[ SECRET POST #2939 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2939 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 036 secrets from Secret Submission Post #420.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Metrics of Success

[othellia]

Holy shit, 5000 kudos? For how long of a fic?

Re: Metrics of Success

[(Anonymous)]

How long of a fic would you think?

Re: Metrics of Success

[othellia]

Well, I didn't exactly want to play a guessing game so I just checked Ao3 for myself.

And dude. There are only 5 fics out of 92601 that have more than 5000 kudos. I think at that point it becomes something beyond just "good."

Re: Metrics of Success

[(Anonymous)]

I totally made the number up. I just wanted to pick something large to contrast the smaller number. It's kind of amusing that there are fics with that many kudos.

Re: Metrics of Success

[othellia]

Haha, okay gotcha. And here you had me believing Supernatural was this unique Oprah!giving haven of kudos.

Re: Metrics of Success

[othellia]

Anyways, to answer your question, it's always a giant shifting combination of the following factors:

1. Is it a ship fic? (Ship > gen when it comes to popularity.)
2. Is it a popular ship fic? (Target audience size)
3. Is it an explicit fic? (Always no in my instance, but still. The smuttier it is, the more popular it is.)
4. Is it a popular fandom? (Target audience size)
5. How long is my fic? (Longer fics get more noticed in search.)
6. How long has my fic been published for? (Picks up more followers/readers between updates.)
7. How many chapters is my fic? (Chapter count increases hit count (and reviews on FFN) out the wazoo.)
8. Is it a oneshot or just the first couple chapters of something longer? (even though they might be the same length, more people will click on a oneshot that potentially invest their time and interest in something that might never be updated)

So... yeah.

Re: Metrics of Success

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP.

5. and 7. haven't worked out that way in my experience. It could just be that particular fandom, but my oneshots always get more hits and comments than my longer, multi-chaptered work.

Having said that, by "longer" I mean 200,000 words plus, and I don't think many people have the patience for that sort of length. I think people tend to stick with ongoing fics and don't notice or mind the length so much, but finished pieces that are over 100,000k are a turn off for a lot of readers.

Re: Metrics of Success

[othellia]

Huh, yeah. One of my fics (under a pseudonym so not linking it here) has about the same number of favorites as the fics with its pairing/length, has three to four times the number of follows, but has maybe about a third of number of reviews.

Most fics in my fandom (and other fandoms) have an average chapter length of around 2k words. Maybe 3k. Mine for this particular story average about 7k. If I segmented my chapters more, I'd have more reviews for sure. But I write what's the best for the story, not the review count, so I don't really let it get to me (although it is why I'll usually search my favs/kudos over review count).

Re: Metrics of Success

[(Anonymous)]

That's odd - I always filter for "complete, >100k words" when I'm looking for new things to read. Granted I usually use ff.net because I have less trouble with it rendering correctly on mobile devices, which changes the pool of fic available, but I'm far more likely to find something I enjoy in longer works than shorter.

Maybe it's because I read absurdly fast, or because I grew up on books, but trying to read in-progress fic doesn't work for me, and I rarely look at one-shots or short pieces unless I really like the author's longer work.

The fic I'm working on myself is already well over 200k, and I'm somewhere in the neighborhood of half done. They do say "write what you'd want to read..." :)