How do you judge success

[RoryOmore]

There doesn't seem to be many comments - at least on my stories. With so little feedback how do you decide if you have written a good story. Is it the rating, the number of views, the number of votes?
I know how I feel about a particular work I've posted, but I'm having trouble figuring out if the reader's have enjoyed it.
Rory

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Years ago I created funny skits, some of which are on YOUTUBE. I was born with a MAD Magazine sense of humor. My stuff is almost always controversial and offends many. I'm offensive for the same reason you have brown eyes or a yellow stripe down your back.

So when my stuff is good readers howl in delight or outrage.

Also, others steal whats good.

 

[nikyc]

Success is rather subjective, isn't it? Arbitrary some might say. Do you like what you write? That's 'success' right there. Well, to some.

Feedback is always tricky. If you feel you're not getting enough you can try asking for some in the Story Feedback forum. Be sure to specify the type of feedback you're looking for. Generally (not always) the rating is a decent enough indicator of what the audience that have found your story thinks about it. In my opinion, based on my rather limited experience, there's usually an audience for everything. The trick is reaching them.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

There doesn't seem to be many comments - at least on my stories. With so little feedback how do you decide if you have written a good story. Is it the rating, the number of views, the number of votes?
I know how I feel about a particular work I've posted, but I'm having trouble figuring out if the reader's have enjoyed it.
Rory

If you like your story, you succeeded.

Ultimately - after a couple hundred votes, which can take a long time - score is some measure of success. 4.5 is a good score. 4.8+ means pretty much everyone agrees you rocked it.

Email from readers is uncommon but is the best measure of how you're doing. Comments on stories is a little less valuable, but still good.

Readers are a fickle bunch. There's no consistent pattern to getting scores or feedback. Patience is advised. It can take months to get enough votes, comments and email to know how you're doing.

 

[Malraux]

Success

If it were a pay site, success would be money.

I began submitting stories 10 months ago or so, and I was shocked at how much the stars and especially comments meant to me. Some of the latter have been heartbreaking or warming. A few readers contacted me rather than post a public comment, but those have been far between.

Views I discount as a good measure because I don't know if those are really reads--my stories can be long for this site and I assume some readers drop a story as they go because of its length or subject or discrimination. I don't really know the definition of a 'view.'

Every time I submit a story, I worry that it is not good enough--whatever that means. The long ones I fear may be rambling or boring. I submit only complete stories, which means I don't have the pressure of changing where the story goes with each installment.

Oh, in the Loving Wives category success is if you emerge with your ego intact and willing to write again.

I have enjoyed my relationship with Literotica--it gets more views and reads than other sites I've considered.

Malraux

 

[My I]

Heh. I'm happy just seeing that someone READ my stories, let alone actually liked them.

 

[Hypoxia]

Success is whatever you want it to be.

* Do you crave brownie points: votes, likes, numerical stuff?
* Do you crave reactions? You'll get lotsa comments in LW.
* Are you satisfied with your own evolving writing style?
* Must you 'merely' transcribe the voices in your head?
* Do you aspire to reach paying mainstream audiences?

Like most everything else, what you get back from LIT depends on what you put into it. What ar your goals? Will your efforts take you there?

 

[litfan10]

I especially like nikyc and hypoxia on this.

We are very much in the fetish territory here and for one person's perk will be another's distaste. There is no easy measure.

You are writing and people are reading what you are writing - it doesn't get any better than that my friend.

Happy writing.

 

[SamScribble]

There are a few readers (mainly other writers) whose judgement I trust. Positive feedback from a few of these people makes me think I'm probably on the right track. Other than that, it probably comes down to how I feel about the story when re-reading it two or three months down the track.

My stuff normally gets beaten up during the first few days. Three months on, stories usually float upwards. The Red Hs sometimes take six months to materialise. If I took too much notice of the Day Two scores, I'd probably never write again.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Well as I submit what I write either here or for pay I have two different ways to judge what I do.

Here, I usually discount reads and even votes because as soon as my stories get even close to 4.5 they are immediately down voted. Some comments let me know how well I'm doing and emails from friends. Other comments provide me with a good chuckle now and then letting me know I hit the correct cord.

As for the pay stuff, the money is the tell. There are several out there that I might post here on Lit. just for the fun of it. There are others that consistently do well on Smashwords or Kindle, so that tells me with those I'm doing something right. At least for a group of people it is.

 

[SamScribble]

As of the pay stuff, the money is the tell.

Well, yes. I certainly think that the royalties speak. But there have still been stories that have paid quite well that I would like to have done more work on a year later. Usually, I would have liked to 'write them shorter'. But that is seldom something readers complain about.

 

[CharlieB4]

Feedback from readers on this site depends a lot on the category your story fits in. Some get a lot more readers than others so more feedback but it's not always nice.

 

[RoryOmore]

Thanks for that, I'm new and paying too much attention to it I guess. How I feel about story personally is the most important thing. What bothers me is when writing a long piece and the scores
suddenly drop from one chapter to the next and I'm wondering if I've made some basic error that I'm blind to.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What bothers me is when writing a long piece and the scores
suddenly drop from one chapter to the next and I'm wondering if I've made some basic error that I'm blind to.

Doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. It just means a bunch of people read your first chapter, it didn't move their world, so they didn't read the next. In a multi-part story, you'll hopefully find that your reader base settles in around chaps 3 or 4 and stays steady. I've got a 23 chapter yarn, I reckon I can tell how many people read a particular chapter twice, because you'd expect a steady state to kick in. Overall it does, but some chapters peak 20 -25% higher in terms of reads. Can only be people reading it again.

Just keep writing. Someone will like it.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Thanks for that, I'm new and paying too much attention to it I guess. How I feel about story personally is the most important thing. What bothers me is when writing a long piece and the scores
suddenly drop from one chapter to the next and I'm wondering if I've made some basic error that I'm blind to.

If its any help, and I have no idea if this is standard, but I find views after chapter one are about half what I get for the first chapter. There are exceptions but that's the average.

 

[Green_Knight]

The perennial question and one that every author – on here or elsewhere – would love to have the answer to.

Yes, I suppose that if you want to make a living out of writing, it's royalties that count, but on that basis Fifty Shades of Grey is a good book. It isn't; there's a host of people here on Lit who are far better writers than E L James and who produce much better erotica.

Views:
a view merely says that someone has clicked on the link to your story and says nothing about whether they liked it or even if they got as far as the bottom of page 1. If it's a long story they may have read it in multiple sessions or if it's got a good wank scene in it they may come back time and time again and click up multiple views. The site seems to know if you've already voted, so it should be able to know that you've already viewed a story.

Votes:
in my experience only about 1 per cent of all views produce a vote. Why don't people vote? Sometimes when I get to the end of a story I might be tempted to click on another link – the next chapter, a similar story, or all comments – and then I've passed the opportunity to vote. And, if urban legend is correct, if I go back and vote, I won't have been on the story page long enough to read it and so my vote won't count. It needs a pop-up when you click away from a story - "Hey, you didn't vote" - with options to say "not finished it yet - add it to my reading list" and "prefer not to vote on this story".

Sometimes I don't vote because the scale isn't precise enough. A 4* is too low but a 5* is too high. It needs a slider scale.

The low number of votes means, unfortunately, that voting is wide open to manipulation – both up and down – especially when a story is new, to the point at which the scores are meaningless.

Comments:
if votes are rare then comments are even rarer, and those that are worth bothering about rarer still.

Favourites:
While favourites are used as bookmarks, they're pointless as a means of measuring the success of a story, even though Lit does precisely that. Want to get a lot of favourites? Try to get your story published at a time when there are loads of new stories so that lots of people will bookmark yours. With a bit of luck many of them will forget to unfavourite you. I've got stories with a low vote (around 4.20) but a high number of favourites and vice-versa. Explain.

My conclusion: there is no way of measuring success on Lit. Just write because you enjoy it and if even one person gets pleasure from reading your work then you've done a good job.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

At LIT most writers assume no standards exist for quality writing, affirmative action rules. Jesus loves the little authors, all the authors of the world; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.....etc.I ts nonsense.

 

[KindofHere]

...............

 

[RoryOmore]

That's a very good point. Thanks

One more virgin question.

How does the H judgment work?

 

[NotWise]

That's a very good point. Thanks

One more virgin question.

How does the H judgment work?

The red H shows up if you have a score of 4.50 or more. I think you may also need a minimum number of votes--like five or something.

 

[Areala-chan]

The red H shows up if you have a score of 4.50 or more. I think you may also need a minimum number of votes--like five or something.

Ten votes and an average of 4.50 or greater qualifies you for the red H.

 

[MayorReynolds]

Success comes in two parts for me.

When I work on a Lit story, or any story project for that matter, I dedicate a lot of time to it—2-3 weeks, sometimes a month or more. I lock myself in my study. I try to keep myself disciplined, resisting the urge to mess around with video games or YouTube clips.

Once it's DONE, spellchecked, and copy/pasted into the window, hitting that 'submit' button is a huge reward. It's over, I've done it, it's on the way to Laurel and out of my hands. The euphoria is the greatest high I could ask for. All the sacrifice was worth it because I created something.

Of course, once the story is approved I get anal about the responses. I try to ignore the overall score. If 50 people made it a 4.2, that's fine, although I may have pictured my story being 'good enough' to receive a 4.4 or a 4.6. At the same time I see people favoriting the story, which is nice. That could mean they actually liked it enough to read it again or that they're just bookmarking it for later.

What I really want is actual feedback in words, as in comments or private messages. Sadly I don't get enough of that. I see that thousands of visitors have been on the page. The number who vote will be in the double digits. But no comments means I can't improve myself and make the next story better.

Do less comments actually mean less people read the entire thing? It's frustrating sometimes. But creativity, to me, is its own reward, and the biggest one.

 

[visioneer]

Don't fixate on the score, meaning don't chase the little read "H." Most readers do not read objectively (which is fine), and comments and scores reflect this. As has been noted, personal satisfaction with a story is your ultimate indicator of success.

As for improving your erotica, find and read Lit authors who write better than you. Watch how they make the magic happen. Learn how they apply the tools of the trade: grammar, words, sentences, etc. to create a story. Often frustrating to be sure, but, just like the real world, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

 

[Green_Knight]

Don't fixate on the score, meaning don't chase the little read "H." Most readers do not read objectively (which is fine), and comments and scores reflect this. As has been noted, personal satisfaction with a story is your ultimate indicator of success...

Rightly or wrongly, the little red H does matter because, faced with a choice either in the New Stories list or as the result of a search, which are readers more likely to pick to read?

The sad thing is, as you say, that readers do not read and vote objectively, especially those, for example, who insist on reading LW stories but then vote them down because they don't approve of the subject matter. Or even, and let's face it, there are a few, those Lit authors who vote down and make adverse comments on competing authors, using an Alt, while voting up and favouriting themselves.

So, yes, don't fixate on the score - recognising that the system of voting used here has even less merits that the US presidential electoral college - but do aspire to get that little red H if you can.

 

[oggbashan]

Some people seem to deliberately target new stories so that they do NOT get a red H, or if the story does, they make sure that H doesn't stay there long.

If the story is down voted in the first few hours it will disappear into obscurity.