Publishing Categories: Advice for a Story

[John_Vandermeer]

The (sausage making) art of navigating Literotica categories keeps cropping up as a theme of many of the threads here. Yet I still feel like I do not fully understand them. Or rather I understand them, but rather dislike how they are structured here and now, and yet that is what we have to deal with. So after throwing the powerless aside I would gladly categories went away altogether and all story navigation became tag driven, I would like to ask you, more experience authors, on the "best" category for a specific story.

I just completed a femdom momcest story and I am really conflicted on whether I should plead the powers it be published on BDSM or Fetish, or I should just let it be published on Incest/Taboo. I am aware many advice anything incest should be I/T, but in my experience so far, femdom themes have a higher squick factor than incest ones here on Lit (funny world Lit, but so it is). Incest is not down-voted and nasty commented on BDSM or Fetish, but femdom is on I/T. I know, because I've run the experiment, having a (complete) femdom daucest chapter novella in BDSM/Fetish and an (in progress, and actually lighter) femdom siscest chapter novella in I/T. Sure, I/T might double the readdership, but suddenly a third of that readership is quite angry they read scenes of erotic humiliation and denial they somehow did not know were coming despite the story subtitle, multiple tags, and even a trigger warning paragraph at the beginning of each chapter. Of course, I could also just publish on I/T and turn off voting. But I would rather not do that. I do seek feedback. But being 1-bombed because readers read something that is not their thing is not feedback, it just says the story was not for those readers.

As I said, we've had this discussion recently concerning gay-male themes, anal themes, and others. Any views on a story that features a mother subjecting her son to erotic teasing, humiliation, and denial?

 

[NoTalentHack]

Put it in Fetish. There’s too much kink there to go anywhere else and have a chance of success.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I would gladly categories went away altogether and all story navigation became tag driven,

I would be happy to see that happen also. I did a mature story recently in the form of a transcript of an audio interview. It was fun from a writing perspective, but Letters/Transcripts seem to be the black hole of categories.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You've got too much going on for vanilla incest. I'd drop it in Fetish, and put in a Note to the Editor as to why you think the content will run better in that category. Laurel might overrule you, but she's allowed incest elements in other categories - bring the different elements to her attention.