Question: The amount of your stories vs. how many followers

[SimonDoom]

I don't know. I recommend sending a private message to Laurel to ask her. See what she says.

Beyond that, my advice is: just move on. Don't focus on past stories. I've been writing stories here for 5 1/2 years, and I've asked Laurel to make a change to a story just one time. I prefer to learn from my mistakes and keep writing new stories.

 

[EbanDousan]

Some people just don't understand the principles of people like you, all because they need fame and popularity, they are not interested in whether your stories are read or not, it is important to them that they have more subscribers and likes. It is very sad to realize that not the attention and affection of people is more important to them, but their quantity. Many writers even buy subscribers on various sites like megafamous.com to increase their number later. Perhaps they do this in order to advertise something in their stories and then they will be paid money for it, but all these stories will be without a soul and they will not be interesting to read. To be honest, I wouldn't subscribe to such people and read their stories.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Can you change a category once you have submitted? Also i see I forgot to put the episode beside the latest submission…

You can resubmit the story as an EDIT, explain in the Note to Editor that you want a category change, and explain why. Laurel may or may not agree.

There's not a huge point, though. The story doesn't get another run on the new category front page, and by the time it's processed (low priority) the story has done its first dash, and it is what it is.

As Simon says, don't waste time futzing with the last story, focus on the next one. And get the fucking category right, next time, ffs.

Also, chapter numbers! Honeybee, focus, honey, focus .

 

[Maxiine]

It's simple.

Write stories in LW that trigger the misogynists.

Thousands will follow you so they can one-bomb each new story, and write sick comments, as soon as it's published.

 

[Maxiine]

If you write for followers and scores, it's not difficult to follow the formula: one fuck a page and don't mix genre. Pricks are always huge unless its a humiliation story, vaginas are always dripping egg-white unless its an incest or virginity one. If you can weave a meaningful plot into that, you'll be a star.

Oh, and please, NO INTROSPECTION!!!

 

[gregscott]

Reader at Lit for ten years Author for 18 months.

I published a story but copied and pasted it into an old copy that was In First time (wrong category).
I had changed it into an Incest story, and the readers of first-time had roasted me within hours. I waited four days for the edit and looked at my score, deciding to delete it and start again.
I rewrote about half the story changed the title, and when it was re-posted, my old crappy scores were put back on it.
The score has gone up tremendously and would have a red box if it didn't have the wrong category scores attached to it.
I have sent in an appeal and hope they can just attach the scores from the new publish date.
I don't want to delete it totally, as there are a lot of people reading it.
My incompetency has cut the legs off a good story.

 

[Escierto]

I post on Literotica for me and me only. If other people enjoy my stories, awesome! If not, it makes no difference to me.

Exactly right. I DGAF if I have any followers or if my stories all rate 1.

At least my stories are true and authentic based on my actual real life experience. One author who writes in my category admits that he has zero actual experience and his stories prove it. They are wildly improbable and full of the stupidest clichéd nonsense and pure bullshit. His stories are wildly popular. Such is the Lit audience.

 

[lovecraft68]

Exactly right. I DGAF if I have any followers or if my stories all rate 1.

At least my stories are true and authentic based on my actual real life experience. One author who writes in my category admits that he has zero actual experience and his stories prove it. They are wildly improbable and full of the stupidest clichéd nonsense and pure bullshit. His stories are wildly popular. Such is the Lit audience.

Lit as a whole seems to reward laziness, bad behavior, unoriginality and quantity over quality.
But that doesn't mean there aren't authors and readers who expect and receive more than that.
End of the day this is a porn site, not a literary erotica site and Penthouse Letters will win over 'But my story has meaning." More often than not.

 

[FifthEstate]

I confess I do this, and make no bones about it, and have been very pleased with the results. There are a few other regular authors, like 8Letters, who have better follower:story ratios than I do, but not that many.

A very few authors have published "one-hit wonders" that hit the jackpot and they have extreme numbers of followers despite having published only 1 or a few stories.

For example, DiscreetNFun published The Anonymous And The Curious (a father-daughter incest story) just a little over 4 years ago and he has 587 followers, just because of that one story. It's his only published story. That's an outlier.

JammyJimmy published two stories in 2011, and that's all. One, Threads:The Island, is an incest story that's the 6th most-favorited story of all time. He has 2757 followers. That's a ratio of 1328.5 followers for every story. That's ridiculous. Of course, he's had 10 years to build those followers, so there's that. But it's still ridiculous.

I have published 36 stories since December 2016 (counting series chapters as separate stories) and I have 2961 followers. That's a ratio of about 82 followers for each story. On average I'm getting about 1.9 new followers per day when I haven't published anything recently.

When I write stories, I do so for a variety of different personal and artistic reasons. Sometimes I write stories I know will not be popular, but I want to write them anyway.

But one of my goals is to get readers. One way of doing that is to pick up favorites and followers. That way, my stories get more visibility, and more people read them. That is one of my goals. So I have written and published some stories with the clear intention of wanting to attract views, readers, favorites, and followers.

The best way to gain followers in large numbers is to write many incest stories. 19 of my 36 stories -- just over half -- are incest stories. Mom-son incest is the surest path to getting views and followers.

Views are the key. Get views, and you will get favorites, and you will get followers.

Incest isn't the only way to pick up followers. Some of the most followed authors publish stories in Gay Male, in Sci Fi, in Romance, and in other categories.

A key is to publish a blockbuster story that gets favorited by many within a certain category. Then, your story will begin to show up on "Similar Stories" Lists at the end of other popular stories in that category. That will in turn get you more eyeballs, and more favorites, and more followers. Success begets success. This is why Silkstockingslover, who is by far the most followed author at Literotica, gets over 500 new followers in a single month. Number 1, she keeps publishing, but number 2, at this point her stories are so popular that they show up all over the "Similar Stories" lists. If you read stories of the type she writes, you will keep stumbling over mention of her stories.

I wrote a blockbuster story in 2017. I wrote it with the express intention of getting as much attention to it as possible. I threw every trick into it I could think of. It worked. And as a result I probably have twice as many followers as I would otherwise and all my stories, even the weird, non-incest ones (I know what you're thinking: incest isn't weird?), get more attention than they would otherwise.

There are some other things you can do to maximize views, scores, favorites, and followers, if that's what you want. Here are a few: 1) Write decently -- decent grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation; 2) Make your stories over 2 Literotica pages; 3) Write in popular categories; 4) Make your story a story: have characters, give them needs, and obstacles, and weave the sexual romp, whatever it is, into a satisfying dramatic arc; 5) understand the desires of the readers of the category in which you are publishing a story and satisfy those needs, and write your story with the understanding of that desire in mind.

It's all about eyeballs. There are many different strategies for getting them on your stories. If you study the Site and how it works it's not that hard to figure out strategies for gaining more views, and therefore followers.

In my opinion -- just my opinion -- a lot of Literotica authors would be happier if they stopped focusing on scores and focused more on getting views and favorites. The idea of being obsessed over having 30 people giving your story a 4.92 seems weird to me. I'd rather be reaching out to a broader readership and knowing my stories are giving pleasure to as many people as possible, regardless of the score. But that's just me.

Which is not to say, this is what you should do. The things I'm talking about may seem like a completely unimportant thing to you, and if you feel that way, you are not wrong.

I respect Lovecraft's opinion because he is a very good story-teller and has many things to say that you should listen to (my most popular story was written after reading, and following, to the best of my ability, his essay "Write Incest Like a Motherfucker"), but I don't quite agree with his post on this. I truly believe that on Literotica you can do both: you can fulfill all your artistic goals and simultaneously seek more readers. There's no reason that all of your stories have to be written with exactly the same goals and standards. You really don't have to choose.

I agree with basically everything SD says here, especially his point that you can absolutely fulfill your artistic goals while simultaneously seeking and capturing more readers. What I’m amazed by are authors who can write outside their own interest areas and still publish successful work.

 

[KeithD]

I don't get that there could be any meaningful correlation between the number of stories and favoriting as an author in comparing one author's work against another one's here. An author can produce an infinite number of stories for any/all readers to read, but each account can only favorate an author once. There's no common control between the two stats, is there?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hmmm... well, you can read the answer two ways.

1. I have 12 followers for each story.
2. I have 12 times the followers than I have stories.

But as said by others, it's a free site and each account can only follow me once.

 

[Imstillfun]

I have to admit, I’ve become a followers/views whore. Once I broke the top 250 I became interested. Once I broke top 20. I became obsessed. Now I look at my followers everyday.

I did do the number of stories/followers ratio. I looked at others to compare. I also look at favorites and votes per view on stories.
I used to watch scores, now favorites/view is my favorite metric for how well I did.

i am bipolar and sometimes need motivation to write. Getting more followers is one of the things I use for motivation in my head.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Secondary question to this discussion: Do you think authors gain more followers from single chapter stories or multiple? Why?

There needs to first be a distinction between "chaptered stories" and "series".

A stand-alone story submitted for publication in chapters, or parts, will attract followers eager to be notified when the next chapter becomes available.

A series will attract followers interested in knowing when the next installment in the series is available.

A stand-alone, single-submission story will attract followers if it is good enough to inspire loyalty from readers interested in new material from the particular author.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

This was his question: "As someone who has nearly six times as many followers as you do stories, do you have any tips for how to grow the popularity of your stories? "

As I read it, the question relates to the popularity of "STORIES", not the author of the stories.

In my opinion, there are only two metrics on Literotica that measure the popularity of individual stories, and those are its rating and how many readers have marked it as a "favorite".

The fact that the person asking the question referred to your number of followers indicates that he/she isn't savvy about the difference. You might want to seek clarification from them. Do they want to be a popular author with lots of followers, or write popular stories with high ratings and lots of favorites?

 

[Imstillfun]

As I read it, the question relates to the popularity of "STORIES", not the author of the stories.

In my opinion, there are only two metrics on Literotica that measure the popularity of individual stories, and those are its rating and how many readers have marked it as a "favorite".

The fact that the person asking the question referred to your number of followers indicates that he/she isn't savvy about the difference. You might want to seek clarification from them. Do they want to be a popular author with lots of followers, or write popular stories with high ratings and lots of favorites?

I think they were trying to judge their popularity as an author by how many stories they have vs followers. it makes sense the more followers you have, the more popular you are.

I write in the LW category most of the time. It’s very contentious so it’s hard to judge your success by a stories score. I often look at favorites/view to see how a story is doing.

so # of followers can be a metric as to how you are doing as an author in whole. but let’s say iim not as prolific a writer, as someone else, how can I judge how I’m doing. Maybe followers/story works.

I have 8450 followers and 87 stories. That’s about 100 followers/story ratio. The top followed author has 42,900 followers and over 600 stories. That’s about 70 something followers per story.

the other part is time. I have been writing for 7 years. So I’ve been collecting followers for years. it makes sense that the longer you’ve been writing the more followers. The most followed writer on the site has been writing since 2010 I’ve been writing since 2015.

she gets over 3000 new followers a year, I get about 1200.

what’s the best metric? No clue. pick the one you like the most.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I think they were trying to judge their popularity as an author by how many stories they have vs followers. it makes sense the more followers you have, the more popular you are.

I write in the LW category most of the time. It’s very contentious so it’s hard to judge your success by a stories score. I often look at favorites/view to see how a story is doing.

so # of followers can be a metric as to how you are doing as an author in whole. but let’s say iim not as prolific a writer, as someone else, how can I judge how I’m doing. Maybe followers/story works.

I have 8450 followers and 87 stories. That’s about 100 followers/story ratio. The top followed author has 42,900 followers and over 600 stories. That’s about 70 something followers per story.

the other part is time. I have been writing for 7 years. So I’ve been collecting followers for years. it makes sense that the longer you’ve been writing the more followers. The most followed writer on the site has been writing since 2010 I’ve been writing since 2015.

she gets over 3000 new followers a year, I get about 1200.

what’s the best metric? No clue. pick the one you like the most.

What you say makes sense if the OP was being asked about his popularity. That's why I suggest getting clarification so that the right (though limited) metrics available could be provided.

I have 936 followers since my first story was published in 2014. I have 68 submissions, but only 20 complete stories. Should I gauge my popularity with readers by submissions or stories (13.76 versus 46.8)? Bearing in mind that the average rating for all of my stories combined is 4.75

The Incest/Taboo category generates a boatload of followers for an author. Why? Who knows. I published my first story in that category last month and gained over a hundred new followers from that single story.

I don't try to compare myself to other authors here because the mix is too diverse. I just write what I want and wait to see what the audience thinks. From an individual story perspective, that falls on ratings and favorites.

 

[other2other1]

I keep a casual eye on my followers, I like to read their comments every few days. I continue to write because I am enjoying the process of learning to write good stories that would myself read over and over again.
I figure if I pick up a follower its because they like what I write, that somehow my stories have stuck a chord or created an emotional response.
I have a few times on some of my upcoming stories thought about what the readers would like to soo, but then I ignore the impulse to write for populatiry. If I write for me, i'm true to myself. If I write for the readers, then I think my writing would become drul and boring.
I do understand that some of the people are following me because they don't like what I write, as I always say, that's okay. Followers, ratings, they are nice to have. But publishing a story that I would enjoy to read myself that is the goal of my writing

 

[Imstillfun]

I keep a casual eye on my followers, I like to read their comments every few days. I continue to write because I am enjoying the process of learning to write good stories that would myself read over and over again.
I figure if I pick up a follower its because they like what I write, that somehow my stories have stuck a chord or created an emotional response.
I have a few times on some of my upcoming stories thought about what the readers would like to soo, but then I ignore the impulse to write for populatiry. If I write for me, i'm true to myself. If I write for the readers, then I think my writing would become drul and boring.
I do understand that some of the people are following me because they don't like what I write, as I always say, that's okay. Followers, ratings, they are nice to have. But publishing a story that I would enjoy to read myself that is the goal of my writing

I noticed you publish in LW as do I. It’s a contentious group. The people who follow us because they “don’t like us” Are fans. They follow and read every story. Usually they can quote from them. These guys are as much fans as they protest they are not.

 

[other2other1]

I noticed you publish in LW as do I. It’s a contentious group. The people who follow us because they “don’t like us” Are fans. They follow and read every story. Usually they can quote from them. These guys are as much fans as they protest they are not.

Absolutely, they just tend to be a little more vocal than most

 

[FifthEstate]

I have to admit, I’ve become a followers/views whore. Once I broke the top 250 I became interested. Once I broke top 20. I became obsessed. Now I look at my followers everyday.

I did do the number of stories/followers ratio. I looked at others to compare. I also look at favorites and votes per view on stories.
I used to watch scores, now favorites/view is my favorite metric for how well I did.

i am bipolar and sometimes need motivation to write. Getting more followers is one of the things I use for motivation in my head.

What do you consider a good favorites to view percentage to be? I really have no idea. Also what is a good view/vote ratio?

 

[SimonDoom]

What do you consider a good favorites to view percentage to be? I really have no idea. Also what is a good view/vote ratio?

I'm not sure what "good" or "average" is. I've published 51 stories in almost six years, over a variety of categories. As of today, my view:vote ratio is 92:1. My view:favorite ratio is 667:1. My view:follower ratio is 1912:1.

 

[FifthEstate]

I'm not sure what "good" or "average" is. I've published 51 stories in almost six years, over a variety of categories. As of today, my view:vote ratio is 92:1. My view:favorite ratio is 667:1. My view:follower ratio is 1912:1.

Wow, those seem like crazy ratio’s. Can I ask what your total number views is?

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I'm not sure what "good" or "average" is. I've published 51 stories in almost six years, over a variety of categories. As of today, my view:vote ratio is 92:1. My view:favorite ratio is 667:1. My view:follower ratio is 1912:1.

Do you count your series as single stories when calculating your follower ratio?

 

[Duleigh]

Do folks think this way, or figure out strategies or formulas?

I never thought of developing a readers to stories ratio, stories and readers are two different things. (6.13:1) Thanks for giving my OCD brain something new to chew on @LAHomedog ಠ﹏ಠ

I was perfectly content with watching my story count climb until I saw that little download symbol on my Works page and then I downloaded a .csv containing all that information from my works page - that's like giving me a loaded rocket launcher to play with. Next thing I know I'm generating charts and ratios as fast as excel can calculate them. Until I found that button all I knew for sure was the story with the highest rating and the story with the highest view count (which was the one I posted 14 years ago)

NOW I know the day I received the most page views over the past 4 months (5,735 on 08/21) the story with the highest ratio of comments per page view, the story with highest view/rating rating, everything that could quantify anything, I stopped myself when I found myself developing a number of words/pageview ratio. (Overall that's close to 1:1 which is kind of scary)

In the end the only number that really means anything to me is the rating. Not because that means how much my readers love me, it means how well I'm supplying a quality series of stories to my readers. THAT's the number we should be looking at. (4.71)

 

[Imstillfun]

I'm not sure what "good" or "average" is. I've published 51 stories in almost six years, over a variety of categories. As of today, my view:vote ratio is 92:1. My view:favorite ratio is 667:1. My view:follower ratio is 1912:1.

Oh my god. I hate you. You just gave my OCD brain A MATH PROBLEM! I downloaded and summed all the numbers. now I have to do the ratios. I’ll be back.