Do you mean that you have a series, and you have a different category for the later chapters? That is sometimes hard to avoid. If you change a stand-alone story, probably no one is going to notice, because after the first ten days or so, people will have moved on. I had to change one because I accidentally put it in the wrong category. It took six days (pretty fast for Lit) to change it, but by then it had mostly been bypassed by readers.
My story has both incest, super power, and body swapping elements within it. So I wasn't sure how to categorise it. The first part had incest. Kind of. It was a body swap incest, not a "real" incest, and the second part doesn't have that at all. It mainly focuses on the power and side stories. Currently, for now at least, the incest aspect is not there. So I wasn't sure if it'd make sense to put it as Incest/Taboo.
But you haven't submitted it yet?
I think there are too many variables in readers passing through to know what the affect of this is. I've done it both ways and haven't seen any comparative pattern in readership.
That's something I've often done, and haven't heard a lot of readership squawk about it. In my story "The Yearbook Girl," the girl doesn't even get laid until the third chapter, so that chapter becomes "First Time." Everything else is either Exhibitionism (the first chapter) or Erotic Couplings. The only reason Erotic Couplings is used for the second chapter is that the MCs get down to some hot mutual masterbation, even though they don't take it all the way.
Right. I have a series where part 1 is non-con, parts 2-7 are lesbian, and part 8 is romance. So M/F. I was more concerned about the 'sudden' swop from lesbian to M/F then I was about the non-con to lesbian, even though you'd have to be a complete dullard to have read the series and not expect some inevitable M/F. I flagged it at the top of the story, and have only received positive comments.
It's not about aiming for a 'smorgasboard', or trying to appeal to readers of different categories, but more about (at least in my case) writing a series in which the various chapters cover different things and thus get assigned to the appropriate category at the time I hit 'publish'. To take the example above, if I'd posted the whole thing as one chapter (all 90k+ words of it...) it wouldn't have fit in any category. It's got non-con, lesbian, and M/F in it.
Lol. I've received similar comments many times. One hopes they're not all from the same person!
.Well it was my first, and it was very nice of them.
Keep writing your stuff and you'll get more. It's nice to be the "best thing they've read" more than once, that's for sure
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Well, not necessarily. Laurel reserves the right of category placement and exercises that right. You can't necessarily change the category--or even determine it to begin with.
I've personally moved my work from one category to another with no issues, but I suppose it'll depend on the individual work... I really never pegged Laurel as a stickler for overly controlling the author's creative preferences, but hey... maybe others haven't been so successful.
She'll occasionally change a story to a category where she thinks it will run better, and she will also allow incest outside the I&T category (contrary to a common belief that all incest is ring-fenced), provided you explain your reasons. She'll put an incest warning at the top of the story. She's not a category fanatic, unlike some readers.
Definitely good to know.
