My Two Cents

I had read Literotica for several years before I sat down and wrote my first story which I posted in Loving Wives. To date it is the story with my greatest viewership. It is also the only story I have posted in that category. My others have generally been posted in Romance or Novels and Novellas. There have been several comments that a story it should be in LW and that may be true. But there is more to that story from a writer's point of view.

I read the recent posts by ILienBagby and The Soulful Bard on the LW category and find no fault with either of their points of view. It is definitely a provocative category and has many avid readers. My comments focus on a couple of other things that I have discovered.

Viewership, Votes, and Score

I don't know if other writers do this but for everything I have posted, I keep track of the data provided by Literotica. For the first week after publication, I record the viewership, number of votes, and the vote score to a spreadsheet. After the first five days, I don't look at the numbers daily but update my spreadsheet once a month. The results of these data are illuminating.

First, without exception the viewership during the first five days will be about 50% of the total viewership after six months. Oddly, this is true regardless of the category. My LW story has the greatest total viewership but 50% of the viewers were in the first five days.

Second, the vote total is also the greatest during the first five days.

Third, the score for the story is the lowest during the first five days. Typically, at the six month point, the score has grown by around half point. So a story that was 3.8 during the first week is a 4.3 six months later.

Finally, the number of votes and comments is well below 1% of the viewers.

I can't verify that this is true across all categories but this is my history in the categories I have posted to. But what does all of this mean? I can only make some assumptions but this seems to be consistent with my experience. There are many eager viewers, many of whom check the New Story file daily. Many of them scan the first paragraph or read the first page. If they don't find the words that give them a buzz, they hit the 2 button and perhaps leave a "Trash" anonymous comment and move on looking for whatever lights their fire. After the first week and later, the serious readers begin to find the story and then the more accurate voting begins to take place over time.

Whether my assessment is right or wrong is almost immaterial, at least to me. I wrote in my profile that I write stories with sex in them; not sex stories. It was valid when I wrote it and I still feel that way. Many things I write start out with no intention of including sex but end up with a lot of sex. In other cases, the reverse is true. When I start to write, the story seems to take on a life of its own and I don't try to fight it.

Viewers

That also brings me to my second point. I can't speak for all writers but when I spend the amount of time it takes to write, edit, and review my work, I want it read not just scanned and panned. Even good readers aren't always satisfied with what I write and that is to be expected but a cursory scan and a bad review is almost a slap in the face. I majored in Literature and I have come to realize that there is some very high quality work on this site. I know that when Sandman and others publish something that it will be of very high quality. I might not get hooked into the plot, but I know that it will be a well planned, well thought out piece of work that I can enjoy.

The eager scanners probably have no idea what it takes to write a story, any story. By my estimate, a one page story on Literotica is about 5-7 pages on Word and that is about 2500-3500 words. A good typist with a written script could pound that out in an hour. I am not a good typist and I am creating the content as I go. So it takes me 3-4 hours to create a full page on Literotica. Many of my stories run to over 15-20 pages after publication. Add to that the time it takes to do two or three edits and reviews and I spend a substantial time putting my work out there for someone to read. Frankly, I am not interested in what the eager scanner thinks because he isn't interested in reading what I wrote. I genuinely appreciate the people who take the time to read, vote, and comment on what they think of the story. My total viewer numbers are lower but I consider these to be of higher quality readers. I value these most of all.

As a result, I doubt that I will post another story to LW; the viewership seems to be the wrong audience for me. All I can say for sure is that you can't change how a reader will react to a story; all you can do is present it to the audience that you feel will respond to it most faithfully.