#still have less than 100 people subscribed to my ao3 lol

[h0neylevi]

been in this fandom for four years and finally surpassed 1000 kudos, lads

[not-poignant]

When you look at how well a story is doing, what do you tend to look the most at? Like kudos, comments, hits, etc?

For me personally I tend to look mainly at kudos and comments. After that, I look at public bookmarks and the number of regular commenters (i.e. people who feel inspired enough to comment on most of the chapters, instead of just one), and new commenters - i.e. usernames I don’t recognise. In this I might also include bookmark comments (even though they’re not for authors). And then after that, I look at overall engagement - like is that excitement or engagement filtering over to Tumblr, are people sending me asks about the story, do they seem interested, overall, in the world and sharing that with others (the major drop off on all of these in The Ice Plague is the reason why I got very depressed about it at the end last year - but last year was the worst I’d done overall, in every metric, ever - even including the first year I made a single AO3 account so, lol, welp).

I never look at hits, I don’t actually care about hits very much, though I know other authors look at them acutely. A lot of hits are from bots etc. and aren’t going to necessarily be a person actually pressing kudos, or opening the comment form. I’ve never really cared about hits.

But it’s complicated. Like if I’m in a small fandom, then 20 kudos means a lot. If I’m in a huge huge fandom with a massive reader base, then 100 kudos means I’m probably not actually getting a lot of interest in my story or I’m writing unpopular tropes and tags. If I’ve written a multi-chaptered story that’s been going for over 6 months and it has less than 250 kudos, then that’s not doing as well as a single chapter story that has 100 kudos in a single day (see: The Ice Plague 3 vs. Passiflora), despite the discrepancy in kudos.

I mean all kudos definitely mean a lot! Every kudos is important, but there’s ways of reading the nature of those metrics which imho, for me, kind of guides what to focus on and where to put my focus (to a point, I still completely shoot off into the wilderness to do lengthy fics in dead fandoms like The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle). 

I’m also often looking at the kudos-to-public-bookmark ratio. A ratio of 4/1 (4 kudos for every 1 public bookmark) is very good for my fiction. Stuck on the Puzzle is one of the best ever, with a ratio of 3/1, and The Ice Plague 3 is one of the worst, with a ratio of 8/1 (that’s not super uncommon for the last book of a series, but by comparison, Into Shadows We Fall (the last part of a series) has a ratio of 5.8/1). Public bookmarks let you know how many registered AO3 users are happy to let other people know that they read your story (this is less common with straight up kink and porn and PWP) if they use a public bookmark system.

And then factoring into that, I have to look at how many kudos are from guests, because obviously guests can’t bookmark your fic publically or privately, nor can they subscribe to your works or your author name. But guest kudos are a really great metric for indicating how many long-time readers, or readers who are searching for your work via tags or fandom, or hearing about you by word of mouth etc. are out there.

I don’t actually pay a huge amount of attention to these metrics overall, honestly. It’s why it came as such a shock to realise that 2020 was the worst year for me in terms of AO3 performance literally ever. I had a suspicion things weren’t great, but I thought I was like, being paranoid or over-inflating my fears due to insecurities, and it turned out not only was I wrong and things were bad, but they were worse than I ever could have imagined across both of my accounts, for various reasons.

If I’d been paying more attention, perhaps it wouldn’t have hit me like a ton of bricks.

I usually pay attention to metrics most on the first few days a story releases and then I sort of...stop paying as much attention and just go through phases where I check out the kudos/bookmarks etc. on a lot of stories at the same time.

That being said, some stories will surprise you. Like Falling Falling Stars is not doing great on kudos or even bookmarks (comparatively speaking, for the length of time it’s been going, the amount of chapters it has, and the tags it uses), but it’s probably one of the best stories I’ve ever had since SAL for engagement. Like the people who do give that story a chance tend to be among the most engaged readers I’ve ever met, and that’s been really humbling and incredible.

So the rules don’t always apply in every situation. I probably would’ve quit writing if it wasn’t for FFS, lol, and the few folks who are incredibly loyal to The Ice Plague.

[christinaroseandrews]

Marketing Matters - Strategy - Fanfiction

Strategy - Fanfiction

So this is a bit of a taboo subject in the publishing world, but I’m going to be upfront with you all. 

We write fanfiction. 

There, I said it. 

Writing fanfic is also a viable marketing strategy for authors who are choosing to go the self-publishing route and not always for the reasons that immediately spring to mind.  In addition, the skills, fanbase, and tricks learned while writing fanfic can also apply to traditional publishing.  However, I’m going to give you one caveat right up front: many big name publishers don’t like authors who write fic. Or at least they say they don’t. It’s becoming more common, but most publishers and agents want authors to be focusing on original fic not fanfic. Several smaller presses don’t care as much, so long as your author persona and your fic persona are very separate and you don’t rub it in their faces.  But the big name publishers may require you to pull your fanworks. So that’s something to keep in mind.

So now it’s time to break it down.

About Us and What we’ve done:

We’re probably best known as fanfic writers in the Hunger Games fandom, where we have a few well regarded fics.  We’ve also dipped our toes into other fandoms including the MCU, Harry Potter, DBZ, and more drive-by one-shots in various fandoms than you can shake a stick at.

We also both were/are a part of the Sims 2 writing community and had a few well known stories there as well.  ^__^ We may or may not have met in this fandom. LOL

Both of us have been part of these fandoms for years and were active members in them. Lark started in fanfic back in 1994/5 as a beta reader (which she then parlayed that experience into becoming an editor that summer). While Rose discovered fic in college in 2002. In these fandom communities, we met people that we now call friends in real life as well as mentors, betas, advisers, and cheerleaders. We learned skills that apply both to fic and to original writing.  And, most importantly, we learned how to listen to our audience.

Let me stress that again: we learned to listen to our audience. 

When we transitioned, we hit up the people we met in these fandoms to help us with various aspects of publishing life (either paying or trading favors for work done) and we’ve also given status updates about our original writing, along with links to our author tumblr in the authors’ notes of our fics. Nothing that will violate the terms of Ao3′s Terms of use - but links to our professional website/social media.

While we write fanfic less, we still dip our fingers in now and again.

Cost:

Time. 

Straight up time.

The cost of writing fic is time, energy, and creativity.  Time spent writing fic is time NOT spent writing original works that can be published.  Time that is not spent editing or plotting or doing other sweat equity types of marketing. Which is why some authors refuse to write fic once they turn professional and it is completely understandable. Fanfic authors don’t get paid for their work and for some, getting paid is a big deal. Especially when most of your income comes from writing.

It’s a cost we willingly pay sometimes, but if a fanfic author you know also writes original works for publications. It does mean that updates may be slower and there is often less motivation to keep publishing stories -- especially if the stories don’t get much in the way of response/feedback.

It’s about return on investment.

Return on Investment:

I’m going to do this a little differently since sometimes the return isn’t monetary.  This is also likely to sound really clinical and analytical; that’s because I’m trying to be objective and I may be going too far the other way. We write fanfic because we love it, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t give back to us too.

Monetary (Language of Flowers only):

Units sold:  20

Mailing list subscribers: 6

Social media followers:  Twitter - 15, Tumblr - 60, Facebook - 8

Not Monetary but Cost Saving

Editors - 9

Cover Designers - 3

Mailing List Trades - 3

Skills Learned:

Editing (Line, Content, Story Doctoring -- Yes, all of these)

Proofreading (not the same as editing)

Creating Characters

Keeping Characters in Character

Plotting

Engaging an audience

Finishing what you start

How to handle ConCrit

How to handle Trolls

How to write to an audience

How to prevent plot holes

As you can see, the biggest return on investment of the time is in the skills section. Fanfiction is not to be taken lightly.

And as for me, Lark, I literally parlayed my experience working in fandom to actual paying jobs as an editor. I honed my skills as an editor on fanfic which I then turned around and used to get a job editing professionally. I did that multiple times for a bunch of different publishers/clients. I got my start in fanfic.

As an editor, one of the biggest problems I see with developing authors is a “sameness” in voice. AKA all of the characters sound the same.  If you want to see this in traditionally published book action, then look at Laurel K. Hamilton... Her Merry Gentry and Anita Blake heroines sound almost exactly the same. (Which not coincidentally, sounds like how she speaks in real life.)

With fanfiction, you can’t do that. You’ll get called out for being OOC. So you have to learn to adapt your voice. (Or only write characters that sound like you but that gets boring after a while.)

So in my actual job as an editor, one I get paid to do, I legitimately tell my clients to pick a character from a show they like and use them as a template for a character they’re having trouble giving a good character voice to. And unsurprisingly, it works. It’s a good trick and it subconsciously teaches your brain how to create different characters/voices.

They other HUGE takeaway from the skills is in regards to concrit and being able to take it. If you want to publish for a living and not just half-ass it, you have to develop a thick-ish skin. And fanfiction can help with that. I straight up learned to deal with harsh reviews from writing fanfiction. But more importantly, I learned how to listen to what the person was telling me and then become a better author because of it.

In fanfiction, unlike in the publishing world, the reviews are meant for the authors... not potential readers. If someone really hates your work, or worse, is apathetic to it. They just won’t comment. They’ll hit the backspace and you’ll never hear anything. Most comments, especially critical ones, are from people who legitimately like the story that you’re telling but have a problem with part of it. The comment may be harsh, it may even be mean. But it tells you something and it gives you an idea where you may be turning off readers. People aren’t always good at phrasing criticism constructively. We’re not really trained how to do that. But when someone tells you why something isn’t working for them or why they didn’t like something, listen. You don’t have to agree -- we certainly haven’t -- but listening and thinking critically about the feedback will help.

This can be seen in our first novel, The Language of Flowers, which started out its life as a fanfic. The story pissed several readers off. And we realized as we were writing it that we needed to explain something and we weren’t doing a good job of doing so. So the scene that every single one of our readers loved was born of that concrit. Our story is better and reached the top 100 in its categories on Amazon because of the feedback we got as fanfic authors.

Seriously, writing fanfic has gotten us to where we are today.

Takeaways:

My biggest take away is that writing fanfic is a great skills builder and audience builder.

Pros:

Skills. Oh so many skills. But the biggest is that you will be writing and no writing is ever wasted. It’s practice. Like an artist has to sketch or a musician practice. You’re honing and toning your writing muscles. And fanfic is absolutely valid for doing that.

Cons:

Time. Straight up Time.

Rating:

It’s been so long since I’ve done one of these that I don’t remember. But honestly, the rating varies. You get out of fanfic what you put in and what you’re willing to take from it.

(Note: This has been sitting in our drafts for about 4 years. I finally finished it up because I was bored and waiting to go to a doctor and didn’t feel like doing nothing.)

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[ariariari-vederci]

11 questions meme (tagged by @sphealrical thank you and i’m sorry it took me so long to see this ; v ; )

Rules: answer 11 questions, write 11 new questions, tag 11 people to answer those new questions.

11 new questions:

1. How would you describe your writing style or “voice” as a writer?

I tend to be...very long-winded, stylistically. ;; Writing is all about conveying emotion for me, so if I don’t feel like one word is enough to capture that, i’ll use five. (or more. a lot more.) Even when I’m writing from a specific point of view (say, Jotaro or Mista), the diction may vary to fit the character more closely, but my sentences still tend to last forever. I’m a 19th century writer at heart, i guess. </3 my prose is also kind of vague and dreamlike? probably because (again) if i see an opportunity to focus on the emotions of a moment, I may rush through physical actions or skip them altogether. sometimes life is like that: you don’t really pay attention to the things happening around you if there’s too much going on inside. 

2. Do you prefer to write in first person, second person (!), or third person– and why? What about present tense vs. past tense?

I favor third-person present tense, hard. I’m not incapable of writing past tense---in fact sometimes I go back to stuff I’ve already published and wonder if it would have read better in past tense. Mostly I think it’s something ingrained from all those years of roleplaying. 

3. What is one thing that inspires or motivates you as a writer these days?

Let me get cheesy here for a second, and say that my biggest motivation since I started writing again (it’s only been seven months, holy shit) has been spending time around other people in the Jojo’s fandom. I’ve met so many passionate and talented writers (and artists!), and I think seeing them love what they do has really helped me get in touch with what I love, also. <3 Even if I end up moving on from JJBA someday, I hope I can carry this same level of passion in my heart for whatever comes next. 

4. What is one of your strengths as a writer?

Hmm...I’m overly critical of my stuff, so sometimes I have a hard time pinpointing things I think I do well. I guess if I had to pick something...I really put in my best effort to stay true to each individual character. Even if I take a few liberties here and there it’s never so wild as to be OOC. and...idk. sometimes that shows through! so i’m glad for that. 

5. What is something you’d like to improve in your writing?

I tend to favor one-shots over multi-chapter fics, so one thing I’m really keen on learning is how to pace a plot over a long period of time. I’m kind of starting to see Libertine as a practice-run for my other longfic (bless everyone who subscribed to my ao3 just for People in Motion, i don’t intend for it to be on hiatus forever </3); because it’s basically pastiche and runs close to the plot of the original Phantom of the Opera I can compare bits and tailor the pacing where needed. 

Also, of course: conveying more emotion in less words. 

6. What is one genre you enjoy writing in, and why?

I REALLY WANT TO WRITE MORE HORROR STUFF BUT UNFORTUNATELY I’M NOT GOOD AT IT YET L-LOL. there are some bits in Libertine that border on creepy (and even more to come hopefully, yayyy); but Teotl is the only thing i’ve written that was intended to be weird/mildly scary, and I really feel it missed the mark. ;v; but yeah. someday I really wanna write something that’ll creep people out. 

7. What would be the biggest compliment someone could give you about your writing?

“This story made me cry” is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me about my writing---it’s definitely the best compliment I could ever get. Like I said before: it’s all about emotion for me. I want readers to feel the same kind of things I’m feeling as I write. So when that happens? I’m overjoyed.  

8. What is one piece of advice you’d give to a writer who is experiencing writer’s block or who feels “stuck” in their writing?

I’ve gone through looong periods of writer’s block before. Seasonal affective issues are a bitch and sometimes you’re going to go a long number of weeks before you can break free of it. The best thing you can do is to try and coast through it. Even if you only get 100-200 words done over the course of single day---even if it’s not for the piece you’re currently struggling with---just write something, and it’ll be more than you had before. Don’t force it too much, and things will come back to you in time. 

9. What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you first started writing?

Treat your writing like you would your yarn craft. No one is going to see one tiny mistake in a sea of stitches except for you---they’re just going to see a beautiful, intricate piece of knitting. 

10. What is a common piece of writing advice that you disagree with, and why?

I once picked up a book of fiction-writing advice and opened to a random page, and it said “don’t use adjectives.” ---are you joking? What kind of advice is that? We can’t all be Hemingway. 

11. What is one of your writing projects that you’re working on these days?

I’ve got so many projects on the docket right now that it’s hard to pick just one! The first thing on my list (that I’ll hopefully have done by tonight!) is a rarepair one-shot that I wrote for the Discord writing server. If I’m not one of the only people to populate the “Kakyoin Noriaki &(?) Enrico Pucci” tag on ao3 I’m going to be sorely disappointed. 

-

aaaahh i’ll leave the questions as they are and tag @deeppainpizza and @kao3wauso if they haven’t done this already because i’m a lazy shit (((: 

[not-poignant]

Piaaaa!!!!! I saw that you’re feeling down as a writer but I’m here to tell you to cHEER THE EFF UP WITH MY AGGRESSIVE LOVE! Seriously though, I’ve been keeping up with your work for years now and I never stop raving about your fics to anyone who will listen. You might think the FT fandom is dying but it’s not! We’re here! We’re just stupidly shy and admire from maybe too afar 🙈 But yeah, please know you’re doing amazing stuff and I love all your FT babies to bits! Kay? Kay. 💜

Hi anon,

The thing is, I’ve been here since 2013 and readers have always been shy. There’s nothing new about that. And the sudden downward swing across all facets (including ones that don’t require like...much active engagement) cannot be explained by ‘everyone suddenly became mysteriously more shy over the past 8 months, and more and more people are getting more and more shy.’

That’s not very logical.

The downward swing, of the last 8 months, by the way, can be observed across:

AO3 commentsAO3 kudosAO3 bookmarksAO3 hitsnew patreon subscriberspatreon subscribers leaving (more patrons left per month than signed on in 8 consecutive months)anonymous askspost likespost reblogspost engagement in general (replies etc.) interaction with writing memes (that’s sitting on a spectacular ‘zero engagement’ which has never happened before and was pretty demoralising)Discord activity

Not all of those things require people to ‘overcome shyness.’ Hits, for example, just require people turning up. Same with kudos, etc. And I feel like I’m forgetting some things, but anyway that’s a pretty good list.

I’m not the only one that has noticed it re: my writing. A few other people have reached out to tell me that they’ve noticed the inactivity over a period of about 5 months, and it’s not improving, nor is it showing any signs of stabilising. I don’t know when the downward trend will stop, but it’s still continuing right now. I can see and monitor my ‘behind the scenes’ metrics (though a lot of AO3 engagement is public and observable to anyone who wants to notice it), and I can see actual graphs and bright red loss metrics on Patreon that show me things haven’t been this bad for me since 2014 (and in like two months, it will be the worst its ever been).

Anyway, I feel like it’s paramount to say a few things too. I’m really grateful for the folks who enjoy my writing, regardless of how they enjoy it or interact with it (if they do at all). I’m in a really lucky position. The me of 9 years ago would have killed to have had a successful Patreon account, or like, even vague interest in my writing projects. I still have amazing readers and to be honest, those people are why I’ve been able to keep up with a really good writing turnover for like the past 6 months (around the time I realised that engagement was dropping and kept thinking ‘oh it’s temporary, it’s just school holidays / college / end of year exams / etc.’). Because it’s depressing to notice a constant downward trend behind the scenes, so like, the interaction I do get has been everything, and I’m really grateful. 100% that’s why I’m still working on Spoils of the Spoiled today

So for me, part of the issue is that there has been no plateau or stabilisation of the loss of income and like, engagement, which makes me think this might get a lot worse and it may not ever get better or recover. I’ve had cause to think that it’s not just external factors either (gosh it would be nice if it was just all about the season or exams or something lol). I don’t really think this is a ‘reader issue’ I think this is a ‘writer issue.’ I don’t think anyone is doing anything wrong. Like I said before, other authors who write similar content to me are doing great right now. so I can’t attribute this to ‘Tumblr dying’ or folks not doing enough. Something about how I’m writing right now, or what I’m writing, just isn’t appealing to a lot of people. And it’s becoming less appealing over time. I’m really glad it still appeals to some people, and that’s why I’m still here.

The fact is as well, if people aren’t being inspired to interact more with the fic, or interact in the ways they have in the past with the writing, that’s not...anyone’s problem or fault, that’s the fault of the writing. I’m not here to ask for more interaction. Because that’s like...pity, and just...no. I’m just in this really locked up, stubborn place where like, I can’t reinvent Fae Tales (and tbh, The Ice Plague requiring so much early reading re: GT and COFT means it’s almost completely inaccessible to new readers anyway), I don’t know if anyone would even invest time in a new series and new characters, and I don’t often want to write for the old fandoms people ask me to write for, and then on top of that, like a fool, I really believe in my writing and I don’t think it’s bad. It’s just not connecting with increasing numbers of people. And I think the ones it does connect with - I think all of us kind of are in this pit and we ‘get it’ but the number of those people has been dropping over time.

Unfortunately, I don’t only write fanfiction (which is like by far and away like 5 times more popular than anything else I write anyway) and I do try and make an income off the original writing, because of medical bills and life stuff. I don’t want anyone to pledge who can’t afford to pledge because that’s really not in the spirit of Patreon. I don’t want anyone to force themselves to interact out of nostalgia or because they feel pity or whatever because that’s uncomfortable, and I don’t want people to invest time in something when other things inspire them more, because then you should be giving your energy to those things that inspire you more.