How do most readers access stories?

[RejectReality]

If this is your first time closely following a contest, be aware that the last few days before the announcement will shake things up dramatically. The sweeps are particularly deep on contests, and almost all scores will rise a fair amount.

There are often 1 or 2 shoe-ins, but the rankings prior to the sweeps usually look nothing like what shakes out at the end. There's a lot of troll/cheerleader voting in contests that goes away in the final sweeps.

Wherever you gather your numbers from will always be outdated by varying degrees as well, so once the announcement is made, what you see will not likely reflect what the true numbers are. ( Except your own submissions page, which is nearly real time save for the views ) The next time the public numbers update, the winners will have seen a surge of voting ( positive and negative ) that will push their numbers off the mark they held when the rankings were determined.

So don't be surprised if post-contest number gathering doesn't exactly match the announced results.

Thanks for your comments RR. You obviously have a good handle on your metrics as they support and guide what you are trying to do by building your 'brand' presence on and through Lit. What you talk about is consistent with what I see.

I've been closely following the Valentine's Day contest entries and in categories with many entries, Romance and Lesbian for example, there are definitely normal levels of views for stories in general and then there are outliers. SilkStockingsLover has nearly 40k followers and actively promotes her work on all major social media sites. There is no surprise when she'll have twice the average views of almost anyone else in submitting for the contest in the Lesbian category. It definitely helps that she usually writes good stories and that she is completely aware of the best categories in which to post.

I should also be clear that having twice the views doesn't guarantee a high score. Authors with a high number of followers, and a commensurately higher number of views, aren't guaranteed a high score.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Hard to know for sure without access to the site's internal data, but this rings true for me.

For example, when I post a new story in Lesbian, I see a small but noticeable bump in views for my other stories in that category. But I also have a lesbian romance in SF/F, and even though the readers who like my romances in Lesbian would probably like that too, it doesn't get the same bump unless I put an "if you liked this story, you might try ..." notice on the new ones.

So it seems like even when they're doing the "other stories by this author" bit they're often reluctant to go outside their favourite categories.

I have some anecdotal evidence to support my hypothesis. Starting on Saturday, I released four chapters of a new series in I/T. My name had been completely absent from the "Top Authors" list for that category for quite a while. I reappeared there, but what I noticed two days ago was that I had suddenly jumped to the #1 spot on the "Top Anal Authors" list in that category -- and I haven't posted a new story in that category in over a year. It seems that readers of my new stuff followed my catalog and gave those stories enough new views to make a significant impact in a different, lower-volume category.