What stat do you care about most on your stories?

[TxRad]

Since I posted my first story, I have collected data on all of them. I like data and it can all an interesting story. I collect for the first five days of posting (that pretty well tells you if you are appealing to the audience). After that I collect the data every month. Over time, you can see which stories have staying power and which ones don't. I didn't realize until TxRad posted this above that the view is first page clicks only. It would be interesting to have both a first and last page click number. At least you could estimate how many people actually read it from front to back. Regardless, the number of votes is very small compared to the views and comments are much less than the votes. I read that to mean that many people read but don't or won't take the time to provide any feedback. Not the best of all worlds but it is what it is and you work with what you have to work with. I agree on the comments about the trolls and what appear to be robots. When you post a forty or fifty page novel and two hours after it is posted you get a scathing negative comment, that means that some illiterate has too much time on his hands.

Here are a set of questions for you to contemplate about votes and comments. What are readers here for? What are they doing while reading and how long does it take them as apposed to reading the full story? If you finish one, do you finish the other? Do you have the energy to vote or comment?

Data from numbers here are so squired by other facts that they are about useless or misleading at best.

Welcome to the AH by the way.

 

[TexasFarmBoy]

Here are a set of questions for you to contemplate about votes and comments. What are readers here for? What are they doing while reading and how long does it take them as apposed to reading the full story? If you finish one, do you finish the other? Do you have the energy to vote or comment?

Data from numbers here are so squired by other facts that they are about useless or misleading at best.

Welcome to the AH by the way.

Based on some of the comments I get, there are a number of people who are serious readers especially for the longer and less sexually intense stories. Many of the short ones are quick strokes and done. In general, I agree with your comments about data except that you have to use the data available to you. Our national polls are based on 2-3000 people and then decide who will win national elections. Talk about data squired by meaningless tripe.

 

[Randy_Scribbler]

I'd like to know how Views are calculated. I suspect the algorithm is counting page hits and therefore only loosely related to actual reads. The number seems too high to be counting individual reads.

Good point. I was thinking the same thing. The more popular categories such as incest will receive far more views and will not act as a true and accurate reflection on the standard of the story.

I uploaded an incest story a few months back, and so far it has received 53,732 views. I've been writing for about 10 years, yet I'm new to erotica and uploaded stories online, but that seems like a lot of views.

I think we can safely say that incest is the most popular category on Lit.

 

[loquere]

I only care if women are reading my stories, I want women to favorite my stories. The idea of a man jacking off to my stories is just disturbing.

 

[MarkoAaron]

Just a generous comment makes me feel good. Seriously though, I would have to say views.
Feels good to see your work has been viewed 15K times, but not sure how many of them read until the end lol

 

[legerdemer]

Here are a set of questions for you to contemplate about votes and comments. What are readers here for? What are they doing while reading and how long does it take them as apposed to reading the full story? If you finish one, do you finish the other? Do you have the energy to vote or comment?
...

These are great points, but I'll add that it's therefore perhaps more meaningful when readers do vote and comment (except in LW, where reading seems to be largely for self-gratification by trolling rather than anything else).

From my own experience (n=1), I don't only read to get off. I read to be entertained, to find a good story when I don't feel like a longer book or am in the mood for something light, to enjoy some good writing - other outcomes are bonuses. But I recognize I may be in the minority with this.

As for my own story catalog, score and comments are about equal in importance, followed by favorites, vote number, and finally views. I assume everyone who voted and commented, and probably also those who fave'd, finished the story.
Probably 5-25% of views represent those who actually finished? No idea, really. But I consider the following - my most popular story has all of about 84K views. But even if only the ones who voted, a bit over 300, actually read the story and liked it enough to vote - how cool is that!! I kept the attention of and entertained 300 people for a couple of hours. And that's in one of the smallest cats here.

I like comments a lot but there are way too few of them.

 

[NotWise]

I visit my submissions page every day and scan what's there. Aside from new submissions there's little change in votes or score, so I scan them and go on. I actually tabulate the views and pay attention to reasons and patterns for more or fewer views.

Favorites are nice, as are Favorite Authors. In both cases I often check the profile of the person who has favorited me or my story and find that they favorite things on a fairly wholesale basis. That diminishes my interest in favorites.

I'd love to say that comments are important to me. I like them but I don't get enough comments for them to count for much.

 

[Ninegoodreasons]

Just saying...

I ended up clicking comments but score is really important to me too. I also love the votes/scores system.
I really wanted at least one of my stories to make the H list. I came close on both (only 2 stories up at present) but I think early publishing hurt me quite badly as I published with a number of spelling and grammatical errors. (I probably still have a few as I self edit.) But I try.
Also received an email from a lady state side (I am British) saying how she loved my story and it had made her cum hard whilst reading it. That was a nice way to say thanks.