I have about this series. Or, rather, the response this series has received. The reason I'm asking is this series has received less than half the votes of some of my other stories and nowhere near the amount of views. The scores have been okay but there just doesn't seem to be too many people reading or voting on this series.

Is this the usual case with a mutli chapter series? Does the multi chapter series format simply require too much of a time commitment from people so they just take a pass? I see a lot of very successful series on Literotica so I figure there must be nothing inherently off putting with doing a series like this.

Maybe the problem is each chapter is at least a few pages long? Same issue, with there being too much of a time commitment requirement? Or does the story just suck? I could see that, except that what little I've received in the way of scores and feedback for this series has so far all been highly positive. There just hasn't been that much of it.

Any thoughts or ideas? Any comments on the story?

 

[stevieraygovan]

I don't know if the moderators or editors here read these threads but if they do I have a question which probably only they could answer...

Is it the norm here to see a precipitous decline in viewership with each new chapter of a multi chapter series? I'm only able to view my own story submissions totals so I can't tell if that's pretty much par for the course around here.

 

[starrkers]

Maybe the title puts 'em off - they think it's a southern hemisphere story

I don't know a lot about multi-chapter stuff, don't have any of my own (except one in Chain Stories and that's hardly representative). But from what others say, it seems readership tends to drop as people lose interest in the story, but scores generally remain high as those that stick with it are the ones that really enjoy it.

 

[stevieraygovan]

starrkers, I guess it's a good thing then I didn't go with my original title for that series: "Christmas In Summer"...

Love your sig, btw. What's the story behind it? It's gotta be funny as hell.

 

[Darkniciad]

You'll normally see a decline with successive chapters. There are a lot of factors that can change that, though. How often you post chapters can matter. What day they post certainly does ( Sunday sucks! ). A good description line for a chapter can draw in people who might have overlooked the story previously.

In my experience, it's not unusual for the final chapter of a story to have a large jump in votes, as well. Not all readers will vote on every chapter. Instead, they wait until you complete the story, and then vote. Some will vote on the first chapter to encourage you to continue, and then not vote again until the end. I have several with "bookends" like this.

Then there are some that simply defy description.

4.32 | 166 | 42055
4.69 | 244 | 37220
4.69 | 197 | 30163
4.73 | 206 | 29860

That's a four chapter story of mine where they all came out one after another on successive days. The views decline as expected, the scores climb, as is normal, but the votes are all over the friggin' place!

There's no way of knowing how the reading public is going to react. Don't get discouraged by declining votes, comments, or even views. I have a few stories where middle chapters suddenly jump by as much as 2x the views of the preceding chapter or three.

You never really know how a chaptered story is doing until you finish it.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't know if the moderators or editors here read these threads but if they do I have a question which probably only they could answer...

Is it the norm here to see a precipitous decline in viewership with each new chapter of a multi chapter series? I'm only able to view my own story submissions totals so I can't tell if that's pretty much par for the course around here.

Yes, it's natural to see a steady decline in chapter readings--especially if each chapter doesn't stand alone very well.

 

[stevieraygovan]

Darkniciad, let me just say that you nailed it exactly. Thanks.

First chapter of a series? Loads of views and a decent amount of votes. Middle chapters? Steady decline of both. Final chapter? Least amount of views but a huge upswing of votes.

Exactly as you stated it: "bookends."

sr71plt (really?? very cool, if true!), your info completely jibes with my experience also.

Okay then, maybe you guys can help me with an answer to that last component of my question, the one about public comments and feedback...and the lack thereof which is part and parcel of all my stories. Some of my stories already have 35,000 views and well over 100 votes. Those aren't huge numbers compared to many stories here, obviously, but the part that sticks out like a sore thumb to me with all my stories is the nearly complete lack of public comment and feedback my stories receive. I'm just perplexed by that.

Is there something wrong with my stories, ie, something about them that just doesn't interest people enough to comment on them? Or is it something else and maybe my type of stories never receive much in the way of feedback? People vote on my stories (notwithstanding the multi chapter series issue you guys already cleared up for me), they just don't comment on them.

I see other stories receiving pages and pages of public comments, right away. Now, granted, often times many of those comments are rip jobs but I know I've seen some other stories which had scores similar to mine which were followed by dozens and dozens of positive public comments and, doubtless, positive private feedback.

Any thoughts there?

This is a very new hobby for me, this notion of submitting stories for public consumption. I'd like to get as much of a handle as possible as to how this stuff all works and what I should come to expect...

 

[sr71plt]

Darkniciad, let me just say that you nailed it exactly. Thanks.

First chapter of a series? Loads of views and a decent amount of votes. Middle chapters? Steady decline of both. Final chapter? Least amount of views but a huge upswing of votes.

Exactly as you stated it: "bookends."

sr71plt (really?? very cool, if true!), your info completely jibes with my experience also.

Okay then, maybe you guys can help me with an answer to that last component of my question, the one about public comments and feedback...and the lack thereof which is part and parcel of all my stories. Some of my stories already have 35,000 views and well over 100 votes. Those aren't huge numbers compared to many stories here, obviously, but the part that sticks out like a sore thumb to me with all my stories is the nearly complete lack of public comment and feedback my stories receive. I'm just perplexed by that.

Is there something wrong with my stories, ie, something about them that just doesn't interest people enough to comment on them? Or is it something else and maybe my type of stories never receive much in the way of feedback? People vote on my stories (notwithstanding the multi chapter series issue you guys already cleared up for me), they just don't comment on them.

I see other stories receiving pages and pages of public comments, right away. Now, granted, often times many of those comments are rip jobs but I know I've seen some other stories which had scores similar to mine which were followed by dozens and dozens of positive public comments and, doubtless, positive private feedback.

Any thoughts there?

This is a very new hobby for me, this notion of submitting stories for public consumption. I'd like to get as much of a handle as possible as to how this stuff all works and what I should come to expect...

Different categories have different comment patterns. Also, those who do a lot of commenting on others' stories will likely get a lot of comments from those folks on their stories (it's a regular you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours cottage industry).

over 35,000 views and 100 votes (depending on the category and how much of the cottage industry you devote your time to) is a high number.

 

[ElectricBadger]

IMO the tagline is the main detractor. When perusing stories something like "Our first holiday season together: summer and friends" or "One hot summer" doesn't jump out: other than the category and the implication of group sex, there's no hint of what the story is actually about. Is it a dare, a first time, drunk and accidental, sorority initiation, costumes or what? Some detail would create some curiosity and get people to click on it.

 

[Darkniciad]

From a quick blink through your PC boards, you're not doing bad as far as public comments go. If you look through mine, you see the same sort of bookend effect with public comments that you see with votes on chaptered stories.

Contest stories always get more than non-contest stories. Certain categories have career commenters ( LW, for example ) and will draw many more comments. Unfortunately, the largest part of said career commenters only have one purpose in life -- to cut down everyone who writes in the category in order to get rid of people who write stories they think "don't belong in the category"

Your main stomping grounds of E/V is a heavy stroke category, in my observation. Strokers aren't prone to make comments.

As SR71 mentions, commenting on a story will often prompt the person you commented on to look through your list and scratch your back as well. You can gather a genuine following when people who might have otherwise never read your work give you a look because you commented on their story. It's good advertising.

How are your private email comments? I typically pick up as many private comments as public -- sometimes 2x or more.

Most of those "pages of comments" have easy explainations. Stories in Loving Wives get oodles of comments from the career commenters.

Look through some of those high-comment stories and you'll see "Thanks for the invitation and the picture of your tits" Comments are encouraged by continually sending out new naked pics to those who sign comments.

Some will have page after page of strikingly similar anonymous comments. If it looks like bullshit, and smells like bullshit...

 

[stevieraygovan]

IMO the tagline is the main detractor. When perusing stories something like "Our first holiday season together: summer and friends" or "One hot summer" doesn't jump out: other than the category and the implication of group sex, there's no hint of what the story is actually about. Is it a dare, a first time, drunk and accidental, sorority initiation, costumes or what? Some detail would create some curiosity and get people to click on it.

I think you're right. The title is too generic. I thought it was okay initially but by the time I rolled out Chapter V I noticed that there were a half dozen other stories that came out that same day with "Christmas" in the title.

Not good.

I just submitted the first chapter of another request story, again from the reader named Jill. This one is entitled "The Play Is The Thing: '...when first we practice to deceive.'" It's an exhibitionism story about an off Broadway play. I like that title but maybe that one won't entice people to read the story either...

 

[stevieraygovan]

Darkniciad, you're absolutely correct about the "career commentors." They're an insane lot, especially as you said that wonderful group who live in the "Loving Wives" and "Exhibitionism" categories. They hate every single story, because they morally disapprove of the behavior of the people in the stories. Do they simply skip the genre, knowing they'll hate the stories, like a normal person would do? Nope, they read every story, and they post the exact same comment to every single one:

"Congratulations. Your wife is a slut. Hope you don't get HIV. I'd never let my wife behave like that. I would've divorced her immediately. Stories like this aren't my thing but apparently this sort of crap makes you happy. Whatever. Good luck in divorce court."

I can't count how many times that comment (or some slight variation thereof) has been posted...ALWAYS anonymously, of course. GW66 has posted that comment fifty times, and so has "Anonymous in Britain." GW66 suffered reprisals due to his posted comments so now he continues to post the same comment over and over under "Anonymous In U.K." There's a group of a half dozen people who are serial commentors. These same people post the exact same response every day to the exact same types of stories.

For the life of me I can't imagine posting the exact same comment of disapproval over and over and over. Why would I keep reading stories I hate? Why would I subject myself to that??

Twice now I've posted my own comments to those idiots, under this stevieraygovan nic, telling them they must be masochists to keep reading stories they know they'll hate. Both times the same group of idiots immediately responded by going through my entire catalog of stories and sabotaging the whole lot with "0" scores. Both times they managed in just one evening to knock out stories I had sitting at #1 on the top of the "Exhibitionsim" and "Loving Wives" sections of Literotica's "Top Lists." They also managed to knock about five of my stories from the front page and two of 'em even lost the "Hot" rating.

Now those stories will fade into oblivion. Nobody new who logs onto the "Top Lists" section to see the most recommended stories will see my stories, not unless they scroll through a few pages. The petty vindictiveness of those idiots means that a lot of people will never see my stories now. That's what pisses me off.

Pretty fucked up. 90% of my posted comments are positive. I usually only respond in order to compliment the story. Two times I posted ripping comments, and they weren't even regarding the story, they were regarding childish comments to the story, and both times I get my stories sabotaged as a result.

Lesson learned, I suppose. Have the balls to sign your comments and you'll pay for it. Cowardly anonymity however is to be rewarded. How special.

To answer your other question, yeah, I get more PMs than public comments. I don't get a whole lot of either but I definitely get more PMs. Most of 'em are requests to take a story further, to keep it going, after I've already ended the series. Also a lot of my PMs are requests to turn my girl into a full on gangbang slut. Sure get a lot of those PMs! LOL!