Staggering submissions?

[crookedletter]

I've generally been very slow to post content here. In my first year and a half I posted a whopping three stories.

Now I suddenly find myself with what seems like an embarrassment of riches: I posted one last week, and I have both a Pink Orchid and a 750-word story ready to go.

These three stories kind of couldn't be more different: three different categories, 750 words to 7K words to nearly 20K words. So I'm thinking there's not much risk of them competing with each other in some way, other than readers who enjoy any one of them may not enjoy any others -- but that has little to do with timing.

I'm just curious if people strategize on letting dust settle on one story before posting another. I know anecdotally there are some around here who seem to crank these things out over breakfast. Do you just fire when ready?

Thoughts?

 

[MrPixel]

My main concern about staggering submissions is when I try to post after margarita lunches. With that out of the way...

Yes. When I have multiple stories queued-up in the "done" folder, or nearly so, I will wait until the "New" tag goes away before posting the next one. Now OTOH, my usual posts are installments of a serial, so I sort of want to space them out, exception being a two- or three-part contiguous tale within the series. I upload those in a batch to be published consecutive days. If I have the odd standalone, I'll still wait until the "New" comes off whatever was before it.

Not that I have hard data that all this accomplishes anything, it's just gut feel.

 

[crookedletter]

My main concern about staggering submissions is when I try to post after margarita lunches. With that out of the way...

Yes. When I have multiple stories queued-up in the "done" folder, or nearly so, I will wait until the "New" tag goes away before posting the next one. Now OTOH, my usual posts are installments of a serial, so I sort of want to space them out, exception being a two- or three-part contiguous tale within the series. I upload those in a batch to be published consecutive days. If I have the odd standalone, I'll still wait until the "New" comes off whatever was before it.

Not that I have hard data that all this accomplishes anything, it's just gut feel.

Probably a stupid question, but how long does the "new" tag stay on there?

 

[MrPixel]

A week.

 

[Baztrachian]

I've generally been very slow to post content here. In my first year and a half I posted a whopping three stories.

Now I suddenly find myself with what seems like an embarrassment of riches: I posted one last week, and I have both a Pink Orchid and a 750-word story ready to go.

These three stories kind of couldn't be more different: three different categories, 750 words to 7K words to nearly 20K words. So I'm thinking there's not much risk of them competing with each other in some way, other than readers who enjoy any one of them may not enjoy any others -- but that has little to do with timing.

I'm just curious if people strategize on letting dust settle on one story before posting another. I know anecdotally there are some around here who seem to crank these things out over breakfast. Do you just fire when ready?

Thoughts?

My writing efforts tend to come in the form of binges. Like I'll write a bunch of short stories in the space of a month or so and then nothing for a while after that. Or I'll get on a bender and start writing a 10,000 to 20,000 word story.

In my off times I'll post draft stories and try to get them started.

Like right now I have a seed of an idea for a transgender story and so far my every effort has fallen flat. The story just isn't flowing like it should, too forced, too contrived. I want something more nuanced and with a twist ending.

I might have to go with calling it an "Erotic Coupling" story to help make the TG thing part of the twist ending. Not quite The Crying Game but in that ballpark.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

In the long term, even with chapters and series submissions, they will all be visible so staggering them is only a short-term strategy at best.

There is no downside to submitting them close together, especially if they are in different categories because each category has its own "New" list.

There are more positives in that readers will get exposure to your work in different categories faster, which can breed more followers.

 

[Britva415]

I'm just curious if people strategize on letting dust settle on one story before posting another. I know anecdotally there are some around here who seem to crank these things out over breakfast. Do you just fire when ready?

Can you spell out what you mean by "strategy?" In terms of goals.

What is it that you would want to achieve as the result of strategizing well? It might not match other people's goals and agendas.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Submit 3-4 days apart. Considering the typical 2-3 day approval timing, you'd potentially be on the 'New' list for close to 3 weeks.


Or don't.

 

[crookedletter]

Can you spell out what you mean by "strategy?" In terms of goals.

What is it that you would want to achieve as the result of strategizing well? It might not match other people's goals and agendas.

I guess I don't have a clearly defined strategy, or goals. Apart from people reading my stories. Just wondering what sort of upsides and downsides people have seen and considered with posting multiple stories. Something I haven't had to worry much about with how much time usually elapses before I have another one ready.

Helpful insights, all. I'll probably post one of the new at least ones this week.

 

[Britva415]

people reading my stories

My opinion is that there's only one factor which could impact how many people read a story while it's new. That would be the phenomenon of getting one of them pushed off the front page of the New list. The one that's only 10 new stories long. You can't control whether other people's stories do that to one or more of your own, but, one of yours could do that to another one of yours.

You also can't control whether readers only select from those 10, or they know there are more and click through to the complete list of new stories ordered newest to older. My guess is that most readers aren't so uninformed that they never see the rest of the new stories, or so premature-prone that they get off and leave without going past the 10.

So, it would be category dependent. Some categories can only display a small percentage of new stories on the front page every day. Others can keep all the day's new stories on the front page. But even then, all of the categories have more stories beyond the 10, and readers can easily get to them.

Anyway, I feel this would be a very very small factor. I don't believe that readers even notice if one author has multiple stories on the new list at the same time. Nor do I believe that if they did notice, they would use that as some reason to not read them.

 

[IWroteThis]

I wouldn't want them all to appear on the same day, so I'd go from shortest to longest, submitting the next one on the day the previous one posted. If they were all long enough that I thought folks might read them in pieces over a day or two, I'd wait a couple more days before submitting the next one.

 

[Writer61]

Having a "New" story drives traffic to previously published stories, so in an ideal world, I would like episodes to drop weekly. But my experience with this is mixed, as they were published out of sequence on one occasion.

 

[ElectricBlue]

These three stories kind of couldn't be more different: three different categories, 750 words to 7K words to nearly 20K words. So I'm thinking there's not much risk of them competing with each other in some way, other than readers who enjoy any one of them may not enjoy any others -- but that has little to do with timing.

There's your answer. You're not competing against yourself, the stories aren't related. Publish and be damned.

I think you only need to worry about release "strategies" if you've got a chaptered story, but even then it's a short term thing to worry about. In six months time the period between chapters is irrelevant.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Submit 3-4 days apart. Considering the typical 2-3 day approval timing, you'd potentially be on the 'New' list for close to 3 weeks.


Or don't.

As I mentioned in my comment, there is a "New Stories" list for every category. Depending upon the category and submission volume, a story could remain on the category new list for much longer than the "New Erotic Stories" list that most people think about. I believe that seven days is the max time on either list. In both cases, the story will typically lose the "NEW" story badge before it falls off the list.

Regardless, it is still only a short term presence compared to the life of a story here. Following are examples for my latest submission:


and...