Delay between chapters

I've seen subsequent chapters in some of my series register more views than previous ones. That's a headscratcher, as I can't imagine jumping in in the middle of the series to start reading. I just see it as the unreliability of "views" as an indicator of actual readers.
Everyone here agrees that views are higher than the count of actual readers. But I think they are much higher than even what I've seen people here guess. I've seen people theorize that a lot of views are people who click in and don't finish. Yes, they are. But, I also suspect that it counts as a view every time a page is loaded. If so, obviously a 10 page story will have way more views per read than a 2 page story. Also a view every time a reader closes the story and then comes back later to read further (also more likely on longer stories). Also every time they come back and read it again, or just glance at part of it again to remember something. I do all these things, I suspect others do as well. And any of these factors could lead to a later chapter having more views without necessarily picking up more readers mid-story. Of course, there can also be new readers; often, if a new mid-story chapter for something I've never read shows up, I'll click in, take a brief look, and then decide if I want to go to chapter 1.

I do wonder how series with like 20 chapters end up with any views at all by the end, with these dropoff rates. But the spreadsheet above looks like a fairly large dropoff from ch 1 to 2, and then not much change from 2 to 15 or whatever...
 
But, I also suspect that it counts as a view every time a page is loaded. If so, obviously a 10 page story will have way more views per read than a 2 page story. Also a view every time a reader closes the story and then comes back later to read further (also more likely on longer stories).
Don't think so. I've experimented on my own multi-page stories, and the View count goes up by one each time the first page is clicked, but not the subsequent pages.

I've got a few very long stories (fifteen pages plus) - they count up in increments of one, not in multiples.
 
I do wonder how series with like 20 chapters end up with any views at all by the end, with these dropoff rates.

My longest running series is at chapter 26.

It's been up a couple of weeks; has about 2.3K views but only 32 votes.

Previous chapters before have mid to high 60s votes.

What this tells me is the readership for my series is small, but loyal.

Sure, it would be great to get a thousand votes per chapter; but hell, part one only has 563 confirmed votes.

I'm okay with it. I write them because I like them. If only 10, 20, maybe 30 other people are actually reading them, that's fine. They get good ratings and nice comments.

I can live with that.
 
But, I also suspect that it counts as a view every time a page is loaded. If so, obviously a 10 page story will have way more views per read than a 2 page story. Also a view every time a reader closes the story and then comes back later to read further (also more likely on longer stories). Also every time they come back and read it again, or just glance at part of it again to remember something. I do all these things, I suspect others do as well. And any of these factors could lead to a later chapter having more views without necessarily picking up more readers mid-story. Of course, there can also be new readers; often, if a new mid-story chapter for something I've never read shows up, I'll click in, take a brief look, and then decide if I want to go to chapter 1.

I do wonder how series with like 20 chapters end up with any views at all by the end, with these dropoff rates. But the spreadsheet above looks like a fairly large dropoff from ch 1 to 2, and then not much change from 2 to 15 or whatever...
I'm reasonably confident that this is NOT true. It doesn't match what I'm seeing. It also doesn't make any sense -- why would the site do this? Nobody would be interested in tracking such information. Others have weighed in on this in the past and the consensus is that a "view" represents a unique opening of the story and has nothing to do with page clicks or reads.
 
I'm reasonably confident that this is NOT true. It doesn't match what I'm seeing. It also doesn't make any sense -- why would the site do this? Nobody would be interested in tracking such information. Others have weighed in on this in the past and the consensus is that a "view" represents a unique opening of the story and has nothing to do with page clicks or reads.
The page 1 only thing is good to know. Is it unique users/IP addresses? Or if someone clicks on page 1 a second time does it count again? I guess I could just test that myself... Well interesting, if views are only counted once per source (user, IP address), they are more relevant than I thought they were.
 
The page 1 only thing is good to know. Is it unique users/IP addresses? Or if someone clicks on page 1 a second time does it count again? I guess I could just test that myself... Well interesting, if views are only counted once per source (user, IP address), they are more relevant than I thought they were.
I believe every time someone opens the story, it registers as a view. That means multiple views by a single reader.
I suspect you are RIGHT, however, about your broader point: the view:read ratio is likely bigger than we'd like to believe. I know from my own behavior I probably finish reading no more than about 15% of the stories I open. I usually open it up, check how long it is, read the beginning to see if I'm interested, and only then maybe read it. If I read as much as half a Lit page I'll usually read the whole thing.
 
The page 1 only thing is good to know. Is it unique users/IP addresses? Or if someone clicks on page 1 a second time does it count again? I guess I could just test that myself... Well interesting, if views are only counted once per source (user, IP address), they are more relevant than I thought they were.
Yes, it does up-count each time you click into a story. It's one of the few things that updates in real time.
 
My longest running series is at chapter 26.

It's been up a couple of weeks; has about 2.3K views but only 32 votes.

Previous chapters before have mid to high 60s votes.

What this tells me is the readership for my series is small, but loyal.

Sure, it would be great to get a thousand votes per chapter; but hell, part one only has 563 confirmed votes.

I'm okay with it. I write them because I like them. If only 10, 20, maybe 30 other people are actually reading them, that's fine. They get good ratings and nice comments.

I can live with that.
I gotta get back to this! I loved the first several chapters. Then got caught up in some 20 and 30 page stories. And trying (failing) to read all the Valentine's stuff in time. I'll pick it back up...
 
I believe every time someone opens the story, it registers as a view. That means multiple views by a single reader.
I did a test. I loaded up one of my stories and logged out. I refreshed the page 100 times. About an hour later, the view count had increased by that much.
 
I think you may be missing an order of magnitude or two.
6% voting means 6 votes per 100 readers. That's 60 votes for a 1000, 600 votes for 10,000. If you're seeing this, you are ***way*** above the number of votes I've seen on my 100k-read stories.
Yes, and 1,200 votes on a story with 20,000 views would be 6%. 4% to 7% is what I have seen with my chapters, with the final chapter being among the highest percentage of votes per view. I don't claim that my numbers are representative of anything other than data on my stories, and other will likely see different results.

If you want to talk about *** way *** above numbers, take a look at the votes to view figures for this story. It's been like this for over a month:

Screenshot 2023-02-08 at 04-54-36 Literotica.png
 
Going back to OP question re multi-chapter stories, my 2c: I think readers get put off by dropping 20k words all at once since it's a big time commitment and not easy to digest in one sitting (you have to be mindful of the reader's time). It seems from my experience that 2-3 pages with storyline/character development and then climax (pun intended) in a chapter serves well.

At the risk of repeating myself from other threads, I believe that a reader's tolerance for the length of a story is category dependent.

I have several 100K+ stories, but they are all posted in N/N. They don't get as many views as stories in other categories, but the readers are very loyal. I began breaking these stories into multiple parts and submitting them to post day-after-day, and readers still overwhelmingly voiced their preference for me to post them as one long story, which is all I do now.

This is just my experience and others likely see different results. We just can't compare apples to fire trucks where experiences are concerned.
 
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