Yet Another Thread about Classification Problems

[ReGats]

Okay, so I'm a bit of a niche writer. I like lesbians. I also like 'monster girls', or non-human women. I can't abide in this reality, so I write in Fantasy or Science Fiction settings. Many of my stories are about lesbian couples where one partner is nonhuman, though both may be.

In short, I need advice on where to put these stories. I've put them in Non-human / Scifi-Fantasy up until now, but I feel that while they may dwell there, they're missing out on part of their audience. At the same time, if they hop the ship and go into the Lesbian category, then again they'll miss part of their audience.

I do have some straight-couple stories, and those have many more reads than my lesbian stuff does, which is part of the factor of this; I may have miscategorized my work and the audience that I am looking for is somewhere else. I need advice.

BTW; the difference for me between Non-human and Scifi-Fantasy is this: In the work, is one of the partners biologically capable of something that no human can do, even if the human is one of those wildly-impossible people who can run in high heels and be able to swallow a banana whole. That divide is not something that I'm primarily concerned about.

 

[RejectReality]

You can always experiment, but if one or both of the women in the lesbian coupling is non-human, the odds are that the stories aren't going to perform especially well in the Lesbian category.

They might get opened more often, but the key word is opened, not necessarily read. I don't think you're going to do all that better in any other metric than you will in Sci-Fi&Fantasy or Non Human.

 

[tomlitilia]

I think you should stick to your previous categories. Supernatural beings trumphs most other aspects of a story IMO. I'd guess that most people aren't expecting that outside of those categories. And you shouldn't expect to get many reads in Lesbian. Of all my stories, the Lesbian one got the fewest reads, even though it scored well.

 

[jehoram]

Maybe one of our more experienced writers could write an essay on how to rank stories by the "squink" factor ... what categories trump other categories. For instance, if an orgy includes gay people of a variety of races, should it go under "Group Sex" or "Gay Male/Lesbian" or maybe "Interracial"? The theory seems to be that it should go into the category that has the greatest risk of turning people off, so that people who don't like gay lit wouldn't be unpleasantly surprised if two guys start getting it on.

 

[SimonDoom]

Maybe one of our more experienced writers could write an essay on how to rank stories by the "squink" factor ... what categories trump other categories. For instance, if an orgy includes gay people of a variety of races, should it go under "Group Sex" or "Gay Male/Lesbian" or maybe "Interracial"? The theory seems to be that it should go into the category that has the greatest risk of turning people off, so that people who don't like gay lit wouldn't be unpleasantly surprised if two guys start getting it on.

Here's an essay that was written with that very purpose in mind: https://www.literotica.com/s/love-your-readers-categories. I haven't submitted in stories in all of the categories, but it looks useful.