A Survey of the BDSM Category

An Objective Look at the BDSM Category

1. Introduction

The BDSM category on Literotica is an interesting one because it is simultaneously both very clearly defined and at the same time also encompasses a wide range of possible topics, activities and kinks for readers and writers to explore. Unlike the Fetish category, for example, which can potentially contain almost any kind of sexual proclivity imaginable, BDSM, by its very name, is limited to stories about Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. In general erotica, it could be said that the gender of a character is often one of their most important characteristics. In BDSM, whether the character is dominant or submissive is equally, if not sometimes more, important.

I had already written a couple of stories featuring male dominants and female submissive, both of which were well received, before I published a story last month written from the point of view (PoV) of an inexperienced female dominant. This story, while it didn't score badly, did noticeably less well than my previous stories and, in an attempt to find out why, I started to look for other recently published stories with female dominant PoVs, to see what approaches other authors had taken and how readers had responded to them.

I struggled to find any. I found many stories written from a female submissive PoV and many with male characters of either role, but it seemed that very few people were writing this kind of character. This got me thinking about the kinds of diversity in the category and how little I knew about what kinds of stories were posted there. As a result, I decided to carry out a small statistical survey to find out what types of stories were written in this category and how well they did.

The main aim of the survey was to find out whether or not female-dominant led stories were as rare as I believed and, when they were published, how well they were received. However, in doing this, I would also able to collect a reasonably large amount of supplementary data which could also be looked at. For example, I would have to scan the stories to discover the gender and BDSM role of the main characters, so it would be very easy also to write down the perspective (first/third) that was used in the story. Similarly, since I was looking at the category every day, it seemed like a good opportunity to also look at a few issues that are often hotly discussed on the Author's Hangout forums -- for example, does the day of the week that a story is published affect its receptions and how much does receiving a Hot score within the first twenty-four hours help attract further readers? While this survey is limited to the BDSM category, it seemed like a good opportunity see what the situation is in this one specific category are.

This survey is intended to be objective. That is to say, I do not intend to give my opinions on any one particular story or author or to rate stories based on how much I personally enjoyed them. I've also decided not to name any specific author or story featured in the survey so as not to single anyone out. Some of the data here, such as whether a story features a dominant or submissive or which tags represented similar content, required the use of my own judgement to classify, but I've tried to be as analytical as possible in my reading. I'm also going to try to avoid 'editorializing' the results in any way. My aim is not to prove that there is anything generally wrong with the BDSM category or that there is anything wrong with any particular type of story published on the category. Thus, this is intended to be a general survey that may have results of interest those authors who publish or are thinking about publishing within the category.

2. Methodology

Information from the BDSM category of Literotica was collected every day just after 6am GMT. This is when the new stories are published on the site. The data collection process lasted two weeks between the 4th and 17th of October 2022. A list of new stories including key information about the length, tags and author was recorded. In addition, after 24 hours and 7 days, the scores and view count was collected as was whether a story had been awarded a 'Hot' rating.

Sometime after, each story was skim read to quickly determine the perspective from which it was written. For stories written in first person or close third perspectives, whether the main point of view character was male or female as was whether the main character was dominant or submissive. This was decided based on whether the story specifically identified them as such or whether in sexual or erotic scenes the character gave or was given commands by another character in an erotic or sexual situation.

Once all stories in the period were fixed, a list was made of all the authors and how many stories they had written in each category. The tags were studied and sorted into sets of related concepts -- for example, 'femdom' and 'female dominatrix' were put together.

Finally, after all data had been collected for all stories, a detailed analysis was carried out. The results are reported below.

3. Results

3.1. Overview

Over the two-week period, 128 stories were published. 5 were removed before collecting the 7-day score and so have been removed from all results. It was not clear if these stories were removed at the authors request, because they violated some site policy or for another reason. After they were removed, 123 stories were left in the analysis.

The averages for all stories after they had been on the site for 24-hours were a score of 4.09 and 1816 views. After they had been posted for a full week, this changed to 4.20 and 3931 views.

76 stories (61%) of stories had their scores increase and 42 (34%) of stories decreased. Five stories had no change. Of the stories which decreased in score, 21 of them had an initial score of over 4.5 meaning they had a very high initial score to start with.

The vast majority of stories (101 or 82%) increased their views by a multiple of between 1.5 and 2.5 between their 1-day and 7-day results. Two stories increased by less than 1.5. Eighteen stories increased by a multiple of between 2.5 and 3.0 and three stories increased by more than 3.0 up to a maximum of 3.36. It's not true to say that stories get most of their views within the first twenty-four hours, but they do get a very significant proportion.

3.2 Hotness

Literotica awards any story which has an overall score of 4.5 or more and more than 10 votes, a 'Red H' or 'Hot' badge. It was common for stories that had only been published for one day to have a score over 4.5 but not yet to have collected the vital ten votes. In this analysis I refer to such stories aspre-hot.

There were 28 stories marked hot and 9 that were pre-hot in the 24-hour data. 26 of the hot stories retained their hotness after 7 days and two 2 lost their hotness (although at 4.43 and 4.35 they still retained well above average scores). Of the pre-hot stories, 4 became hot after 7 days, 4 had scores drop to below the hot threshold and one remained in a pre-hot state. In total, 6 stories which had not previously been hot or pre-hot became hot after 7 days. Of those stories, five of them had scores ranging between 4.4 and 4.5 before becoming hot, meaning it was mostly stories which had been very close to being hot anyway becoming hot after a week. One exception to this was a story which became pre-hot from an initial day score of 3.5.

Stories which were pre-hot after one day had a much smaller viewership than hot stories - averaging 1069 against 2323. This makes sense as stories with fewer viewers are also likely to receive fewer votes.

Contrary to what is often believed by authors about hotness, at least according to Literotica forums, having a red H after one day only increased the viewership for these stories by a marginal amount. Stories that were hot increased their viewership over the week by a multiple of, on average, 2.28, whereas stories which were neither hot nor pre-hot after a day increased by 2.15. Stories that were pre-hot increased only by a multiple of 1.96. This seems to indicate that stories which did not attract a significant audience on the first day were not helped to attract one subsequently by having a high score.

3.3. Parts

In longer works, authors often publish chapters or parts separately and usually include the chapter or part number in the title. Longer part stories appear to be very common in BDSM works. Of the 123 stories, at least 79 were denoted as one part of a longer story.

Forty-four of the stories had no part number after them. This could indicate a one-off story, but it is also not uncommon for authors not to include a part number on the first part of a series. In any case, these stories were treated as stand-alone unless a follow-up part was published within the survey period. The average score for these stories was 4.18 and they averaged 5061 distinct views.

Twelve were explicitly denoted as part one (in a couple of cases with part two also included in the same publish story). These stories averaged a score of 3.95 and had 4522 average views. Fourteen were explicitly part two. These average a score of 4.36 and had 4115 average views. Seventeen were explicitly part three. These averaged a score of 4.18 and had 3204 average views. Nine were explicitly part four. These averaged a score of 4.29 and had 2688 average views. Sixteen were explicitly from parts five to nine. These averaged a score of 3.98 and had 2177 average views. However, these averages were lowered by a series that had five separate published entries during the period in this range and which were all generally low scoring. Twelve were a part number of ten or higher with thirty-two being the maximum seen during the study. These averaged a score of 4.58 and had 3376 average views.

These results show a somewhat inconsistent pattern with scores both rising and falling between the ranges. The number of views fell steadily, but the longest running series recovered from this and had very strong views and scores.

3.4. Length

Seventy-two (59%) of the stories were one Literotica page long which approximates to about 3,700 words. These stories averaged a 7-day score of 4.11. Of those stories 35 were under 2000 words and these scored an average of 4.07.

Twenty-nine of the stories were two Literotica pages and these averaged a score of 4.36. There were thirteen stories that were three pages long and these averaged 4.38. There were nine stories of four or more pages with the longest being 9 pages and 30,000 words long. These stories averaged 4.18.

These results match with advice, often given on the Literotica forums, that suggests that longer stories (but not too long) tend to do better. It would have been interesting to see how four and five page stories faired and if there is a point where the average starts to decrease, but there was not enough data to do this reliably. Taken together with the previous section, it does appear as though there is a strong preference for multipart stories with short chapters within the category.

3.5. Perspective and BDSM role.

Of the stories, 74 (60%) were written in simple first person perspective with a single protagonist. Two stories were written in first person but swapped characters in different sections and an addition five stories were written in first person perspective with the second person ('you') also referenced in the story. This means that about two-thirds of the stories were written in some kind of first person perspective.

Of the remaining stories, 28 (18%) were written in close third and 14 (11%) were written in omniscient third. Close third refers to a story where the narrative solely follows one character and has access to their inner thought and emotions. Close third may change characters between chapters, but since chapters were mostly posted and analysed separately, this wasn't an issue in this study. Omniscient third follows more than one characters and as such, there is usually no single main character, meaning they were not considered in this part of the analysis.

No real significant difference in the scores of stories written in different perspectives was found as first person stories averaged 4.19 and third person stories averaged 4.22. However, interestingly enough, stories written in omniscient third did significantly better than those in close third (4.45 verses 4.11) although given the smaller sample of omniscient stories this may just be a statistical anomaly.

Ignoring those stories written in omniscient third or multiple first, which had no single identifiable protagonist, of the remaining 107 stories, 85 (79%) had a submissive protagonist, 19 (18%) had a dominant protagonist. Only three had a protagonist who switched roles. It should be noted that, while no data was formally collected on this, it was observed that some secondary characters acted as dominants with the main character and submissive with a third character -- however, there were almost no stories where a couple actually switched roles while remaining partners.

Stories featuring a clearly identifiable submissive main character scored, on average, 4.18 and had 4260 views after a week. Stories with a dominant main character scored 4.08 and had 3307 views.

By gender, there were 44 (41%) female protagonists and 63 (59%) male protagonists. There was a minor increase in average score for those stories featuring female protagonists (4.22 versus 4.12) and female-lead stories had slightly more views (4546 versus 4028).

Although there was not a huge range in scores, the least popular protagonists were male dominants (13 stories with an average score of 4.04), then male submissives (48 stories, 4.13) and female dominants (6 stories, 4.14) and the most popular were female submissives (37 stories, 4.23). There were not enough stories with switches to make a comparison meaningful.

Of the stories featuring female protagonists, ten of them had lesbian scenes (some may also have had male sexual/session partners for the protagonist). All of these were written from a sub perspective and scored an average of 4.35.

Of the stories featuring male protagonists, ten of them had another male as a BDSM session partner (though not always directly sexually). All were written from a sub perspective and had the other male as dominant. Those stories scored an average of 3.81. It should be noted that, of the three stories posted during the study period which scored less than three, two of them were from the same series and featured in this male/male average. Negative comments on these stories indicated that some readers were unhappy with the abusive and non-consensual nature of the relationship rather than the nature of the pairing (though the Literotica software will filter out any explicitly homophobic messages so it can't be said that this definitely wasn't an issue). When these outliers were removed the male/male stories had an average more in line with other pairings, at 4.17 and 3 of the 10 these stories were rated hot at the end of the 7 days.

It seems as though there is a clear trend within the category for writers to write submissive main characters and these story are preferred by readers over those featuring dominants. There is also a trend for writers to write male main characters more than female, but female-lead stories do slightly better.

3.6 Day of the Week

A similar number of stories were published on each day of the week over the two week period, though Monday's had significantly less activity. It's noticeable that all three 'weekend' days, including Friday, scored highly, although it is somewhat surprising that Wednesday scored highest overall and had the highest number of views. This may be a statistical anomaly.

Monday 9 stories : avg. score 4.04 : avg. views 4348

Tuesday 21 stories: avg. score 4.19 : avg. views 3094

Wednesday 15 stories : avg. score 4.36 : avg. views 5094

Thursday 26 stories : avg. score 4.08 : avg. views 3928

Friday 18 stories : avg. score 4.22 : avg. views 3591

Saturday 16 stories : avg. score 4.21 : avg. views 4841

Sunday 18 stories : avg. score 4.3 : avg. views 3266.

3.7. Authors and Other Categories

There were 92 authors who posted stories during the two-week period. The majority of authors, 72 (78%), posted only one story. Thirteen (14%) posted two, four posted three (4%), one posted four and one posted eleven.

The authors were then divided into two categories -- those who posted more stories in BDSM than any other category (including ties) and those who had another category as their most common.

There were 73 authors who posted more in BDSM than any other category. Of those, 44 had only ever posted stories in BDSM. This included 14 authors who had only written one story. Of the 22 authors who had written 10 or more BDSM stories, six had only ever written in that category, another six had over 90% of their stories in the category, and another three over 80%. This gives the impression that many authors in this category stick tightly to it.

Of the 29 mainly BDSM writers who had posted stories elsewhere, 13 had posted at least one story in Fetish, 11 had posted in Non-Consent/Reluctance, 7 had posted in Erotic Coupling, 6 in Lesbian, 5 in Science-Fiction and Fantasy, and 4 each in Exhibitionist/Voyeur, Incest/Taboo and Erotic Poetry. In total, these authors had written 1018 stories in the BDSM category and only 206 in other categories.

Regarding the 19 authors who mainly favoured another category, four wrote mostly in Erotic Couplings, three each mostly in Exhibitionist/Voyeur and Non-Consent/Reluctance, two each mostly in Transgender/Crossdressers and Fetish and one each in Mature, Mind Control, Incest/Taboo, Anal and Audio.

Tags

Literotica allows authors to tag their story with up-to ten keywords, though it does not require it. It should be noted that there is no generally agreed standard for how stories should be tagged and subsequently, tagging is frequently done differently by different authors. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at because it informs us about what the authors think are the main attractions of their stories.

There were individual 739 tags on the 123 collected stories (including repeated tags). Ten of the stories had no tags at all.

Many of the most common BDSM tags were related directly to the concepts of the category. That is to say there were 55 which referenced specifically female domination ('femdom', 'dominatrix' etc.), 11 which referenced specifically male domination ('master', 'maledom' etc.) and 16 which referenced domination with no indication of gender. Similarly, there were 14 which referenced male submission, 7 which referenced female submission and 25 for submission generally. After that 35 were simply 'BDSM', 32 referred to bondage (including one for 'light bondage'). 'Slave' had 10 tags.

Eleven tags highlighted lesbian relationships and two indicated bisexuality.

'Humiliation' had 13 tags with a further 3 for 'degradation'. 'Punishment/Discipline' had 5 tags. 'Romance' had 6 tags. 'Public sex/Outdoor' had 9 tags.

The most common tag referencing a specific kink or activity was 'Chastity' (or 'Chastity cage'/'Male chastity') with 21 tags. It was followed by 'Spanking' and 'Anal Sex' both with 16 tags ('Butt/Anal plugs' was a separate set with 5 tags). 'Denial' and/or 'Teasing' had 11 tags combined along with 'Edging' with 8. 'Blow job' was taken as referring to specifically male-received oral sex and had 11 tags, and non-gendered 'Oral sex' had 10 tags. Female-received oral sex (i.e. 'Cunnilingus/eating pussy') only had 3 tags. Put together, 'Threesomes', 'Group sex' and 'Mmf'/'Mff' had 10 tags. 'Foot worship' or just 'feet' had 9 tags. 'Toys/Vibrators' had 7 tags as did 'Pegging' ('Strap-on' was grouped separately and had 5).