Milestones

[PriestOfIshtar]

What milestones have felt exciting or important to you as you have been publishing on Literotica?

I have two more pending stories in my current [and first] series, so having a complete series published is one milestone I am looking forward to.

Another is hitting 100k reads across all stories.

I'm a newbie, so these may seem like small potatoes... but even so, I would love to hear about some of the milestones that felt important to you!

 

[JanusGoneAwry]

My first milestone was to get a red H attached to a story I wrote and my second one was to publish 10 stories. I've accomplished both of those relative newbie milestones and next on my list is to double my published stories count to 20 and I'd also like to write a four or five-part series. I'd love to see my H ratio at 50% or better of my total published stories but as so many others on this board have pointed out the readership here can be fickle so it's probably best to focus on the things I can control such as publishing more stories and becoming a better writer.

 

[SimonDoom]

Biggest one, by far: Publishing my first story. December 8, 2016. I regard it as one of my least important stories, on the merits. But it was a big deal for me finally publishing something after years of reading erotica and thinking about writing, but not getting around to it. I finally got my toes wet and it felt great. I was in my 50s and I'd finally published a piece of creative writing for the first time in my life.

On June 7, 2017, my story Late Night on the Loveseat With Mom reached no. 1 on the 30-day most viewed toplist, 28 days after publication. 9 months later it was no. 1 on the most-viewed toplist for the preceding 12 months. On April 11 of this year, that story reached one million views. That was a cool milestone. The success of that story has been very enjoyable, but somewhat puzzling to me, and, so far, impossible to recapture.

August 2017: I found out my second-published story, In The Hallway, was nominated for the BDSM story for the year for 2016. It ended up number 2, which I never expected. The best part was the nomination gave it more exposure and a lot more people read it after that.

On September 6, 2018, I got my 1485th follower. That was good enough to get me on the list of top 250 most followed authors at Literotica. I'm about number 120 on the list now.

Each time I publish a story in a new category is a milestone. I like pushing my comfort zone and striking out on new ground in my writing.

 

[Ian_Snow]

Finishing my first series (New Man, cheap plug) was pretty great. Also the first time I opened my email inbox and realized I had a dozen or so unopened emails from readers sending me on encouragement or criticism was pretty cool. Up until that point I didn't think anyone would actually reach out.

 

[SamScribble]

Waking up in the morning and discovering that I am still alive.

 

[PriestOfIshtar]

Biggest one, by far: Publishing my first story. December 8, 2016. I regard it as one of my least important stories, on the merits. But it was a big deal for me finally publishing something after years of reading erotica and thinking about writing, but not getting around to it. I finally got my toes wet and it felt great. I was in my 50s and I'd finally published a piece of creative writing for the first time in my life.

On June 7, 2017, my story Late Night on the Loveseat With Mom reached no. 1 on the 30-day most viewed toplist, 28 days after publication. 9 months later it was no. 1 on the most-viewed toplist for the preceding 12 months. On April 11 of this year, that story reached one million views. That was a cool milestone. The success of that story has been very enjoyable, but somewhat puzzling to me, and, so far, impossible to recapture.

August 2017: I found out my second-published story, In The Hallway, was nominated for the BDSM story for the year for 2016. It ended up number 2, which I never expected. The best part was the nomination gave it more exposure and a lot more people read it after that.

On September 6, 2018, I got my 1485th follower. That was good enough to get me on the list of top 250 most followed authors at Literotica. I'm about number 120 on the list now.

Each time I publish a story in a new category is a milestone. I like pushing my comfort zone and striking out on new ground in my writing.

Wow... those are some inspiring milestones. I didn't even know about some of these lists... I am going to have to go look for them now.

 

[HeyAll]

One a side note, my first story was posted roughly 10 years ago (yikes).

Back then, Lit didn't have the number of views posted on stories. I'm pretty sure that a bit later on. I was also unaware of any Top List; if it did exist back then, I didn't see it. I was also unaware of any sort of favorite author list.

So I basically had no frame of reference for story views or stats.

My first story was something I did for fun, and it was a mom/son story. I still remember when the story was posted. I was trying to figure out what the stats meant and I remember being suprised that so many people were reading it and commending on it.

Interesting experience overall because before it was posted, I literally didn't even think about stats. I didn't even know I would get to see numbers or favs or anything.

 

[lovecraft68]

Like Simon mentioned I think all of our first stories is a milestone.

To me milestones are the same as goals and those change as you grow here and strive for different things. So here's a few of mine as time has gone on.

Typing the end on my 39 chapter 18 months to write Siblings with Benefits series.

Hitting the top 250 author list.

Having a #1 all time story (Home is Where the Heart is topped the Mature Hall of fame for a few weeks

Winning a contest

100 stories

An H in every category I've written in (that took a long time to happen because it took a couple years for one of my LW stories to creep over 4.5)

Getting into the top 10 fav author list( progression from just making it a few years prior.

A 10k vote story

500 comment story

The one I have left is my story currently ranked #18 on the all time favorite story list cracking into the top 10.

 

[PriestOfIshtar]

Like Simon mentioned I think all of our first stories is a milestone.

To me milestones are the same as goals and those change as you grow here and strive for different things. So here's a few of mine as time has gone on.

Typing the end on my 39 chapter 18 months to write Siblings with Benefits series.

Hitting the top 250 author list.

Having a #1 all time story (Home is Where the Heart is topped the Mature Hall of fame for a few weeks

Winning a contest

100 stories

An H in every category I've written in (that took a long time to happen because it took a couple years for one of my LW stories to creep over 4.5)

Getting into the top 10 fav author list( progression from just making it a few years prior.

A 10k vote story

500 comment story

The one I have left is my story currently ranked #18 on the all time favorite story list cracking into the top 10.

That's a really inspiring list also! Wow!

 

[PriestOfIshtar]

Hitting the top 250 author list.

Getting into the top 10 fav author list( progression from just making it a few years prior.

Where is the fav author list? I see some lists under "Author Hub" but nothing about favorites or top 250. Is the "In the Spotlight" section the top 10 list?

 

[SimonDoom]

Where is the fav author list? I see some lists under "Author Hub" but nothing about favorites or top 250. Is the "In the Spotlight" section the top 10 list?

Go to your main control panel page. At the top you will see the word "Explore" with a down arrow. Click on it, and then click "Favorites" This will take you to a page where you can access the all time lists of 250 most favorited stories and most followed authors.

From the same pulldown menu, if you click on "popular" you will get to the place where you can access the most viewed and highest rated stories. You can also see the highest rated stories by category.

 

[CyranoJ]

What milestones have felt exciting or important to you as you have been publishing on Literotica?

Lit milestones have receded somewhat for me as I haven't posted stories here in a while (and my latest story is an edited entry from an old anthology), but Lit has been pretty good to me.

Getting a runner-up story contest win, an Editor's choice, my nice little handful of 'H' stories and several stories over 100K readers (two of them over 150K now) has all been enjoyable. Getting reader feedback, even the critical kind, has been rewarding. Getting nominated for a Reader's Choice award (a long while back now) was nice. They're all forms of feedback that I've valued and found motivating.

I think what's been best is some of the contacts Lit helped me make. Lit is the reason I even have published erotica books (with a small press, but still, they've made at least nominal amounts of money, enough to make a difference to my irregular freelancers' cashflow, and provided an opportunity to get stories out there few people might otherwise have gotten to see). I've gotten totally unexpected feedback and engagement from sources I never would've imagined before. Those have been the biggest milestones for me.

 

[gordo12]

What milestones have felt exciting or important to you as you have been publishing on Literotica?

I have two more pending stories in my current [and first] series, so having a complete series published is one milestone I am looking forward to.

Another is hitting 100k reads across all stories.

I'm a newbie, so these may seem like small potatoes... but even so, I would love to hear about some of the milestones that felt important to you!

Funny you should ask. I've been watching stats the last few weeks for a good reason.

• Milestones include, as others have said, publishing my first story.
• 100,000 views was a nice accomplishment.
• Having my very first story get a red H was an inspiration, as were the others that followed
• Three weeks ago, I was stoked to pass 18,000 votes on 18 stories/aver 1000+ per story
• The 18,000 is what remains AFTER the sweeps, which for LW is heavy. 15% not uncommon.
• Last weekend, I passed 550,000 downloads. I know not everyone reads, but still...that's a lot of people that took time to click and see if they were interested.

Overall, it's been a blast here for the last couple of years.

 

[PriestOfIshtar]

Go to your main control panel page. At the top you will see the word "Explore" with a down arrow. Click on it, and then click "Favorites" This will take you to a page where you can access the all time lists of 250 most favorited stories and most followed authors.

Ah, this is the one I was missing! Thank you.

I have a loooong way to go to show up on any of those lists, but it's cool to see them there.

(On another note, the site navigation of literotica is truly baroque. It's like three or maybe four co-existing versions all intermingled over the same data set. It's like an architectural fusion of a steel sky-scraper, a stone castle, and a glass cathedral, all interleaved like some cubist dream.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

My next submission will be my 100th story or chapter, with around a million words written over six years. That's more than I ever expected to write.

My biggest achievement was finishing my Arthurian novel (103k words) which took a year to write. Every chapter is Red H, with only 2,268 reads of the final chapter (about twice what I expected). Small numbers compared to others, but those readers are worth their weight in gold to me.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

With my 2md and 3rd stories I wanted to see if it was possible for me to write well enough and to expectations so as to get a red H.

Clearly I could.

I don't write in LW or I/T so my numbers of views and votes are never going to be enormous, so I've been working on Followers. Wanted to get 100 followers by end 2020 and hoped to get more with a series.

Which was well-received among a very small niche of people - I think less than 2000 have read chapter 14 which is only more than a couple previous chapters.

But I've reached a couple other milestones - placed in a contest unexpectedly, and briefly had a story (that wasn't part of a series!) in the HoF - in the March kerfuffle it lost votes and when it regained them, didn't quite have the score. Ah well.

And was encouraged to try writing in Anal if I wanted views and votes - tossed off a quick one as it were, got top score in the category for the month. So I'll try that again.

It's encouraged me to write in a couple more categories - about to try a First Time (it's not all sweet and innocent so will probably go down like cold sick) and working on an Erotic Horror.

Still only got about 70 Followers depending on which bit of the site you look at.

 

[Omenainen]

I just spent my first anniversary publishing here, and while gathering my stats to celebrate I noticed that my stories have now been read (okay, viewed) more times than their word count: I've published 222 879 words, and they have been viewed 223 501 times. Silly milestone, but it made me happy. And it's one others hadn't mentioned

I don't have goals or expectations or even wishes. I suspect my angle of approach is such that I'll never end up on any top lists. I've been dabbling in different categories, but don't have a goal of writing every single one. Most meaningful takeaway of my year on Lit, on the story side, has been the wonderful comments I get.

The most unexpected and meaningful otherwise has been the few relationships I've formed with other authors. When I started publishing, I hadn't really thought of the forum at all, and have been surprised both by my willingness to connect with others and the results.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Having 50 submissions was the big one for me. Everything else is a nice bonus.

 

[oggbashan]

I set myself several milestone targets:

To post my first stories on Literotica: achieved 2002.

To complete a NaNoWriMo challenge with additional tasks: To write, edit, and POST the whole thing (given the then delays in posting) before the end of the NaNo month - achieved 2003 with Flawed Red Silk.

To post 100 stories, then 200, then 300, then 400 and now 450...

To win some themed contests - done.

Next target? 500 posted stories. I might do that by the end of 2021.

 

[WinsomeWeb]

This year I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna post a second story.

I had some very nice comments on the first story, and in the six months since then nothing I've produced has felt good enough to share. So, the biggest milestone for me right now is to get over that anxiety about things not being good enough and just share stuff.

Other milestones for the future:

• Enter every Holiday contest in a twelve month period
• 5/10/25 submissions
• 10/25/100 followers
• Get a Red H
• Submit at least one story over 50K words
• 1 submission in every (written) category

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

I never set any milestones when I started four years ago as I expected to put up one story to scratch an itch, be shot down in flames and run and hide away forever with my tail between my legs.

47 more stories on, I have 350 followers, 3 stories in the all-time Mature Hall of Fame, only 5 without a red H. I am approaching the million views mark and hope to reach it with my 50th story soon.

They all feel like completely and utterly amazing milestones to me as I have never written for publication before in any capacity.

I won't set any future ones - I'll just see what turns up next!

 

[Omenainen]

One lovely accomplishment I had was that for a few sweet weeks all my stories were "hot" at the same time! That's even nicer considering it's now just a distant memory, because since then I've published some that will never get there

 

[PennameWombat]

My key milestone was to publish my first story. I managed that.

Being able to get a decent percentage of my stories with the H has been gratifying. It was headier at first but now it's been tempered with the understanding I just have to write the stories I want to write as well as I can and let those chips fall where they may.

I've never had a goal to publish in every category here because if I don't have interest in reading there then I don't have the interest to write for some of them. Same with checking of 'all' contests and events. I've entered many but there are some (April Fool's, here's looking at you) that I have zero interest in covering. Life's too short to force things that far.

I guess I'd say that being able to unroll my 'universes' has been something of a milestone. That is and will hopefully remain a work in progress because otherwise I'm dead or have lost total interest. Both thoughts are too depressing. It would be nice to be able to write faster, but I can only do what I can do.