The Authors' Hangout 2011 Halloween Contest Support Thread.

[Sugary_Comfort]

Congrats to the winners!! I didn't read any of those stories, I only really tried to read things the first few days.

As for my score, it's at 4.41 with 34 votes! The sweeps took out 4 more votes between the time I looked yesterday and today. So it went from 4.16 to 4.41! I'm very happy with that ^_^

I will work much harder on the winter themed contest story and I think I'll try to keep it short and sweet. The more of these contests I enter, the more practice I'll get with short stories. I suck at them lol.

 

[LunaEroticaMystica]

estragon, why do you say I would have won?

DARK: After the final sweep

Jersey Love: Apple Dreams & Release:
4.85, 34 votes, 4403 views, 14 comments, 6 PCs, 3 favs

This morning I had 42 votes. I think the length of the story definitely scared some readers away. But things stayed steady almost throughout, which surprised me. I'm used to the yo-yo-ing of trolls and sweeps.

Did anyone else notice steadiness this time?

 

[nomoretears00]

Yay!

Congrats to the winners!

Tali... you rock my friend way to go! What a way to start the weekend, lol.

 

[Et2bruttus]

My numbers.

My final numbers for "An Intergalactic Halloween" were 4.81, 108 votes, 4067 views, 9 PCs, 6 Favs, and 13 votes swept.

Prior to the final sweep, I believe my numbers were somewhere around 4.57, 121 votes, 3966 views, 9 PCs, and 6 faves.

 

[sr71plt]

Congrats to the winners. It was quite a ride. As close as I can figure I had nearly as many votes swept as still remain.

My highest rated story was the nonerotic "3 for Poe" at 4.71, but without enough votes to qualify for the contest.

My highest qualifying one was the GM "Cold Stone Tomb" at 4.62 (45 votes); my lowest-scoring one was the tongue-in-cheek Incest "Mommy Deadest" at 3.72 (275 votes).

In spite of purposely going for the less popular categories, 9 of the 14 stories posted over 4.0 when swept (as opposed to 3 before the sweeps) and 4 ended with an H (as opposed to none even close before the sweeps).

12 of the stories, minus two of the GM ones, but plus two not-GM from earlier Halloween contests, were published last week under the habu name by BarbarianSpy as 13 Ways for Halloween, which is already in the top 50 anthology listings (out of 911) at Allromanceebooks.com.


http://www.allromanceebooks.com/thumbnailImages/624828.jpg


One of the stories, "3 for Poe" was published as a free read and is #1 on the Horror list at Omnilit.


http://www.allromanceebooks.com/thumbnailImages/620965.jpg


So, the upshot of entering the contest is that, on the plus side, you get higher-level exposure for your stories, which mostly translates into more views, more votes, more comments, and often higher ratings than if you posted the story to the general file and, on the negative side, you get to see the baser behavior of others on Literotica.

I posted a bunch of stories (14) to the contest partially in response to Scouries' campaign to cut out the minor categories and to restrict the number of entries permitted by a single poster and partially to respond to claims by others that I don't enter contests (I've entered most since I started posting to Literotica) and/or that I don't write anything but GM. My stories covered 11 different categories in this contest and I have nearly 100 stories posted to Literotica in the sr71plt name alone that aren't GM. (There aren't very many of the nearly 55,000 authors on Literotica who have 100 stories listed at all, let alone across the 21 categories I have posted in--most certainly not the primary detractors who attack me here.)

For me, this contest had the benefit of pushing me to get another anthology written and out to the marketplace. I didn't expect to win any prizes on the contest here itself--not with stories pushing the more-unpopular categories and certainly not with the malicious trolls I have hanging off me here.

 

[Darkniciad]

estragon, why do you say I would have won?

DARK: After the final sweep

Jersey Love: Apple Dreams & Release:
4.85, 34 votes, 4403 views, 14 comments, 6 PCs, 3 favs

This morning I had 42 votes. I think the length of the story definitely scared some readers away. But things stayed steady almost throughout, which surprised me. I'm used to the yo-yo-ing of trolls and sweeps.

Did anyone else notice steadiness this time?

There's no way of knowing for sure until scores update, but you had the highest score of all the stories in the last couple of tracks. If you weren't ineligible because of a recent win, according to the current numbers we have, you would have been in 1st.

=============

Appreciate the numbers everyone is posting. I'm recording them all and I'll use them as a baseline to check the scores throughout the day. Once I see enough of them matching ( or close ) with what's displayed on the public side, I'll run a score track. Odds are that a vote track will be pointless until at least tonight, and most likely tomorrow morning.

 

[PennLady]

Congrats to the winners.

I lost more votes than I expected in the sweeps -- close to 20 all together. On the upside, that pushed my score to a 4.62, so hey, I'll have my H. For now, anyway.

 

[LunaEroticaMystica]

DARK: Oh wow, I didn't know. Very cool!

NOMORETEARS: Talis story was amazing! How cool that you were one of the first to read it.

PENNLADY: Yay for the red "H"ot H!

SUGARY COMFORT: Nice for your first contest!

It was so nice to see some brave newbies enter the contest world too.

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

DARK: Oh wow, I didn't know. Very cool!

NOMORETEARS: Talis story was amazing! How cool that you were one of the first to read it.

PENNLADY: Yay for the red "H"ot H!

SUGARY COMFORT: Nice for your first contest!

It was so nice to see some brave newbies enter the contest world too.

Damn, what happened, Luna? When I looked at Scouries scores, you were the highest rated story. I figured you'd win, especially with the story your wrote for the contest.

Oh, well. It's nice seeing new people having a chance to win a contest.

Congratulations to the Halloween contest winners.

Better get writing, it's less than two weeks for Winter Holiday contest.

 

[LunaEroticaMystica]

Freddie: I'm unable to place because of placing with my Nude Day entry a few months ago. I think I'll be eligible again by the Valentine's Contest. Thanks! I just went back and saw Scouries posted scores. That makes sense as to why it's been brought up a couple of times because I was clueless.

EDIT: 2 weeks? Yikes!

 

[nomoretears00]

*grin*

Luna... I begged her to enter it after I read it, lol. You ended up with a great score!

Yay Penn... glad your story came up!

 

[LunaEroticaMystica]

estragon: Brr! Are you getting snow too?! I haven't thought about a winter story for them. Hmm.

NOMORETEARS: You had to beg her? How come? How did your story do? Contest is over but doesn't mean Halloween and story-reading is over.

 

[nomoretears00]

Luna...

Tali wasn't sure it was Halloweenish enough, thus the author's note at the beginning. I called her this morning after I saw the list and she was absolutely shocked. LOL.

Mine did okay; I didn't lose many votes and my score came up a little. Maybe ten or eleven votes swept. I think the bibical stuff in the beginning with Judas, God and Satan turned some folks away. *Laugh* it was dark and violent-which I usually don't do-and some of the folks that read me didn't care of that. But I was expecting that, too.

 

[AutumnRayven]

4.71, 18 favorites, over 10k views. Grats to the winners. Very happy with how I did. Lost quite a few votes in sweeps. Went from 160 to 134 but my score went up considerably

 

[Darkniciad]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of votes I picked up on mine. For the length of the story and the category, it did quite well. The number of comments are deceptive compared to the number of emails I got on it as well.

Picked up 16 favorite author nods since it posted, as well as several favs on older stories, a nice chunk of votes across my list, two stories rising higher on the toplists, and a few more creeping toward appearing on the toplists again after the change in the minimum vote totals.

A win's always nice, but the new eyes on my work are the real reward I'm always aiming for

 

[talismania]

Congratulations to everyone! This was a great group of authors and stories and, yes, I was surprised to find my story among the top three. I haven't been watching the scores or anything, so didn't know how it was doing.

Nomoretears told me to just go ahead and enter it. I wasn't sure readers would be interested in a story set in old Peru, but the response has been wonderful.

 

[PennLady]

For the record, after the final sweep:

The Collection
79 votes (down from a high of 99 to my knowledge)
4.62 (up from as low as 4.3)
5977 views
10 comments
1 favorite (ah well)

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Mine bounced up to the 4.4-4.6 mark. Not bad considering all of them had some fairly icky moments. (can't resist the opportunity to ambush unsuspecting readers )

I'm disappointed Erotic Horror had a poor showing overall, but congrats to the winners!

 

[oggbashan]

The Authors' Hangout Last Place (tm) Contest

Last Place Contest

Rules for Last Place contest.
****

Order for coming last:

Lowest voted rating for a genuine attempt at a story multiplied by number of votes if less than 25 divided by 25.

So - if rating is 3.00 but only 12 votes the score would be

3.00 x 12 / 25 = 1.44

If rating is 3.00 but more than 25 votes, the rating stays the same.

I suggest ignoring number of reads except as a tie breaker when least number of reads would *win*.
****

Since the 'winner' actually wins nothing, it is pointless to cheat. To enter, all you have to do is declare your rating and votes at the time the real contest is decided.
Participation is entirely voluntary.

Og is banned from entry for life because he finds coming last too easy and is a past multiple winner of last places.

For the last place contest, 1 votes are very valuable and 5s are bombs.

Og (whose decision is final unless you all gang up on me)
__________________

 

[Boxlicker101]

Congratulations to the winners. I thought one story would contend for last place, but the sweep eliminated more than a third of the votes and raised the score to a more respectable one. I don't know if the swept votes were trolls or gay bashers. Probably some of both.

Mu other story lost almost 20% of the votes and ended up alright too.

 

[DG Hear]

Congrats to the winners. My totals after all the sweeps ended up pretty good.

Halloween and Batman
4.67 270 7321 Non-Erotic (English) 10/07/11
Public Comments: 9


Halloween Swing Halloween
4.53 420 27950 Erotic Couplings (English) 10/01/11
Public Comments: 23


Motor City Trick
4.49 538 28272 Loving Wives (English) 10/19/11
Public Comments: 20

 

[estragon]

estragon: Brr! Are you getting snow too?! I haven't thought about a winter story for them. Hmm.

NOMORETEARS: You had to beg her? How come? How did your story do? Contest is over but doesn't mean Halloween and story-reading is over.

Luna, Dark explained it. If you hadn't placed in Nude Day with that brilliant Lavender story, you'd have won this one in a walk. That's the price of being as good as you are. Hail to the victors, of course--they well deserve their places.

As for snow, my word! The National Weather Service says we broke the record for the most snow here on any October 29th since they started keeping records in 1869. Herself and I were out and about, and it was more like January than October. In fact, we came within 2 degrees of tying the record low temperature for this date, that was set in 1925. Time for some winter stories.

 

[Darkniciad]

Still no sign of the public author pages updating to anything resembling the scores we all saw at around the time the winners were announced.

I'll keep checking periodically as long as I'm awake, and start a track as soon as I see the signs that things are updating.

The longer it takes, the more likely the numbers are to be off from what they were at the time of the winner announcement, though -- especially on the winning stories. I know I had a flurry of new reads and votes after my wins.

Then again, all my previous after-winner announcements have matched the winner's list pretty accurately, so the update schedule may cause them to be more accurate than I'm expecting.

Then again, it's been a while since we had so many surging and plummeting stories in a contest.

I guess I'll know when I run the track

 

[Darkniciad]

Well, not everyone's public author page has updated yet, but a lot of them have, so I gathered what was there in a score-only track.

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/halloween_2011_w.htm

I'll run another ( probably final ) track in the morning to see if I can capture the swept votes, and see what we have for score.

If there's enough of the sweeps captured, I'll add a % swept to tomorrow's track.

My second story is still gathering votes at a fair rate, and I've picked up 4 author favs as Dark just today.

 

[Darkniciad]

And, here's the final track.

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/halloween_2011_x.htm

Caught everything about as close as is humanly possible without direct server access to the way things looked at the time of the winner announcement.

Average score of 4.30 and a median of 4.41 As I predicted earlier in the contest, these are the highest averages I've observed in tracking contests.

And here's the final page of this track, which simply demonstrates the sweep percentages.

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/halloween_2011_y.htm

About a 18% average and 16% median of votes cast were swept.