Do Non-human readers vote less often on stories?

[taytay4eva]

I posted Sammi Elf Savors a Seductive Sweet in Non-human and I've had nearly 1000 reads with 4 votes. Like, on average I get ~0.9 votes per 100, while that is ~0.4 votes per 100.

I assume that, because lots of people are checking it out, it's not unlikeable, but votes and comments are how I know if I wrote a story well.

Should I enact an edit and request to have it moved into SciFi Fantasy and do that going forward, or am I being a worry wart?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Well, we've got a few goblins who show promise, but I suspect humans do vote more often on Lit in general.

We need more fantasy races, period!

 

[Katie_Mae]

Lit doesn't count reads, it counts views.

I've always thought of the vote count as a more-likely read count, however I've come to learn that assumption is probably off as well.

I've only had one story in non-human, so can't comment on what's usual for that category.

I wouldn't bother an edit to change categories if it were me.

If you're really looking for actual feedback, I don't think votes/comments on lit are really the way to determine if you're writing well. Badly written stories can and do score highly. In my opinion, what comments and votes tell you is if your readership like the stories you're posting.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I posted Sammi Elf Savors a Seductive Sweet in Non-human and I've had nearly 1000 reads with 4 votes. Like, on average I get ~0.9 votes per 100, while that is ~0.4 votes per 100.

I assume that, because lots of people are checking it out, it's not unlikeable, but votes and comments are how I know if I wrote a story well.

Should I enact an edit and request to have it moved into SciFi Fantasy and do that going forward, or am I being a worry wart?

Let it be. It's just one of those things. I have stories in the 4.25 ratings/100 range, and stories in the 0.55 ratings/100 range.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Lit doesn't count reads, it counts views.

That's true. A fair number of views are likely cats walking across keyboards.

 

[Katie_Mae]

That's true. A fair number of views are likely cats walking across keyboards.

Reads is a statistic I'd really like. More than threaded comments even. Also "began reading" vs "finished reading" but sadly Lit's tec just can't.

 

[taytay4eva]

Let it be. It's just one of those things. I have stories in the 4.25 ratings/100 range, and stories in the 0.55 ratings/100 range.

I love posting in Non-erotic. I usually get a very high vote to view count there. Like, no, not many people read them, but the ones that do make their voices heard!

The one oddity is Gremlin: The Road Not Taken, which has both a low view-count and a low vote count over there, and I have no idea why. Like, no, it's not as good as Raggedy: An Electrifying Evening (which it was a sequel to), but that was more or less lighting in a bottle, in terms of how well it was received.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I love posting in Non-erotic. I usually get a very high vote to view count there. Like, no, not many people read them, but the ones that do make their voices heard!

Non-erotic is my lowest ratio, actually, and romance is my highest.

 

[taytay4eva]

Non-erotic is my lowest ratio, actually, and romance is my highest.

Huh! Maybe I should have post my story in Romance. Ooo, or Loving Wives!

Kidding. Either of those places would have ripped it to pieces.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Most of my stories in non-human have around 1 vote to 100 views, while sci-fi/fantasy has closer to 1 vote to 50 views. That is not counting sequels though, which tend to have a worse vote to view ratio. And this is only counting the first week, as after that the ratio degrades.

My lone foray into fetish also had the 1 to 100, while my story in non-erotic got 1 to 20.

So yeah, category counts, as does newness, but whether it's a sequel or not also counts. Some of those people may very well be going back to read the earlier installments before reading the current one.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I posted Sammi Elf Savors a Seductive Sweet in Non-human and I've had nearly 1000 reads with 4 votes. Like, on average I get ~0.9 votes per 100, while that is ~0.4 votes per 100.

I assume that, because lots of people are checking it out, it's not unlikeable, but votes and comments are how I know if I wrote a story well.

Should I enact an edit and request to have it moved into SciFi Fantasy and do that going forward, or am I being a worry wart?

How dark is the story? That tends to be an important distinction between what runs well in EH versus Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

EH can be fairly unresponsive as a category, you never get much of an idea how a story is running.

An elf story though - I'd default to Sci-Fi and Fantasy with that. Might be worth doing an Edit and ask for a category shift - you won't get a run on the category front page, but your existing scores and comments will remain. It might future-proof the story better, I reckon.

 

[old_prof]

@8letters did a category by category breakdown of things like this a few years ago. I can't find it easily right now. I think NonHuman was one of those. Average votes per view ranges by more than a factor of ten from category to category. Longer stories also get fewer votes per story, which makes sense as some readers probably bail before the end (and maybe before they even start reading).

I will look for that post and re-post a link to it here when I get a chance to search for it. I used to keep it open in a tab, but I seemed to have lost that tab.

 

[taytay4eva]

How dark is the story? That tends to be an important distinction between what runs well in EH versus Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

It's ... I mean, it's about two people fucking up a relationship in different ways and it ends with them reconciling and growing together. It's not a light story, but it ends well enough.

EH can be fairly unresponsive as a category, you never get much of an idea how a story is running.

Yeah I'm picking up on that.

An elf story though - I'd default to Sci-Fi and Fantasy with that. Might be worth doing an Edit and ask for a category shift - you won't get a run on the category front page, but your existing scores and comments will remain. It might future-proof the story better, I reckon.

She's a Christmas elf, if that makes a difference.

 

[taytay4eva]

Most of my stories in non-human have around 1 vote to 100 views, while sci-fi/fantasy has closer to 1 vote to 50 views. That is not counting sequels though, which tend to have a worse vote to view ratio. And this is only counting the first week, as after that the ratio degrades.

My lone foray into fetish also had the 1 to 100, while my story in non-erotic got 1 to 20.

Non-erotic readers are ACTIVE and I love them.

So yeah, category counts, as does newness, but whether it's a sequel or not also counts. Some of those people may very well be going back to read the earlier installments before reading the current one.

That's true, and there are two installments before this one. I tried to write it so that you could read it without needing to read the prior ones, but I'm not gonna say no to their reading them either.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's ... I mean, it's about two people fucking up a relationship in different ways and it ends with them reconciling and growing together. It's not a light story, but it ends well enough.

Yeah I'm picking up on that.

She's a Christmas elf, if that makes a difference.

Not flesh eating daemons who write letters in human blood, and live in catacombs, then!

If it was me, I'd ask for it to be moved to Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Might take a week or three, but in a year's time, that doesn't matter.

 

[taytay4eva]

Not flesh eating daemons who write letters in human blood, and live in catacombs, then!

If it was me, I'd ask for it to be moved to Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Might take a week or three, but in a year's time, that doesn't matter.

I do suppose that Sci-Fi Fantasy folks are more willing to read multiple parts in a series than other categories are, if what I've seen so far is anything to go off of.

 

[taytay4eva]

@ElectricBlue and done! And now we wait 15 to 45 days for the edit to go through. I think edits are quicker if there isn't an event happening, but that's based on limited evidence on my part.

 

[taytay4eva]

Most of my stories in non-human have around 1 vote to 100 views, while sci-fi/fantasy has closer to 1 vote to 50 views. That is not counting sequels though, which tend to have a worse vote to view ratio. And this is only counting the first week, as after that the ratio degrades.

You know, back when I wrote fanfics, I did notice that the "Chapter One" always got LOADS of views that rarely translated into views for later chapters. The funniest thing to me was seeing how there were "semi-random" bursts of interest in later groups of chapters, which quickly distilled into very DISTINCT interest once I labeled those chapters as "NSFW". Like, (ch07 - 20 clicks, ch08 - 15 clicks, ch09 - 28 clicks, ch10 - 18 clicks) into (ch07 - 3 clicks, ch08 - 2 clicks, ch09NSFW - 75 clicks, ch10 - 3 clicks)

 

[NuclearFairy]

You know, back when I wrote fanfics, I did notice that the "Chapter One" always got LOADS of views that rarely translated into views for later chapters. The funniest thing to me was seeing how there were "semi-random" bursts of interest in later groups of chapters, which quickly distilled into very DISTINCT interest once I labeled those chapters as "NSFW". Like, (ch07 - 20 clicks, ch08 - 15 clicks, ch09 - 28 clicks, ch10 - 18 clicks) into (ch07 - 3 clicks, ch08 - 2 clicks, ch09NSFW - 75 clicks, ch10 - 3 clicks)

Even on sites that don't tout themselves as erotic, spicy and NSFW chapters tend to get bigger bumps in reads.

 

[Bamagan]

I do suppose that Sci-Fi Fantasy folks are more willing to read multiple parts in a series than other categories are, if what I've seen so far is anything to go off of.

I think the readers of the Non-human category are generally fine with multiple parts, considering how the top 25 stories list for that category is largely composed of one popular series that's over 100 parts long now, and much of the rest of the top 250 are parts of stories that are in double-digit chapters.

 

[taytay4eva]

Even on sites that don't tout themselves as erotic, spicy and NSFW chapters tend to get bigger bumps in reads.

Wizard School Fanfic Chapters About the Wizard School: Schoolyard drama, student rivalries, general fixfic stuff

Wizard Scholl Fanfic Chapters About the non-magical parents of their magical daughter: Barely concealed sexual tension filled with the author's kinks

That said, I am DESPERATELY trying to file the serial numbers off of the ideas in that fanfic because I LOVED those ideas but many of them were so bound up to that particular IP that it is hard to detatch them because the characters ONLY made sense as reflections of who they'd been.

 

[taytay4eva]

I think the readers of the Non-human category are generally fine with multiple parts, considering how the top 25 stories list for that category is largely composed of one popular series that's over 100 parts long now, and much of the rest of the top 250 are parts of stories that are in double-digit chapters.

Yeah that's why I feel like I should have just posted the stories in there after the first part (which I think did VERY WELL for itself)

 

[anthrodisiac]

I posted Sammi Elf Savors a Seductive Sweet in Non-human and I've had nearly 1000 reads with 4 votes. Like, on average I get ~0.9 votes per 100, while that is ~0.4 votes per 100.

I assume that, because lots of people are checking it out, it's not unlikeable, but votes and comments are how I know if I wrote a story well.

Welcome to niche erotica!

Non-Human tends to have a pretty broad range of stories, so someone clicking on one and finding out it's not their "thing" will likely not continue, which means you'll get the "view" from the click, but then they won't finish it or rate it (which is better than them dropping a 1 because it's not the type of NH they like).

There are a lot of niches in NH, and thus it's a lot likely a particular story won't scratch someone's particular itch. My stories range from 30 - 180 views per rate, with the higher ratios on the chaptered parts and lower V/R for standalone, with an average of around 75:1 (currently at 2k:13 for my Valentine's Day story, if that's any indication of roughly what to expect).

I will say that your story has quite a few different elements to it. Which is both a gift and a curse. It means you're more likely to hit someone's kink, but also more likely to turn someone off because it hits a kink they aren't into. A reader might start with the expectation that it's a pure elf story, but then you have Krampus and shapeshifting and TF elements. For someone who likes all of those things, that's a gold mine. For someone who likes a couple of those things, that's great. But for someone who likes just elves, or just TF, it's possible it could cause them to not finish.

 

[TheLobster]

I believe the answer is “it depends on how they were programmed.” Some bots definitely read and vote!

 

[Britva415]

Do Non-human readers vote less often on stories?

They better never be voting on stories!