Encourage more comments

[Olive_DD]

Comments are the best thing about writing for Literotica. Is there a way to encourage more comments?

Would the site admins consider tweaking the site flow so that when a user adds a story to favorites or bookmarks a story they are prompted to add a comment and have to comment or opt out in order for the favorite/bookmark to be saved? This would surely increase comments a bit and probably would not reduce use of favorites/bookmarks.

It might also make sense to also give users the option to follow the author when they favorite or bookmark a story.

Another idea to increase the number of comments might be to add a nag screen to the last page of stories. If a user has read all the way to the last page then they are obviously enjoying the story and may be responsive to some persuasion along the lines that comments are the pay off for authors and since they are enjoying the story so much they should say why in a comment. Then they get to see the last page after they have left a comment (or opted out of leaving a comment).

Would the admins consider these suggestions?

Does anyone have any other suggestions to increase comments?


O

P.S. Do read my stories (and leave a comment)

 

[SmilingLez]

That's one way to do it

 

[Rob_Royale]

I used to ask for them in my authors note - 'please tell me what you liked or what you didn't', but it didn't help.

I'm thinking though of asking for just critique. 'If something about this story made you not give the story five stars, please tell me what it was so I can improve my writing.'
I'll give it a try with my next story.

 

[Olive_DD]

It would also be possible to prompt a user who navigates away from a story before going past page 1 if they would like to comment on what they didn't like.

 

[darwin1859]

Comments are the best thing about writing for Literotica. Is there a way to encourage more comments?

Would the admins consider these suggestions?

Does anyone have any other suggestions to increase comments?

My perception (i.e., speculation) is that the site owners are busy keeping up and not likely to make such changes. Apparently it's just Laurel and Manu and I get the impression that Laurel's time is mostly taken up with vetting stories. There's something like 150 new stories published daily and supposedly Laurel is manually approving each one. That cannot be true, I'm sure there's automation involved, but I'm sure she's the "human in the loop" and adjudicating even a dozen stories and eyeballing a list of approved stories seems like it would be time consuming. And although Laurel was hand-coding HTML in the beginning, I think Manu handles the technical side and I think that requires some effort. I'm guessing that this site doesn't make them rich and at least one of them has a day job. Also, a lot of aspects of the site haven't changed in years.

Counter-argument: small things change all the time. The story pages say: "November 2025 update is live! We are improving site performance and adding new features based on your feedback. Exciting changes coming to Author Profiles early next year!" So, they made changes that they were excited about in November and they have some changes in store for author profile pages soon(?)... I know several weeks ago they were down for maintenance.

Nonetheless, rather than waiting for a change, I like @Rob_Royale 's suggestion that you request comments. EDIT: I would request in the a brief author's note at the beginning and again at the end. My bad, you already do this, although not at the end; I would also say that you already have a slightly above-average number of comments for your stories.

Another thing you can do is post your own comment (to your own story) and in that comment, request that the readers leave comments. Tell them how much you value comments.

Also, engage with the readers when they do leave comments.

Why, BTW, do you want comments? Most of my comments are "This is good, you should write more.", possibly with some praise thrown in like "You write well" or "Your characters really come alive" and sometimes I include some criticism, most commonly "You need an editor." I see other people's comments. Some of them tell an anecdote or say how you should go in a future chapter. Plenty of people begging for a new chapter when the author seems to have stalled. Some comments seem unhelpful, even harmful. Clearly some stories trigger some people. Are any of those comments really helpful to you?

A LOT more people leave ratings than comment (even though it's < 1% of supposed readers) and I take that as a comment. Also, you see how many lists and favorites your story has been added. I also see that as a comment.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Comments are the best thing about writing for Literotica. Is there a way to encourage more comments?

Write more, write well, and develop a following.

Would the site admins consider tweaking the site flow so that when a user adds a story to favorites or bookmarks a story they are prompted to add a comment and have to comment or opt out in order for the favorite/bookmark to be saved? This would surely increase comments a bit and probably would not reduce use of favorites/bookmarks.

Lit is feedback-lite - my metric is one comment per thousand Views, across nearly all categories I've written in. LW has a much higher comment per view ratio, but check out the nature of the comments first!

It might also make sense to also give users the option to follow the author when they favorite or bookmark a story.

You can do that already, at the bottom of every last page.

Another idea to increase the number of comments might be to add a nag screen to the last page of stories. If a user has read all the way to the last page then they are obviously enjoying the story and may be responsive to some persuasion along the lines that comments are the pay off for authors and since they are enjoying the story so much they should say why in a comment. Then they get to see the last page after they have left a comment (or opted out of leaving a comment).

Not a good idea. Given that the vast majority of readers never comment, holding them hostage like that would get extremely negative reactions. They're hard put to vote (one in a hundred), so forcing them to comment would be like getting blood from a stone.

P.S. Do read my stories (and leave a comment)

Some authors put that at the bottom of their stories, and it's probably the best you can do.

 

[Olive_DD]

Not talking about holding people hostage. Just prompting them to consider commenting. Giving them some information and persuasion about reasons to comment

 

[Bazzle]

Not talking about holding people hostage. Just prompting them to consider commenting. Giving them some information and persuasion about reasons to comment

We as authors need to write something that engages the reader enough to comment.

I have had something like 1.1 million clicks on my stories but 321 comments. I am awful at converting clicks to comments. Presumably because my content is so niche...most click away.