OMG One Bombs!

[RejectReality]

The alternative to writing in high readership categories is to keep writing in the categories you enjoy. Lit has a vast number of eyes. If you keep producing new work and getting your name out there, you'll steadily develop more regular readers. It takes time, but you'll eventually build enough of a readership to take the edge off those one bombs, and that's all that's really required. Once the odd asshole can't completely tank your score and drop you off the radar, it's a fairly rapid snowball effect of accumulating new readers, which provide additional shielding against malicious voting.

Hang in there, write what you want, and you'll find a measure of success that most people will be happy with on Lit. The number of eyeballs makes it almost inevitable, so long as you don't throw your hands up and walk away.

And it only takes one lightning-in-a-bottle story to cut that line. One story that punches above its weight can provide the results of months if not years of steady accumulation.

 

[ElectricBlue]

And it only takes one lightning-in-a-bottle story to cut that line. One story that punches above its weight can provide the results of months if not years of steady accumulation.

Very true. I've been fortunate enough to have had several stories punch well above their weight, and they still pull in readers.

And I definitely agree with your comment about mixing up your categories. It's working for me, quite nicely.

 

[Voboy]

The alternative to writing in high readership categories is to keep writing in the categories you enjoy. Lit has a vast number of eyes. If you keep producing new work and getting your name out there, you'll steadily develop more regular readers. It takes time, but you'll eventually build enough of a readership to take the edge off those one bombs, and that's all that's really required. Once the odd asshole can't completely tank your score and drop you off the radar, it's a fairly rapid snowball effect of accumulating new readers, which provide additional shielding against malicious voting.

Hang in there, write what you want, and you'll find a measure of success that most people will be happy with on Lit. The number of eyeballs makes it almost inevitable, so long as you don't throw your hands up and walk away.

And it only takes one lightning-in-a-bottle story to cut that line. One story that punches above its weight can provide the results of months if not years of steady accumulation.

This is excellent advice, and I'd take it a step further: be productive. You build an audience here by consistently producing high-quality work. Not everyone can do that, granted, but cranking out a really good story once every month or so is going to get you a rapid following no matter what category you're posting in. When I started here, and had plenty of ideas, I was posting more than once a month. I've slowed down since, but the followers remain (for whatever that's worth).

And definitely, that one story will slice right through the mix and take your readership to the next level. Getting a piece onto the HoF, or a contest win, or something like that will boost your numbers across the board.

 

[SimonDoom]

The alternative to writing in high readership categories is to keep writing in the categories you enjoy. Lit has a vast number of eyes. If you keep producing new work and getting your name out there, you'll steadily develop more regular readers. It takes time, but you'll eventually build enough of a readership to take the edge off those one bombs, and that's all that's really required. Once the odd asshole can't completely tank your score and drop you off the radar, it's a fairly rapid snowball effect of accumulating new readers, which provide additional shielding against malicious voting.

Hang in there, write what you want, and you'll find a measure of success that most people will be happy with on Lit. The number of eyeballs makes it almost inevitable, so long as you don't throw your hands up and walk away.

And it only takes one lightning-in-a-bottle story to cut that line. One story that punches above its weight can provide the results of months if not years of steady accumulation.

This is very good advice. Look forward, not backward. If you are disappointed in the reception a story got, write the next story. Focus on getting better. Over time you will build up readers, which means more views and more votes, which means more insulation against the impact of the occasional really bad vote.

I floundered a bit when I started, not getting the views or scores I expected, but I reacted by pushing myself and I had my most productive writing spell from around 5 to 8 months after I started writing. I happened to hit on one of those "lightning in a bottle" stories in May 2017. The result was a dramatic gain in views and followers and I've never had to worry much about 1-bombs since.

I would add a couple of practical suggestions:

1. Think carefully about your title, tag, tagline, and category choices. They can make a BIG difference. My own view is that the story is the art and everything else is advertising, and this attitude has served me well. It works, in terms of getting more views and ultimately insulating your stories to some degree from attack.

2. If your story potentially can go in more than one category, pick the category that will get the most readers. If you don't know which categories get the most traffic, consult the category toplists or search for 8Letters' thread in this forum on category stats from about three years ago.

 

[RejectReality]

This is excellent advice, and I'd take it a step further: be productive. You build an audience here by consistently producing high-quality work. Not everyone can do that, granted, but cranking out a really good story once every month or so is going to get you a rapid following no matter what category you're posting in. When I started here, and had plenty of ideas, I was posting more than once a month. I've slowed down since, but the followers remain (for whatever that's worth).

And definitely, that one story will slice right through the mix and take your readership to the next level. Getting a piece onto the HoF, or a contest win, or something like that will boost your numbers across the board.

It doesn't have to be a story that gains specific accolades either. One of my big breakouts in this name was "Boned". It didn't win a contest, or ever place highly on a toplist, but it has garnered steady attention ever since release. "A Fine Substitute" does the same thing. Those still pop up consistently amidst things like "You Serious?", "Rim Fire", and "Holly Jolley Christmas" that did win contests or hit the upper end of their toplists.

This is very good advice. Look forward, not backward. If you are disappointed in the reception a story got, write the next story. Focus on getting better. Over time you will build up readers, which means more views and more votes, which means more insulation against the impact of the occasional really bad vote.

I floundered a bit when I started, not getting the views or scores I expected, but I reacted by pushing myself and I had my most productive writing spell from around 5 to 8 months after I started writing. I happened to hit on one of those "lightning in a bottle" stories in May 2017. The result was a dramatic gain in views and followers and I've never had to worry much about 1-bombs since.

I would add a couple of practical suggestions:

1. Think carefully about your title, tag, tagline, and category choices. They can make a BIG difference. My own view is that the story is the art and everything else is advertising, and this attitude has served me well. It works, in terms of getting more views and ultimately insulating your stories to some degree from attack.

2. If your story potentially can go in more than one category, pick the category that will get the most readers. If you don't know which categories get the most traffic, consult the category toplists or search for 8Letters' thread in this forum on category stats from about three years ago.

While I do agree that going with the most eyes is a solid strategy, you need to carefully consider whether something truly fits in that category first. If another theme is dominant, you can't necessarily expect the readership of the more viewed category to accept it with their preferred kink being a secondary element. It needs to truly be able to fit in either category before making a decision based on reader numbers alone.

 

[SimonDoom]

While I do agree that going with the most eyes is a solid strategy, you need to carefully consider whether something truly fits in that category first. If another theme is dominant, you can't necessarily expect the readership of the more viewed category to accept it with their preferred kink being a secondary element. It needs to truly be able to fit in either category before making a decision based on reader numbers alone.

To some degree, I agree, and I think one should pick carefully, but I think too often Literotica authors gravitate toward the category where they will get the least disapproval, and I think that's a bad strategy. For instance, let's say you can publish in category A or category B and you know ahead of time, magically, that your choices will result in the following:

Publish in A: 5,000 views, 4.75 score, 50 votes, 15 favorites, 1 bad comment.

Publish in B: 30,000 views, 4.55 score, 300 votes, 90 favorites, 7 bad comments.

People will choose differently, and there's no correct answer for everyone, but for me personally, I would choose "B," hands down. Getting 6 times as many favorites means a lot more than avoiding bad comments or getting a higher score. The avoidance of unpleasantness should not be an author's primary goal, IMO. Go for happy readers and ignore the unhappy ones. The further benefit of this approach, as you explained, is that with a larger army of happy readers behind you the less impact the occasional bad comments and votes have.

I've said this before, but I believe pursuing a strategy of trying to get the highest possible score is a form of deluding oneself. If the score is the product of cleverly sculpting your reader base, then it doesn't really mean anything, right? It's not in any meaningful sense a reflection of how your story stacks up with other stories. And as a practical matter, from what I've observed in this forum, this strategy results in far more angst and heartache than the other strategy of trying to expand one's reader base and connecting one's stories with the broadest possible audience of readers who like them.

 

[Duleigh]

I think I just got hit with one. A single vote in my Nude Day entry dropped the score greatly. If that's a strategy used in contests, I'm pretty proud that I couldn't sink that low.

 

[lovecraft68]

Its interesting how much conversation the one bomb has always garnered, when the reality is, if you look around at the median scores of the site, they're far less common than a 5 vote as evidenced by the countless stories here with a score over 4-perhaps the majority, but I'm guessing, someone like RR could conjure that up, I'm sure. I'll add if you remove LW from the equation we'd be over four....oh, and Samuel X of course.

In contests its more prevalent of course because somehow people seem to think there's stakes involved. A few bucks, a blue W on your page seems to be enough for people to turn into cheaters, or just sour grapes if they don't like a particular author or category.

I wonder if Lit were to do away with the paid contests and just let people roll with the just for fun author challenges if we'd see a overall drop in one bombs.

 

[SimonDoom]

Its interesting how much conversation the one bomb has always garnered, when the reality is, if you look around at the median scores of the site, they're far less common than a 5 vote as evidenced by the countless stories here with a score over 4-perhaps the majority, but I'm guessing, someone like RR could conjure that up, I'm sure. I'll add if you remove LW from the equation we'd be over four....oh, and Samuel X of course.

In contests its more prevalent of course because somehow people seem to think there's stakes involved. A few bucks, a blue W on your page seems to be enough for people to turn into cheaters, or just sour grapes if they don't like a particular author or category.

I wonder if Lit were to do away with the paid contests and just let people roll with the just for fun author challenges if we'd see a overall drop in one bombs.

I'm sure that's true.

The fact that 5 votes predominate is precisely what makes 1 votes so hard to take, for some. There is a lot of "gamed" rather than honest voting. For instance, many people (probably authors, disproportionately), don't want to give less than a 5 because they don't want to hurt someone's chances of getting a red H. That's considerate, but the result is that scores mean less than they would if people just voted honestly.

The purpose of a score, after all, is to convey information to a prospective reader. It is not to give the author a pat on the back.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm sure that's true.

The fact that 5 votes predominate is precisely what makes 1 votes so hard to take, for some. There is a lot of "gamed" rather than honest voting. For instance, many people (probably authors, disproportionately), don't want to give less than a 5 because they don't want to hurt someone's chances of getting a red H. That's considerate, but the result is that scores mean less than they would if people just voted honestly.

The purpose of a score, after all, is to convey information to a prospective reader. It is not to give the author a pat on the back.

I'm on board with all of this, I'll just add that some authors want people to be honest. If you think my story sucks that's fine, I don't need a participation award. On the other hand there are authors who get pissed with anything but a five. Of course in both cases I'm talking legit votes, not ones based on dislike of a category that for some reason they're reading in or the "I didn't like where the money shot went" or "reee cheating." I mean hey enjoyed or did enjoy the story based on over all quality not personal nitpicks.

 

[Voboy]

The obvious caveat, as pointed out frequently in threads like this, is that there’s no standard for what the numbers mean. There’s the kindly reader who told me she/he gave me a 4 “even though” they spotted a typo, which existed only in their head. The impression I got was that they thought a 4 was an amazing score.

Not much meaning to the numbers, really, when a story gets [in effect] denigrated for phantom mistakes because the reader can’t spell.

 

[RejectReality]

It always takes several fives to counter any malicious low score. In the majority of cases, authors defaulting to the five or no-vote pattern probably aren't doing anything more than balancing the scales.

It's also the norm. The average reader is either going to love it and vote five or back-click without ever reaching the end. So an author who does this isn't really affecting anything. They're consciously voting the same way most readers do by default.

SOL tried to do something about the clustering at the top end of the scale with a complicated mathematical formula, but I don't see where it's accomplished all that much. It created differentiation between those clustered scores on the upper end ( by lowering all of them ) but my anecdotal experience says that all it did was shift the bar of what readers use as a score of note down a little. It didn't affect their voting patterns, or which stories were getting read. Stories of about the same average real vote score were still garnering the same level of attention pre and post change. Once things settled in, anyway. For a while, it crashed reads on anything but the top 5% or so of scores until readers adjusted to the new display scores.

All it accomplished in my eyes was authors crying witchcraft! to the point where a feature everyone wants here that was already there ended up being removed — vote breakdowns. The solution was to remove anything that allowed you to see/calculate your straight vote average as an author, so the only thing you can see is the one that's been run through the machine. Can't complain about the difference if you don't know what it is.

 

[lovecraft68]

It always takes several fives to counter any malicious low score. In the majority of cases, authors defaulting to the five or no-vote pattern probably aren't doing anything more than balancing the scales.

It's also the norm. The average reader is either going to love it and vote five or back-click without ever reaching the end. So an author who does this isn't really affecting anything. They're consciously voting the same way most readers do by default.

SOL tried to do something about the clustering at the top end of the scale with a complicated mathematical formula, but I don't see where it's accomplished all that much. It created differentiation between those clustered scores on the upper end ( by lowering all of them ) but my anecdotal experience says that all it did was shift the bar of what readers use as a score of note down a little. It didn't affect their voting patterns, or which stories were getting read. Stories of about the same average real vote score were still garnering the same level of attention pre and post change. Once things settled in, anyway. For a while, it crashed reads on anything but the top 5% or so of scores until readers adjusted to the new display scores.

All it accomplished in my eyes was authors crying witchcraft! to the point where a feature everyone wants here that was already there ended up being removed — vote breakdowns. The solution was to remove anything that allowed you to see/calculate your straight vote average as an author, so the only thing you can see is the one that's been run through the machine. Can't complain about the difference if you don't know what it is.

Part of the problem is as my great grandmother used to say people don't mind their P's and Q's. Some don't just watch their story they watch every one else's and to use your word, witchcraft! when a similar story in their category has numbers far beyond theirs. We know there's many reasons this can happen, but they don't and they start squealing.

This is the participation award society, and a lot of people want to do away with H's because they don't have many, they want no more top lists, because they're not on them, etc...its never they should do better, everyone else should be pulled down to them.

It is what it is, and as you and others have pointed out you can control your own success with more work and maybe a better lucky than good story here and there.

The only thing I feel is unfair here and has been discussed, asked for, and falsely promised several times is the chapter stories. Unfair on the top lists, the monthly contests, we still have authors of never ending sagas and installments being nominated in the yearly farce, and the advice of keep writing isn't the answer there, because it is not fair for someone to feel they need to write 30 chapters of unending drivel to be able to have a fair chance on a top list.

Other than that, you can make or break yourself here.
.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Its interesting how much conversation the one bomb has always garnered, when the reality is, if you look around at the median scores of the site, they're far less common than a 5 vote as evidenced by the countless stories here with a score over 4-perhaps the majority, but I'm guessing, someone like RR could conjure that up, I'm sure. I'll add if you remove LW from the equation we'd be over four....oh, and Samuel X of course.

Interesting question, and it's not too hard to find out.

Advanced Search, search for stories containing "the" (since the search field can't be totally blank), sort results by score: https://search.literotica.com/?query=the&sort=vote&page=1

That got me 550840 hits, which is pretty close to the total number of stories on Literotica, so it should be pretty representative.

At 50 pages per story, that makes 11017 pages of hits. Jump to the middle page of those hits (or press the "next page" button 5508 times ;-): https://search.literotica.com/?query=the&sort=vote&page=5509

Stories on that page all have a ranking of 4.37. So this is the halfway point for Literotica voting. Skipping ahead, the first 3.99 appears on page 8987, which means that about 82% of stories score a 5 or above. [Edit in 2024: I think this was meant to be "4 or above".]

Searching only within LW: 39271 stories (matching the "39.2k" shown for category total), 786 pages of results. Even in LW the midpoint score is 4.08.

Same again, ticking all categories except LW: 551569 stories (quick check: yes, that plus the 39271 for LW adds up to the total 550840 I got earlier). Midpoint score is 4.39; LW is less than 10% of the site content so removing it from the calculation doesn't make a gigantic difference to the midpoint score. (SamX is somewhere around 0.4% of site content, so removing him would have even less effect.)

 

[lovecraft68]

Interesting question, and it's not too hard to find out.

Advanced Search, search for stories containing "the" (since the search field can't be totally blank), sort results by score: https://search.literotica.com/?query=the&sort=vote&page=1

That got me 550840 hits, which is pretty close to the total number of stories on Literotica, so it should be pretty representative.

At 50 pages per story, that makes 11017 pages of hits. Jump to the middle page of those hits (or press the "next page" button 5508 times ;-): https://search.literotica.com/?query=the&sort=vote&page=5509

Stories on that page all have a ranking of 4.37. So this is the halfway point for Literotica voting. Skipping ahead, the first 3.99 appears on page 8987, which means that about 82% of stories score a 5 or above.

Searching only within LW: 39271 stories (matching the "39.2k" shown for category total), 786 pages of results. Even in LW the midpoint score is 4.08.

Same again, ticking all categories except LW: 551569 stories (quick check: yes, that plus the 39271 for LW adds up to the total 550840 I got earlier). Midpoint score is 4.39; LW is less than 10% of the site content so removing it from the calculation doesn't make a gigantic difference to the midpoint score. (SamX is somewhere around 0.4% of site content, so removing him would have even less effect.)

Hey, no one likes a show off, kay?

Just kidding, thank you for pulling this up.

 

[RejectReality]

Part of the problem is as my great grandmother used to say people don't mind their P's and Q's. Some don't just watch their story they watch every one else's and to use your word, witchcraft! when a similar story in their category has numbers far beyond theirs. We know there's many reasons this can happen, but they don't and they start squealing.

This is the participation award society, and a lot of people want to do away with H's because they don't have many, they want no more top lists, because they're not on them, etc...its never they should do better, everyone else should be pulled down to them.

It is what it is, and as you and others have pointed out you can control your own success with more work and maybe a better lucky than good story here and there.

The only thing I feel is unfair here and has been discussed, asked for, and falsely promised several times is the chapter stories. Unfair on the top lists, the monthly contests, we still have authors of never ending sagas and installments being nominated in the yearly farce, and the advice of keep writing isn't the answer there, because it is not fair for someone to feel they need to write 30 chapters of unending drivel to be able to have a fair chance on a top list.

Other than that, you can make or break yourself here.
.

It's much worse when figuring out how your own score is derived is difficult or in SOLs case, impossible. The main part of the math is something you could calculate. It's the final element that made it impossible. Your score is weighted by a formula that depends upon the scores of every other story within certain time frames. That data is unobtainable by anyone on the outside. Now, all score data is unobtainable because even breakdowns have been removed. Absolutely all you have are the scores that have churned through the machine.

Personally, I believe it's all being done fairly. As I said, I noticed no change ( once things had settled ) in reader interaction, and for a significant period of time, we had access to our raw average as well as the breakdowns. You could see without a doubt what it would have displayed under the old system and the new system. So I was able to track things and determine that the change ( at least in my case ) was a wash. I have a fairly decent mix of short stories, chapter stories, and long single submission stories, which is where most of the cries of witchcraft arose, and I didn't see it.

The more complicated the math is to arrive at what's displayed, the more people are going to cry bloody murder. That's why I always push back against suggestions of means and such as a method to reduce author anxiety. It's not going to happen. It will make it worse. An average is something virtually anyone knows how to do off the top of their head. That's tangible and real to them. The farther you venture beyond middle school math, the more people aren't going to understand what's happening, and what you don't understand is witchcraft.

Whether it's more fair, useful, or anything else doesn't matter. If the goal is reducing author anxiety, changing the math isn't the way to go about it. ( Getting rid of the H is )

As to chapter stories, I've been arguing in favor of removing that unfair advantage for a long, long time. I see the building blocks in place to do it, and I expect it will happen. Not nearly as quickly as anyone would like, but I see it coming to pass in time. Having just watched what a truly horrific change in code-base looks like at Lush, my already optimistic view of Lit's slow evolution is even more positive. At least here, we aren't losing a massive number of features and nowhere near having them back after nearly a year. Never mind moving into the future. They're rebuilding from the stone age over there.

I've said it before, but scores rounded down to the nearest whole number. That's the kind of downgrade we're talking about. Count your blessings that Lit is taking their time making changes, because a ( admittedly necessary due to their one coder being unavailable on short notice ) rushed change is a horror show.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The more complicated the math is to arrive at what's displayed, the more people are going to cry bloody murder. That's why I always push back against suggestions of means and such as a method to reduce author anxiety. It's not going to happen. It will make it worse. An average is something virtually anyone knows how to do off the top of their head. That's tangible and real to them. The farther you venture beyond middle school math, the more people aren't going to understand what's happening, and what you don't understand is witchcraft.

Agreed 100%, though I'd say even the averages used here sometimes cause people confusion. Simplicity and transparency are virtues.

One option would be to make the score breakdowns visible, and then let people code and host their own metrics. But I'm not sure how that would interact with sweeps; might be it'd make it easier for bad actors to figure out how to exploit things.

In the end, scores can only tell you so much.

 

[PennameWombat]

The obvious caveat, as pointed out frequently in threads like this, is that there’s no standard for what the numbers mean. There’s the kindly reader who told me she/he gave me a 4 “even though” they spotted a typo, which existed only in their head. The impression I got was that they thought a 4 was an amazing score.

Not much meaning to the numbers, really, when a story gets [in effect] denigrated for phantom mistakes because the reader can’t spell.

At least I got knocked down to a 4 from a 5 for something that was there… My MMC used his long-time on-again off-again girlfriend’s panties to masturbate and ejaculated in them. It was described in the story as him releasing months of frustration she’d caused him in the past. But, well, that one scene didn’t sit well with one of my readers.

Of course, I mostly don’t get reasons for votes but from overall discussion my case of a single squick might not be so unusual.

Although a couple have said, literally on a couple of different stories, “interesting story, 4”. Not quite interesting enough for a five, would’ve liked to know what I needed to put them over the top But they neglected to tell me.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I had one comment which said, in effect, "I don't like this category, so 3."

Okaaay, thanks for coming out.

 

[NotWise]

Although a couple have said, literally on a couple of different stories, “interesting story, 4”. Not quite interesting enough for a five, would’ve liked to know what I needed to put them over the top But they neglected to tell me.

Those comments annoy me. All you can do is wonder. I had a reader tell me (paraphrasing) "I was confused in the beginning. I was confused in the middle and I was confused in the end, but it was a good story." I'm still wondering what he/she was confused about.

 

[SimonDoom]

The obvious caveat, as pointed out frequently in threads like this, is that there’s no standard for what the numbers mean. There’s the kindly reader who told me she/he gave me a 4 “even though” they spotted a typo, which existed only in their head. The impression I got was that they thought a 4 was an amazing score.

Not much meaning to the numbers, really, when a story gets [in effect] denigrated for phantom mistakes because the reader can’t spell.

This is true, but it's true of all ratings systems, whether for books, music, movies, or products on Amazon. The meaning of a score (cumulative mean score, not an individual score) is murky, but, if it's based on enough votes, it's not totally meaningless. I find that across my 51 body of stories there's a fair degree of consistency in scoring, once I allow for a few things, like 1) whether it's a 750-word story (means the score will be lower), 2) whether it's a Loving Wives story (means the score will be lower), and 3) whether the story delves into territory that is "hors categorie" and may defy or surprise the expectations of readers (means the score likely will be lower). Stories also are somewhat MORE likely to get higher scores if they 1) have clean spelling and grammar, 2) skew longer, 3) meet category expectations, and 4) have well-developed characters that draw readers into the story. When I allow for those things I find I'm rarely surprised by story scores, either within my own body of work or when comparing my stories with those of others.

 

[Voboy]

I didn't vote when I was a reader for many years, but before I started writing here I didn't really know what a "red H" was nor how precarious they can be. So, had I been a voter, a 4 might have seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable score for a well-written but formulaic story that got me off. I'd have thought of that as a nice, solid B+, a 5 being an A. Of course, now I know that that 4 might have kept that story from a red H, meaning a lot of readers would scroll on past without a second thought.

I think AH people sometimes need a reminder that a MASSIVE swath of the readers out there view our stories and their reception very differently than we do.

 

[SimonDoom]

Of course, now I know that that 4 might have kept that story from a red H, meaning a lot of readers would scroll on past without a second thought.

This is a common assumption, and I believe it's wrong.

I've written quite a few Exhibitionist & Voyeur stories, and all of them except one have a score over 4.5 and therefore have a red H. Yet, the one story that DOESN'T have a red H (the score stubbornly hovers around 4.45) gets far more daily views than all the others -- 5 years after its publication.

All things being equal, it's better to have a high score than not if you want to attract readers. But things aren't equal, and it's a weak correlation. Nobody should think their story is doomed because it doesn't have that faux-magical red H.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I'd have to agree with you, Simon. While it has that red H, my third-most popular story, with well over 100K views and 1,000+ votes, is rated well below my 'score average'. It didn't win any contests and I'm not entirely sure what keeps drawing people to it. I guess I'm just happy people seem to enjoy it.

 

[8letters]

I agree, but going to add to the issue by looking at the last part of your post. There are categories here that will get more views and votes. But....what if you don't want to write in those categories? Maybe incest puts you off, who wants the hate in the LW section(and even though you get votes and comments there, they are mostly negative)

The next tier as I'd refer to it, would be mature and group, neither are squick categories, mature is easy to write, but again, what if you don't want to?

Actually, I wasn't talking about categories. What I was thinking about was:
* Write stand-along stories instead of a series
* Whatever you publish - stand-alone story or a chapter - should be at least 15K words
* If you are writing a series that is getting a low number of views and votes, don't continue it. You don't owe your readers putting time into a series that isn't rewarding for you
* If you are going to write a series:
** Have sex in each of your first few chapters
** Have a lot of content written before you publish the first chapter so you can pump out a lot of chapters early on
** Don't change categories

But I agree with you that the category is important. You put a few categories into tiers. Here's how I'd put them into tiers for stand-alone stories based on my statistical analysis:
S Tier - I/T, Illustrated (if you have good illustrations, which is way beyond most writers)
A Tier - LW (lots of comments, but low rating and lots of negative comments)
B Tier - Mature, Noncon (I don't know much about Noncon, but there is definitely a Noncon audience out there)
C Tier - Anal, First Time, Group Sex, Lesbian Sex (LS has less views than the others, but higher average rating and more comments)
D Tier - Erotic Couplings, E&V, Gay Male, Interracial, T&C

I think an author can have a very satisfying time publishing in the lower tiers. The little bit I've been plugged into the LS community, the top authors there seem very happy with the results their stories bring.

Say you're someone who enjoys writing in fetish, E&V, Trans...the categories that don't get the traffic. Your choices are to continue to be frustrated with numbers and have a why bother feeling-if you're writing for numbers, some don't care-or try to force yourself into writing something you're not interested in just to get some attention.

And the tough truth is, there is nothing that can be done. Lit cannot change the dichotomy of stories here. They can't make readers go to certain categories, they can't spread the wealth so to speak.

So your suggestion of just write in other categories isn't a fair solution, but on the other hand, there's nothing else one can do. The decision has to be made on do you want to tell the stories you want to, and get little in the way of stats or sell out to write things you don't like just so joeybigballs will leave you a two word "so hot!' comment?

Up to the author, just too bad its like this

As for the categories not on my tier list, I think an author should write what they want, but they should have reasonable expectations for your story. Also, they can also include themes from a less popular category that excites them personally into a story for a more popular category.

I dislike it when people give new authors the advice "Write what you want, and you'll build an audience." If there isn't an audience for what you want to write, then an audience will never come.

Most of this much-earlier post is so nonsensical that I didn't think it was worth replying to, but there is one part that a reply fits well into this post:

You've been here for nine years and have yet to try your hand at anything but taboo stories because OMG, you might not get 2k votes if you write in another category.

The two categories I have story ideas for besides I/T are Romance and SF&F. But both are small-audience categories. As I only write one or two stories a year, it doesn't make sense to me to spend my writing time on those stories just to prove that I can publish in a category besides I/T. (BTW I do have a LW story published. I wrote it as an exercise in creating an absolute jerk of a main character. It wasn't something I spent a lot of time on).

But I've done what I suggested above to "try my hand at something different". For example, my story "My Crocheting Little Sister" is an I/T story with lots of BDSM (but BDSM for people who don't like BDSM). Three of my I/T stories have threesomes that I think would fit in well in Group Sex. I'm planning on writing somewhat soon an I/T story with a fantasy setting. There's a lot of variety to my stories, even if I publish in the same category.