Timing of submissions

[jsmiam]

One of the regulars here (please forgive me, I forget who exactly) made a comment about trying to time a new story to appear on Fridays, and to do that, they would submit on Thursdays. (All times listed by me are U.S. Eastern time, GMT - 5:00) The comment was part of a thread on a different topic, and I can't seem to find it right now.) The summer-loving thread has a few threads touching on this topic too, not the Friday part specifically, but the "how long does it usually take" part.

I decided to give this a try for the story to be new on Friday, and I suppose it in a way worked. After a submission, it says "pending" in blue as a hyperlink (I bet there's a better name, I'll just call it "half approved", then at some point the "pending" is no longer a hyperlink, and I read somewhere else here, that this second stage means it's approved by Laurel, and now is waiting for approval by the moderator of the particular category moderator. Then, it's fully approved. Right?

Anyway, I tried. Submitted early a.m. Thursday, and it was "half approved" by Friday morning. It stayed half approved, and I'm going to guess Friday at about 11 p.m., it became fully approved (I was spot checking here and there through the day: it wasn't approved at about 10 p.m., but was at midnight). I was hoping to hit "prime time", which would have been a bit earlier in the day Friday, but I know there's some randomness to it all. No worries, other than trying to hedge my bets better in the future.

I'll try Wednesday next time, but curious what the more experienced folks do? Thanks.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Over the long haul it matters little. This week one of my stories went live Monday or Tuesday and got 20,000 reads in 24 hours. Two went live Friday and got less than 1/2 as much traffic.

 

[RejectReality]

It was probably me who said that. When I say Friday, I actually mean Thursday Night/Friday Morning.

That means putting the story in the queue on Tuesday.

However, my most recent story went through the queue in only one day, putting it out on Wed. night/Thursday morning. Not sure whether that was a fluke caused by low submissions or possibly a new trend.

The only critical thing is to avoid Sunday like the plague. That's the one release day where I've had consistently dismal numbers.

 

[jsmiam]

@JamesB & RejectReality, thanks for the replies.

And RR, now that you say that, it triggered a couple brain cells, and yes, it was your comment I was thinking of, thanks.

I'm as good an amateur hack statistician, as I am an amateur hack writer. And poisson is just fun to say.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Just an FYI, once Laurel approves the story, that's it, there is no other approval process. It's just a matter of waiting for the site updates to take place.

 

[sr71plt]

If you are shooting for a Friday story posting, only submit it on Thursday if it's in a theme contest. Regular postings pretty uniformly take two days now, so you'd submit on Wednesday.

 

[Weird Harold]

One of the regulars here (please forgive me, I forget who exactly) made a comment about trying to time a new story to appear on Fridays, ...

I don't know if it will still work, but it used to be that if you wanted a particular posting schedule, you could put a request in the comments field of the submission form. The option was most often used for submitting a serialized (chaptered) story all at once for a regular posting interval other than one chapter a day (which is the default.)

IOW, If you want your story to appear Friday(s) submit it any time before Tuesday Morning and request a Thursday evening posting. The Earlier you post a story/chapter the better the chances of it fitting into Laurel's posting schedule as you request.

 

[jsmiam]

Oh, good tips all around, thanks everyone!

 

[HeyAll]

Speaking of new trends, do stories still get posted around 9 am eastern?

It seems that lately, all of the stories get approved for midnight. Even the contest stories (if you submit during the afternoon or night)

 

[sr71plt]

Speaking of new trends, do stories still get posted around 9 am eastern?

It seems that lately, all of the stories get approved for midnight. Even the contest stories (if you submit during the afternoon or night)

It's always been between mostly between 1:00 an 3:00 a.m. eastern time in my experience, first to the author's page and later to the hub and the "New" list.

 

[JKendallDane]

Decisions about submission timing can also be affected based on category.

In the lighter submission cats (ie: gay male, lesbian, erotic horror, humor & satire, etc) submission day isn't all that important. It's not at all unusual for a new story to stay on the "new" list on the category hub for ten days to two weeks, so unless you are totally anal retentive about being "on the top on the weekend" then you just submit whenever during the week. Since Laurel has been keeping us to a very dependable two day approval period for quite a while, I've found I prefer to pop up on the new list on Wednesday or Thursday and still be riding the new list wave through the entire weekend.

Now granted, in the hot and heavily submitted cats (LW, Incest, EC, BDSM, etc) you would want to be as creative as possible on timing since it appears there are days where, even with twenty slots available on the hub new list, you aren't guaranteed being seen there.

.

 

[ishtat]

JBJ noted that Friday submissions did less well for him than submissions earlier in the week, however, I suspect that the most important factor is having your story somewhere near the top of the day's list in its category.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JBJ noted that Friday submissions did less well for him than submissions earlier in the week, however, I suspect that the most important factor is having your story somewhere near the top of the day's list in its category.

Location, location, location.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Heres 3 stories I posted last week:

The Tuesday story has 32,000 reads @ 4.28 score

The Friday story has 14,000 reads @ 4.31 score

The Saturday story has 36,000 reads @ 4.00 score

 

[jsmiam]

Yep, it's a cat and mouse game. My ten day old humor and satire post is at this moment still the newest post there (4400 views, 4.32). My almost midnight Friday post had a good run, maybe it was a slower posting week (incest/taboo, cousins) because it stayed on the new hub page pretty much all weekend. It hit 19,000 at 48 hours, stayed at about 4.60 +- 0.3, so the red H probably helped too.

I think I will keep trying for weekends myself, but I do see where that could be part superstition. It'd be fun if we could pull a Facebook and secretly conduct human experimentation on readers. Same story, different titles, days of week, categories, etc. I know we can't (and shouldn't), but still, it'd be fun.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yep, it's a cat and mouse game. My ten day old humor and satire post is at this moment still the newest post there (4400 views, 4.32). My almost midnight Friday post had a good run, maybe it was a slower posting week (incest/taboo, cousins) because it stayed on the new hub page pretty much all weekend. It hit 19,000 at 48 hours, stayed at about 4.60 +- 0.3, so the red H probably helped too.

I think I will keep trying for weekends myself, but I do see where that could be part superstition. It'd be fun if we could pull a Facebook and secretly conduct human experimentation on readers. Same story, different titles, days of week, categories, etc. I know we can't (and shouldn't), but still, it'd be fun.

Been there, done that. I compiled a series into one submission, and its score is significantly lower than its chapter scores.

 

[coochiebarber]

Yep, it's a cat and mouse game. My ten day old humor and satire post is at this moment still the newest post there (4400 views, 4.32). My almost midnight Friday post had a good run, maybe it was a slower posting week (incest/taboo, cousins) because it stayed on the new hub page pretty much all weekend. It hit 19,000 at 48 hours, stayed at about 4.60 +- 0.3, so the red H probably helped too.

I think I will keep trying for weekends myself, but I do see where that could be part superstition. It'd be fun if we could pull a Facebook and secretly conduct human experimentation on readers. Same story, different titles, days of week, categories, etc. I know we can't (and shouldn't), but still, it'd be fun.

The same goes with my story. It was posted yesterday (within 24 hours of submission) and had more than 20k hits. Needless to say, 6.00 and above ratings helps a lot. It did start with 1.00 rating though. I wonder.....

 

[RejectReality]

Don't forget that category ( and sometimes, genre within category ) matters far more than timing.

14k hits in Humor & Satire is phenomenal, while 14k hits in Incest is on the extreme low end. A good M/S story in Incest can easily break 100k views in 24 hours.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Don't forget that category ( and sometimes, genre within category ) matters far more than timing.

14k hits in Humor & Satire is phenomenal, while 14k hits in Incest is on the extreme low end. A good M/S story in Incest can easily break 100k views in 24 hours.

What in hell do you mean GENRE WITHIN CATEGORY? Genre exists apart from categories. Its neither fish nor fowl.

 

[redzinger]

I posted Ch. 2 last week and it was up within 24 hours. Straightforward submission.

I posted Ch. 3 this week and it took 48 hours. This one had a note.

So, I'm guessing adding notes and other complexities probably slows things down.