If You Incest: A Data-Driven Post on Why Your Story is Screwed

[MelissaBaby]

I appreciate you taking the time to explain all of that. Everything you said makes sense, and I can see now where the issue was and how I was wrong.

Not only was I incorrect statistically, but I also made an arrogant assumption that other authors wouldn’t write certain erotic categories unless they were personally into them. I’m not sure why I jumped to that conclusion, as I’m usually self-aware enough to recognize that people have very different motivations for what they create. If someone simply enjoys writing within the erotica genre, the specific topic may not matter to them at all.

Truthfully, I wouldn’t classify myself as an erotica writer. I mainly write comedy and participate in other online writing communities. I originally joined this site just to share a few erotic-adjacent comedic pieces of mine. Then I started to read through all the threads about the issues people were running into, and it triggered my pathological need to help.

Unfortunately, I sometimes get ahead of myself and end up making things worse. I consider it to be one of the "many problems" I have, as someone else aptly put it.

I apologize to everyone for the asinine assumptions in my original post. If I could, I’d delete the thread altogether. I hope I didn’t offend anyone too much, that “Literotica is full of MF’s” line was purely meant as a joke, nothing more.

Thanks again for setting the record straight.

You weren't the first person with a theory, you won't be the last. I don't think anyone is upset with you, just in disagreement. I appreciate that you gave thoughtful consideration to our opinions and personal evidence.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

So why wouldn’t they prioritize what gets the clicks?

A lot of reasons, most noticeably that they only have one person doing the moderating. And, let’s be real. The site’s monetization isn’t as ramped up as it could be. That there’s never been a subscription model or premium version is a testament to that. Laurel leaves a lot of money on the table.

In a rational world with rational actors who always do what’s in their best interests, your theory would work and might even be correct. But as I am constantly telling my colleagues who love to rely heavily on economists, people are irrational and do stupid shit all the time. Assuming somebody will always choose the thing that’s in their best interest is belied by literally every story on the news every night.

 

[MelissaBaby]

This has been my experience as well. I’ve had chapters in my series, which average between 1400-3000 views after a week, approved within 20 minutes. I think it comes down largely as to when I hit publish more than anything else. I know if I get finished editing and hit publish right before noon, I usually have it ready to publish by bedtime.

Best I ever did was getting on a plane for work - hit publish while we were boarding and it was through and ready to launch by the time we took off.

I think a lot of this stuff is completely random, based on when laurel is doing her thing.

I've always figured that Laurel's approval process went something like this, presumably after sone sort of preliminary AI screening;

*New author, first story, better set that aside for a close look
*That one, too.
*Simon Doom, fine, approve
*Give this one a glance...hmm, okay
*Erozetta, just approve and move on
*Quick look, okay
*Check...whoa! No way!

....and on and on.

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

*New author, first story, better set that aside for a close look

That best describes my experience. The first couple of stories took time, but since they followed the rules new stories pass quickly.

 

[RejectReality]

I've always figured that Laurel's approval process went something like this, presumably after sone sort of preliminary AI screening;

*New author, first story, better set that aside for a close look
*That one, too.
*Simon Doom, fine, approve
*Give this one a glance...hmm, okay
*Erozetta, just approve and move on
*Quick look, okay
*Check...whoa! No way!

....and on and on.

With the caveat that Laurel likely has a problematic word/phrase highlighter to assist her skimming. People with 100s of submissions have been erroneously rejected, and then published unchanged after resubmission with a note contesting it. Most of the time, it's an underage rejection, and you can guess where tired eyes and a highlighted phrase probably set off a knee-jerk rejection.

Nobody gets rubber-stamped straight through. Every submission gets reviewed by a single human's eyes, even if it's oh-so briefly.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Audio poetry is worse. If it were click driven, that category would not exist..

Dang, and here I was thinking of trying that when I didn't feel up to singing (or when my poetry wasn't a song parody)...

 

[SimonDoom]

I apologize to everyone for the asinine assumptions in my original post. If I could, I’d delete the thread altogether. I hope I didn’t offend anyone too much, that “Literotica is full of MF’s” line was purely meant as a joke, nothing more.

Thanks again for setting the record straight.

There's no need to apologize. I don't agree with your analysis and conclusions, which conflict with everything I've seen and experienced since I started writing here, but it's an entertaining theory and it provoked a lively discussion. Speculation about what's going on behind the Site's curtain is the sport of choice around here. Many like to play, as you can see.

 

[alohadave]

But as I am constantly telling my colleagues who love to rely heavily on economists, people are irrational and do stupid shit all the time.

I casually follow some economists, and I don't want to live in the world they seem to prefer, though it seems that is where we are heading. They are about min/maxing everything, as if that is the only logical way to live.

 

[PennyThompson]

The site’s monetization isn’t as ramped up as it could be.

And thank God for that, IMO! Lit obviously has its flaws, and lately I worry about the sustainability of its workflow on the owner, but I appreciate that it hasn't been completely enshittified!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

And thank God for that, IMO! Lit obviously has its flaws, and lately I worry about the sustainability of its workflow on the owner, but I appreciate that it hasn't been completely enshittified!

For the sake of argument, why does everyone assume that the monetization, or some large player moving in and buying Literotica, would be detrimental to readers and authors?

 

[YmaOHyd]

For the sake of argument, why does everyone assume that the monetization, or some large player moving in and buying Literotica, would be detrimental to readers and authors?

Platform decay.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

For the sake of argument, why does everyone assume that the monetization, or some large player moving in and buying Literotica, would be detrimental to readers and authors?

What would the end goal of a larger player buying them be?

Honestly, I think it could go either way. What gets most of the other sites like this nerfed is that some company buys them then clamps down over fears of reputational damage.

Anyone who would buy Lit is likely going to be a porn driven enterprise, so that shouldn't matter.
Nothing on Lit is inconsistent with what you can find on "mainstream" sites like PornHub.

It's not like they could cut services to try and save money...

There probably is the potential for some serious improvements.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What would the end goal of a larger player buying them be?

Honestly, I think it could go either way. What gets most of the other sites like this nerfed is that some company buys them then clamps down over fears of reputational damage.

Anyone who would buy Lit is likely going to be a porn driven enterprise, so that shouldn't matter.
Nothing on Lit is inconsistent with what you can find on "mainstream" sites like PornHub.

It's not like they could cut services to try and save money...

There probably is the potential for some serious improvements.

Exactly. It could go either way. Actually, I assume there would be some things we wouldn't like, but I also think there would be some improvements. What I don't understand is this assumption that it would be terrible.

Platform decay.

I know about that theory, but how exactly is Literotica prioritizing users' experience right now? What I see is that almost every decision of theirs is aimed at improving the number of clicks, often at the detriment of readers' experience. I could name so many examples.
And don't even get me started about authors' experience. We are now firmly at the bottom of the food chain. I don't exactly see how that could get worse.

Sure, they also have some firm stances on certain things, and some of us support them, some of us don't. I think it's fair to say that most users support some practices and dislike others. It's a mixed bag. But either way, some firm stances that Lit holds right now are mostly a product of admins' biases and not some altruistic stands. And they are most certainly not something that is done for our sakes here.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I know about that theory, but how exactly is Literotica prioritizing users' experience right now?

I happened to open a tabloid's website the other day -- I needed one specific piece of information from the article. The article's text took up 1/16th of my screen; there were four visible sentences. There were two rotating ads in the left sidebar, five static ads in the right sidebar, an auto-playing pop-over in the bottom right corner, and an auto-playing in-line video ad with sound. Opening a story doesn't add popups or pop-unders, and I don't have to wait for an intermediate ad to click through, like ad-supported Netflix or similar. One thing the current management does that future management very likely will not is keep ads from interfering with the user's experience.

Another thing Lit doesn't have is anything algorithmic or the ability to pay for status to goose the algorithm. I can't do the equivalent of buying a blue-check to get my stories to show up in the Suggested Reads section. The category page hasn't replaced the Random section with a Featured section that's pay-to-play.

Lit is absolutely not perfect but it does a good job of not allowing monetization to interfere with the basic task of reading.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Lit is absolutely not perfect but it does a good job of not allowing monetization to interfere with the basic task of reading.

But it does allow their poor technical knowledge to hinder stories, and it sure does allow weeks, even months-long queues for (some) authors.
And the stories still get buried underneath new submissions, while those Suggested Reads spots you mentioned - the current top lists section, is curated by the top list mafia rather than the website owners. Our beloved Laurel and Manu don't seem to care about the unfairness of it.

As you see, everything is a matter of perspective. There is too much bias when it comes to this topic. The emotional knee-jerk reaction that Lit would go to shit if someone big in the porn were to acquire it is just pure speculation. I don't see a reason to believe that things would get worse, overall.

 

[PennyThompson]

I don't see a reason to believe that things would get worse, overall.

*Gestures vaguely at every shareholder-profit-driven social and media platform currently operating on the internet*

 

[alohadave]

For the sake of argument, why does everyone assume that the monetization, or some large player moving in and buying Literotica, would be detrimental to readers and authors?

For better or worse, Lit is a labor of love, run by the same two people who founded it. They've kept it more-or-less the same for 25+ years. It's free to use for readers and authors. 600k+ stories that are not paywalled nor have any access restrictions.

Future owners, presuming that they sell the site, will care about getting a return on their investment. The free access may stay, behind user registrations. The data associated with accounts becomes a huge asset that can be sold to data brokers.

The free author access may stay. What is more likely is that there will be a tiered access model, a couple stories a day or week, or whatever. Then to access more stories, you pay for access. This is how SOL works, you get a set number of stories per day that you can access per day. If you want more, you pay.

To recoup their investment and to make a profit, the new owners will want to find ways to make site visitors pay. Tiered access for readers. Pay options for additional features for authors, whether that is placement in search results, access to additional tools. A paywall to read more than a couple paragraphs of a story.

They could make it more social media oriented. Algorithmic feeds that show you what they think you want to see, no more chronological feed. Authors will see that their view counts and engagement plummet if they are not what the algorithm feeds to readers. If you think that author self-promotion and discussion about views/votes/engagement is bad now, wait until you have to do youtube style strategies to stay relevant to get any views.

The site will not be a labor of love to new owners (it could happen, but that is a unicorn situation, not realistic), it will be a business that they think will make them money. And they will milk it as much as they can.

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

As far as I can see the only element of monetization is the row with sex chat ads shown. I have always wondered how many people who come here to read actually switch to chatting with naked women instead? Because only when you start paying for these offerings can Literotica receive income.
I remember that I once followed the IP-adresses used and it looked to me as if the ads came from the company adultfriendfinder. But not only did the ads come from there, but the Literotica content as well. It looked to me as if adultfriendfinder provided the servers and the bandwidth. So it might very well be that Literotica in some way belongs to adultfriendfinder.

 

[TheLobster]

They've kept it more-or-less the same for 25+ years.

It's definitely stuck somewhere around the turn of the century, that's for sure.

The data associated with accounts becomes a huge asset that can be sold to data brokers.

This data is about as valuable as the tastes and preferences, in the form of viewing history, of users of regular porn sites. If you have it on hand, you could perhaps use it to target more personalized porn ads, and who says that Lit isn't doing that already?

Algorithmic feeds that show you what they think you want to see, (...)

Oh god, yes please. Almost anything would be better for discoverability than the big ol' nothing we have right now.

Authors will see that their view counts and engagement plummet if they are not what the algorithm feeds to readers. If you think that author self-promotion and discussion about views/votes/engagement is bad now, wait until you have to do youtube style strategies to stay relevant to get any views.

If authors cared about engagement this much, no one would be writing anything but LW and incest. View counts are already in the toilet for anything but a handful of categories; the existing "algorithm" is already forcing the stratification of engagement because, surprise, readers like what they like.

With some automated suggestions a'la YT home page, we'd at least see some cross-pollination that could prop rarely read categories.

The site will not be a labor of love to new owners (...)

I don't see much love being put into this labor as of late, given the state that the site is in. A profit motive would at least compel the housekeepers to keep it clean of obvious and glaring bugs.

 

[THBGato]

Algorithmic feeds that show you what they think you want to see, no more chronological feed.

Oh god, yes please. Almost anything would be better for discoverability than the big ol' nothing we have right now.

Doesn't this already exist? The "similar stories" recommendations beneath each story, and the "recommended for you" section on the category hubs (which really doesn't know my taste at all).

I know they aren't on our home page feed... but then I wonder how often readers look at that.

 

[TheLobster]

Doesn't this already exist? The "similar stories" recommendations beneath each story, and the "recommended for you" section on the category hubs (which really doesn't know my taste at all).

Huh, I wasn’t aware of the “recommended for you” section. Like many more useful things on the site, it’s tucked away where the sun doesn’t shine.

Even so, it is category-specific, so it cannot point you to stories from related categories. Lit has this weird, deeply baked assumption that categories are distinct universes with no overlap, which everyone who ever had a category dilemma as an author knows is largely nonsensical.

 

[BryanRichardson]

I wrote in every Lit category in 2024 for the Survivor challenge (not including audio, illustrated and chain). The only long pending times happened when I submitted to challenges where all the stories published on the same day at the end of the challenge.

Well, that and the erotic horror story that broke the cannibalism rule, but even that was rejected pretty quickly.

Was a lack of delay because my stuff is good? Probably not, some of it sucked.

Was it because I published regularly and TBTB just based my stuff on through? Maybe, except that erotic horror story was rejected so someone or some program was checking something.

I just submitted a Non-Erotic story. Would anyone like to bet on how long it takes to go to pending, and how long before it is published? That category has been averaging 0-1 publications per day recently…

In about a day it was approved to be published on the 14th, which is tomorrow.

 

[BryanRichardson]

In about a day it was approved to be published on the 14th, which is tomorrow.

165 views in 11 hours! It’s being viewed like crazy! Woo hoo! Clickity clickity click!

(Ok, one of the views is mine, but the rest are all legitimate.)