The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 09

[sirhugs]

It got up to 62 yesterday and will barely top 42 today. Most of the snow (except where it was piled up) melted and you could see the ice floes going down the Ohio River. We will soon be seeing the Ohio River leaving its banks and making a mess of everything.

I've got a fresh pot of coffee brewing and the teapot is hot so enjoy your caffeine hit. There are snacks on the counter and I will be making a cornbread today.

I'll be over in the corner working on my story. The plot bunnies nibbling on my ankles are distracting me so make sure you come in and pick them up and give them a good home.

will carrots help?

 

[MillieDynamite]

I've been busy writing so far this week. Time to get back to it, jus' wanna say, "Hey," to all of you.

 

[NotWise]

My new garden shed went up this morning. I've spent the last couple hours moving things into it.and cleaning the garage.

I'm working outside in a tee shirt, and the garlic is coming up. I predict a killing freeze near the end of the month.

I got a little written before the builders showed up, but now that ballroom scene seems kinda remote.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I suppose the good thing about submitting a longer work is that any votes that you do get tend to be higher votes?

I might, not really sure about it, but maybe, I'd prefer a lower score and more votes.

On the other hand.... The shorter sections I've submitted of my other even longer work, the last two sections still don't have enough votes for a hot score....

Might be time to convince myself to not care about how many people read my stuff, and just post it and forget it.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Might be time to convince myself to not care about how many people read my stuff, and just post it and forget it.

That's pretty much what I have been thinking lately ...

 

[JGittes]

I suppose the good thing about submitting a longer work is that any votes that you do get tend to be higher votes?

I might, not really sure about it, but maybe, I'd prefer a lower score and more votes.

On the other hand.... The shorter sections I've submitted of my other even longer work, the last two sections still don't have enough votes for a hot score....

Might be time to convince myself to not care about how many people read my stuff, and just post it and forget it.

This is a frequent topic in other threads in the AH, and I don't want to just replicate those.

Most authors report vote-to-view ratios of 1:100, meaning for every 100 views, they get 1 vote. My only story with that ratio is a 750-word entry. All my other stories are long, 15-40k, and they receive roughly 1 vote for every 260 views.

I interpret this as meaning a potential reader clicks the story, sees how long it is, and clicks out without reading.

Anecdotally, on an academically oriented blog I frequent, professors report how difficult it is to get undergraduates to read even 6 pages during a week to prepare for class discussions. Standard novels are about 300 words per page, so current undergrads at university can't be bothered to read 2000 words for their courses, let alone full novels.

The trend appears to be that shorter attention spans affect how long readers are willing to spend reading. That observation is supported by many respondents in threads in the AH, who volunteer that they won't read a story longer than three Lit pages.

None of this means that an author should only write shorter stories. I write to make sense of the chaos in my head, and that takes quite a long time to sort through. Enough readers appreciate my work that I feel validated in producing it and sending it out into the world. Would I like to get more views and votes, sure, but that's not why I write to begin with.

 

[AlinaX]

It’s not why I write, but it’s part of why I write on Lit.

 

[ICantLeafYou]

I'm sick of Libre Office bitching at me when I leave the U out of words and went to switch it to US English. That's a lot of Englishes. Englishii? And there's even a few more not shown in the pic.

 

[TheLobster]

I'm sick of Libre Office bitching at me when I leave the U out of words and went to switch it to US English. That's a lot of Englishes. Englishii? And there's even a few more not shown in the pic.

View attachment 2595913

Israel? Denmark? What? This list is some fresh nonsense. A good chunk of those countries don’t have English as their official or co-official language, and no large English-speaking population other than people who learned it as their second language.

Surely they didn’t just take the mistakes of ESL speakers and called them a dialect…

 

[anthrodisiac]

I suppose the good thing about submitting a longer work is that any votes that you do get tend to be higher votes?

I might, not really sure about it, but maybe, I'd prefer a lower score and more votes.

On the other hand.... The shorter sections I've submitted of my other even longer work, the last two sections still don't have enough votes for a hot score....

Might be time to convince myself to not care about how many people read my stuff, and just post it and forget it.

It's not about how many people read your stories, but how many people you impact with your stories. There's little else as rewarding as someone who leaves you a comment about how moved they were or how much they enjoyed it. And you, my friend, have definitely both more than once for a number of people.

Post it, but never forget it. Each story is a part of you and has been enjoyed by someone, somewhere. Even if they don't rate or comment, it made an impact.

I'm apparently quite sappy when I can't sleep at 2 in the morning

 

[anthrodisiac]

I'm sick of Libre Office bitching at me when I leave the U out of words and went to switch it to US English. That's a lot of Englishes. Englishii? And there's even a few more not shown in the pic.

View attachment 2595913

This reminds me of the system I'm working on where we have a selection for what language the person speaks, and the options include Ancient Greek (? - 1451 BCE) and Ancient Egyptian.

"Okay, and what language do you speak?"

"Nk.tw aA."

"No, sir, may a donkey fuck YOU!"

 

[TheLobster]

options include Ancient Greek (? - 1451 BCE) and Ancient Egyptian.

No Proto-Indo-European? It’s like you’re not even trying!

 

[anthrodisiac]

No Proto-Indo-European? It’s like you’re not even trying!

I'm also very sad about our lack of PIE.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Mmmm pie ...

My ratio of votes to 100 reads for my catalog started out at over 2.1 in 2020 to now about ready to fall under 1.3. This can be interpreted several ways: 1.) my first few stories were good and everything since is crap; 2.) people were more likely to vote on stories back then; 3.) there are too many stories being published daily and mine are getting lost in the noise. I'm leaning toward 1.) since my first few stories have still maintained above a 2.0 ratio while everything since is worse and trending down. I started writing when COVID hit and everyone had to find something to take their minds off what was going on and I probably benefited from that.

We've got some sun right now but it's supposed to cloud up later with a high near 40. My BP is spiking again so I'm having to stop the Meloxicam again. My knee is still not working properly and I'm going to have to do something about it. I can't keep taking Meloxicam and I can't take the aches and pains when I don't ...

There's fresh coffee brewing and the teapot is hot. There are snacks and a cornbread on the counter. I only see a couple of plot bunnies so either a bunch of them starved or somebody snatched them up and made stories out of them.

I'll be over in the corner working on my story. It's frustrating when I can picture the story in my head but I just can't seem to make it to paper. I need to stop banging my head on the keyboard so the dents in my forehead can smooth out ...

 

[MrPixel]

I need to stop banging my head on the keyboard so the dents in my forehead can smooth out ...

Ah! Querty face! Know it well. As to the plot bunnies, I hope our friendly neighborhood fox didn't get 'em.

Last week I chanced across another rabbit hopping around our studio yard, so Spook's spirit lives on. Actually, in the 12 years we've had the studio, we've had a bunny tenant on at least four occasions. This new fella is a wild adult, so is likely wily enough to out-fox the fox.

 

[NotWise]

Made me go look at the votes/view ratio, which I do now and then.

Mine range across an order of magnitude from 0.24% to 2.64%. The average is 0.93%. There's a tendency for EC stories to land at the low end of the list and Romance stories to land at the high end of the list. There may also be a tendency for my more recent stories to be at the high end of the list. I'm not sure the length of the story is a factor.

The ratio changes over time. I expect that it changes with the makeup of the community of readers. For instance, the community that picks the story from the "New" list is different from the community that finds it in your profile, and they give you different votes/view ratios.

Among less tangible reasons, I think stories with an emotionally rewarding ending tend to have a higher votes/view ratio.

 

[sirhugs]

I need to stop banging my head on the keyboard so the dents in my forehead can smooth out ...

but what about the poor keyboard?

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I vote this to be a vote free space.

 

[NotWise]

I took an opportunity to learn a little about Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and applied it to the votes/views ratio for my stories. I tested the effect of category, story length and publication date. What I found was that the votes/view ratio was very dependent on the category. The story length and date didn't make a significant difference. Posting a story in Romance increased votes/view by 0.74.

The story rating was independent of the votes/views ratio, so I did an ANOVA for that, using the same variables. Category was not a significant factor in the rating, but there were significant effects from both story length and the publication date. The affect of publication date was not a trend. The average rating of my stories from 2018-2020 was higher than both earlier and later stories. That result probably won't generalize outside of my catalog. A length of 7 or more pages increased the rating by 0.13. That was a trend, with the rating increasing with story length.

My stories fall into eleven different categories, but I only have three or more stories in three categories. For the tests, I divided the categories into Romance, T/I, EC and other. I did the test including and excluding "other", and it didn't change the conclusion. I grouped story length into 1-2 pages, 3-6 pages, and 7 or more pages. I grouped the publication date into my first 3 years (2015-2017), my second 3 years (2018-2020), and the last five years (2021-2025).

 

[MillieDynamite]

Math, why'd it have to be Math‽

I took an opportunity to learn a little about Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and applied it to the votes/views ratio for my stories. I tested the effect of category, story length and publication date. What I found was that the votes/view ratio was very dependent on the category. The story length and date didn't make a significant difference. Posting a story in Romance increased votes/view by 0.74.

The story rating was independent of the votes/views ratio, so I did an ANOVA for that, using the same variables. Category was not a significant factor in the rating, but there were significant effects from both story length and the publication date. The affect of publication date was not a trend. The average rating of my stories from 2018-2020 was higher than both earlier and later stories. That result probably won't generalize outside of my catalog. A length of 7 or more pages increased the rating by 0.13. That was a trend, with the rating increasing with story length.

My stories fall into eleven different categories, but I only have three or more stories in three categories. For the tests, I divided the categories into Romance, T/I, EC and other. I did the test including and excluding "other", and it didn't change the conclusion. I grouped story length into 1-2 pages, 3-6 pages, and 7 or more pages. I grouped the publication date into my first 3 years (2015-2017), my second 3 years (2018-2020), and the last five years (2021-2025).

 

[AloneTooLong]

My new garden shed went up this morning. I've spent the last couple hours moving things into it.and cleaning the garage.

I'm working outside in a tee shirt, and the garlic is coming up. I predict a killing freeze near the end of the month.

I got a little written before the builders showed up, but now that ballroom scene seems kinda remote.

our two weekends of (for us) really cold weather and ice where we didn't get above freezing for about 48 hours didn't seem to bother our garlic that already had 8 inch tall foliage; hopefully your garlic will be fine.

 

[NotWise]

our two weekends of (for us) really cold weather and ice where we didn't get above freezing for about 48 hours didn't seem to bother our garlic that already had 8 inch tall foliage; hopefully your garlic will be fine.

Garlic is very winter hardy. The first of it appeared in my garden yesterday. The first hyacinth appeared today.

 

[TheLobster]

Math, why'd it have to be Math‽

Would math by any other name smell just as sweet...?

 

[Belegon]

well, we've gotten above freezing for two days in a row now. that's a positive development at least.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

They keep fluffing the overnight lows. They say 33-35. Temps falls into the 25-28 range.