Stories piblished at off-hours

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

My basic premise may be wrong, so I invite correction if needed. The premise is that most new stories here appear to be posted as a single large batch, one per day, around 2 am, U.S. Eastern Daylight. This is what I’ve observed since I first became aware of this site, about eight months ago.

My most recent two stories were posted at hours other than the one for the main batch. This may have deprived the stories of some reader awareness, because they didn’t show up on that day’s page(s) of the ‘New’ list at the posting time for the main batch. This isn’t a complaint, I’m just confused. Both stories are in categories where there usually aren’t many stories posted in a given day, so they’ve shown up in their hubs fairly high up, with probably the same number of days spent on the hubs as they would have had if posted in the main batch. (There was also off-hour posting on one of my earlier stories, but I don’t remember which. This should help indicate that it’s not a big deal to me, but it’s puzzling.)

My questions for all of you wise folks are: Have you had this experience? If so, did off-hour posting affect the number of views your story had?

The story posted in late February has had many fewer views than my other two stories in that category, over comparable time periods (one of the two was a contest entry, the other wasn’t). The other story was just posted yesterday, in a category where I’ve never posted before, so there are no useful data.

To follow on the fact that I’m not complaining, I must state that the most recent story showed that the system here at Lit can work. The story was initially rejected, and the boilerplate reason given had nothing to do with any of the story’s content. I sent a PM to Laurel, who sent me instructions for having the story reconsidered (it involves making one’s case in the space for Notes to the site). I did as instructed, and a day later the story was published, as is.

But returning to the main point, I don’t understand the off-hour publishing. I, personally, am willing to wait for a story to debut the following day, in the main daily batch. I’ll mention this in the Notes on future submissions. Does anyone prefer the-sooner-the-better posting?

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5116173&page=submissions

 

[yukonnights]

Based only on what I've read here by others; The early morning eastern time for posting is normal — I've not heard of any other time for new story postings. Contest stories usually garner more views than non-contest stories.

I think your concerns are misplaced. Others watch these things closer — so you may get more/different info soon.

 

[Kojak01]

Yes, I have also experienced that occasionally stories are published outside of the normal batch.
I do not know why or if there is a logic or a rule behind it.

 

[RejectReality]

Laurel "pre-approves" most stories to appear on a specific date. Those are the ones that go live with the main batch somewhere around midnight Pacific time. ( it's actually been closer to 11 a large percentage of the time that I've noticed )

I'd imagine that she's filling out a light daily listing or paring down a large backlog in the queue whenever stories post outside the main batch. Maybe the hours she sat aside to approve stories had a large percentage of stories that had to be sent back, leaving her with a light daily listing. Or maybe something just came up and she couldn't get through her typical quota that day.

I've had it happen a couple of times. It can depress your views on day one, but as long as you're not in a rapid turnover category, it seems to balance. LW and Incest getting posted in a late batch are probably going to take a real hit.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I call it the midnight server run. I usually see my stories go live the same time, mid-afternoon my (Oz) time, but my last one went live sometime during my night. When I woke in the morning it had been running for a couple of hours already, with a nice take-up.

I put it down to Laurel spreading her work load, or maybe topping up slower moving categories. My last went up in two days, which is pretty quick.

 

[KeithD]

My most recently posted story (this week) posted off the regular New list schedule. I'm presuming that was because Laurel put it aside to fix something. I'd reported to Manu that the text block didn't accept the text. Apparently it did but just didn't show that it did and it may have been populated with the text multiple times, which had to be fixed (don't know; I didn't get a response of what was wrong/what was fixed).

I don't notice any disadvantaging in reads or votes in having been posted off general pattern.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

Others watch these things loser...

Think you dropped a comma there, bro. BOOM!

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I have had a story or two posted outside the server run. Thors Fist "A Taste of Slavery" series seems to post in the afternoon or early evening Eastern time. It can potentially hurt your ratings. In that case it is a very long running series with a following, so i suspect the author does not care overmuch.

Bottom line, Laurel's site.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I don't notice any disadvantaging in reads or votes in having been posted off general pattern.

Generally I agree, but I can see a story getting lost in the backwash of the next days new story posts. That could hurt a one off or a first in series story.

 

[KeithD]

Generally I agree, but I can see a story getting lost in the backwash of the next days new story posts. That could hurt a one off or a first in series story.

I'm not that obsessed with the "gotta compete and play all the angles" stuff with my stories.

 

[yukonnights]

Think you dropped a comma there, bro. BOOM!

Oops, not a comma but definitely a 'c' — thanks for the heads up

 

[gordo12]

It's happened to me twice and a real impact on the views etc both times.

Stories appear where I live around 11:30 PM at night for tomorrow's date. That means the stories that drop tonight (12th) will be dated Friday the 13th.

Twice, (I assume because of overwork or error) stories have appeared the next afternoon around 1-2 pm. Also dated (in this example) the 13th.

Any story appearing like that misses the initial viewing, votes and comments and is driven down the list less than 10 hours later by the new arrivals that night.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Oops, not a comma but definitely a 'c' — thanks for the heads up

Hey, no worries, I'm the one who somehow wrote 'piblished' in the title.

Thanks all, and to reiterate, I wasn't complaining. The story and its reception are what they are.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yep, I believe the story publisher script runs all the time in the background. It checks the server date and then grabs all the stories in the to be published list with that date.

Most of the time it works flawlessly, and starts to post the stories at Midnight EST/EDST. Now through out the day Laurel works on the next batch of stories and places them in the queue. I bet there are time that she puts the incorrect date on them and that's why they get posted at odd time during that day.

But then why would anyone care, as long as they get posted.