i dont think anything compares to the joy of getting asks on tumblr or getting comments on ao3
its like, wow. human communication thru the internet. except it feels personal. but yknow, in a nice way, not in an invasive way
its like, you CLICKED on MY account and read thru MY posts and cared enough to leave me a personal message. smth so cute abt that
if you’re like “this fic was posted [x] number of days/weeks/months/years ago, it’s too late to post a comment,” let me tell you. no. it is never too late to comment. maybe someone else will see your comment and decide to read it. maybe the writer will see it, maybe they won’t, but if they do i guarantee they won’t be like “who’s this n00b commenting on my old fic” they’ll be like !!!! someone is reading my old stuff!!!! every time an AO3 comment is posted an angel gets its wings etc etc
This isn't instagram, new comments are the best
“Doctor Who is a beloved long-running series and we understand that some people will feel attached to a particular idea they have of the Doctor, or that they enjoy certain aspects of the programme more than others. Opinions are strong and this is indicative of the imaginative hold that Doctor Who has – that so many people engage with it on so many different levels.
“We wholeheartedly support the creative freedom of the writers and we feel that creating an origin story is a staple of science fiction writing. What was written does not alter the flow of stories from William Hartnell’s brilliant Doctor onwards – it just adds new layers and possibilities to this ongoing saga.
“We have also received many positive reactions to the episode’s cliff-hanger. There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we hope that you will come back to join us and see what happens, but we appreciate that it’s impossible to please all of our viewers all of the time and your feedback has been raised with the programme’s Executive Producer.” This insane i swear.. I sometimes feel like we need to be louder. Us that actually enjoy the show. We just enjoy it but rarely voice our opinion whereas these guys do and they’re a loud but small group.. Sighs..
Here ya go guys! Go leave a positive review and spread the love <3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comments-feedback/#/Your%20comment
Leave a positive review yall!
The absolutely funniest thing on the internet is these comments from heterosexual men under the "Henry Cavill reads thirst tweets" video
Also those of you who go deep into My My Works page and leave kudos on every single story, even the super old works.
I see you and I adore you.
All this and also:
Definitely gonna keep doing these
Yep that's why I only stay on tumblr
I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week. At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read. I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos.
People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom. I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it. On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button. Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked. Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos. Before that - 10%, and then 16%. I’m not even going to get into the comments. Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot. I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc. And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.
Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted. Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them? Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button. It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert.
TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.
Reblogging again
So much this
You know, kudos and comments are much beloved by all esp. yrs truly, but I have to say: I’ve been posting fic for 20 years, and I have never in my entire life had a story stay above a 1:9 kudos to hits ratio (or comments to hits, back when kudo wasn’t an option). Usually they don’t stay above 1:10, once they’ve been around for a few weeks.
I also have a working background in online marketing. In social media 1:10 is what you would call a solid engagement score, when people actually care about your product (as opposed to “liking” your Facebook page so they could join a contest or whatever). If BNFs are getting 1:5 - and I do sometimes see it - that is sky-high engagement. Take any celebrity; take Harry Styles, who has just under 30M followers and doesn’t tweet all that often. He regularly gets 3-400K likes, 1-200K retweets. I’ve seen him get up to just under 1M likes on a tweet. That’s a 1:30 engagement ratio, for Harry Styles, and though some of you guys enjoy my fics and have said so, I don’t think you have as lasting a relationship with my stories as Harry Styles’s fans do with him. XD;
Again, this is not to say we, as readers, should all go home and not bother to kudo or comment or engage with fic writers. That definitely is a recipe for discouraging what you want to see in future. But this is not the first post I’ve seen that suggests a 20% kudo ratio is the equivalent of yelling into the void, and I’m worried that we as writers are discouraging ourselves because our expectations are out of whack.
I think about this a lot, because it’s important to know what a realistic goal to expect from an audience is, even though I admit it definitely is kind of depressing when you look at the numbers. I was doing reading on what sort of money you can expect to make from a successful webcomic, and the general rule of thumb seems to be that if your merchandising is meshing well with your audience, about 1% will give you merch. I imagine ‘subscribe to patreon’ also falls in this general range.
Stuff that is ONLY available for dollars are obviously going to have a different way of measuring this, but when it comes to ‘If people can consume something without engaging back in any fashion (hitting a like button, buying something, leaving a comment)’ the vast majority will.
And as a creator that is frustrating but as a consumer it’s pretty easy to see how it happens. I have gotten steadily worse at even liking posts, much less leaving comments on ones I enjoy, since I started using tumblr. It’s very difficult to engage consistently. I always kudo on any fanfic I read and comment on the vast majority, but then again I don’t read a lot of fanfic, if you are someone who browses AO3 constantly/regularly for months or years, I could see how it’s easy to stop engaging. I don’t remember to like every YT video or tumblr fanart I see, much less comment on them.
When we are constantly consuming free content it’s hard to remember to engage with it or what that engagement means to the creators. And lol, honestly that sucks. Certainly as consumers we should be better about it. But also like, as a creator be kinder to yourself by setting a realistic bar of what you can achieve.
And IMO, if numbers matter to you (kudos, comments, etc) be honest about the fact that you CAN improve those things by marketing yourself better. The ‘I just produced my art and put it out there and got insanely popular because it was just so brilliant’ is less than a one a million chance. Lots of amazing content is overlooked every day because there is a lot of good content and a metric fuckton of mediocre to bad content. You can only SORT of judge the quality of your work based on the audience it generates, but if what you WANT is an audience there is way, way, WAY more you can be doing than simply producing whatever you immediately feel like. Marketing yourself is a skill and if you want the benefits of it you have to practice it.
I have a professional background in internet marketing as my day job and a moderate hobby business. My definition for “moderate” is “it pays for itself, keeps me in product, and occasionally buys groceries.” In the day job, which is for an extremely large global company, there are entire teams of people whose entire purpose of employment is to ensure a 3% conversion rate. That’s it. That is for a Fortune 100 company: the success metric is for 3% of all visitors to a marketing web site to click the “send me more info” link. My moderate business that pays for itself has a 0.94% conversion rate of views to orders. Less than 1%, and it’s still worth its time – and this is without me bothering to do any marketing beyond instagram and tumblr posts with new product. I know it feels like no one is paying attention to you and you’re wasting your time if you don’t get everyone clicking kudos or commenting but I promise, I PROMISE, you are doing fantastically, amazingly well with your 10% rate. You probably aren’t going to go viral AND THAT’S FINE. You’re only hurting yourself if you’re expecting a greater return – don’t call yourself a failure, because you’re NOT. You’re just looking at it the wrong way. I promise, you’re lovely just the way you are.
Reblogging this bc it is a take on fan engagement at AO3 that I haven’t seen before, and as a writer I find it helpful to have this reality check. Also I wonder which came first: the overall low engagement rates in internet commerce, or the freaking shit-ton of unwanted spam and advertising we’re constantly bombarded with?
I think as writers our assumption (my assumption anyway) is that the portion of hits that don’t convert to kudos equals the portion of readers who looked at your fic, didn’t like it, and never finished it. But it would seem that is an overly pessimistic assumption.
I should know this, because I ‘like’ very sparingly here and reblog only less sparingly, and yet I read and enjoy a lot of posts I don’t like or reblog.
#also something that is really obvious that none of this points out#(probably someone did somewhere in the notes but I do have a life)#your hit count will go up by virtue of PEOPLE REREADING YOUR FIC#a hit count disproportionate to kudos/comments#which are things that are only really done once #is INEVITABLE#and a GOOD thing #people rereading your fic is a good thing
This! Thank you!
I hate it when men make unsolicited comments about a woman’s body. Like “she’s got a nice shape but she needs to tighten up her stomach”
How about you tighten up your lips and never speak again you ignorant shit.
Wow maybe you need to accept constructive criticism jesus christ.
Men telling me (or any other woman) what I need to do for them to find me sexually attractive is not constructive criticism.
THIS!!!!!
- what time it is
- how long you’ve been reading
- how many chapters you’ve covered in the last 24 hours
- what you were late for because you were reading
- the woeful few hours you have left to sleep
- the emotional outbreaks you’re experiencing
- the inappropriate place you’re having said outbreak
- the general public’s reaction to your outbreak
- how much phone battery you have left
This!!!
There is a writer, I love every work she has written so far and I comment or leave kudos every chapter/work that she had published. Is that too much? I'm feeling like a stalker.
Odds are you are now that author’s favourite reader and they have you specifically in mind when they write because they’re looking forward to your reaction to it :D
At least, that’s how it goes for me.
it is never too much, it honestly isn’t.
NEVER. TOO. MUCH.
Odds are I recognize your name and comment style and love you very much.
If this is you then yes, you are my favorite reader and I DO think about you actively while writing new chapters.
All of the above. I honestly cannot thank enough all of you who leave comments, kudos and reach out to me ♥ And yes, when someone tells me they love a particular storyline/relationship/character/type of scene, I am more likely to write more of it.
Agreed! The first time someone comments, I’m already starting to make their friendship bracelet. By the fifth time, we are basically BFFs and I want to invite them over to my house to watch TV shows and cry over fictional characters together. I think perhaps that is too much???
Readers who leave comments on more than one chapter are the best ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I have one reader (and fellow fanfic writer) leave these gloriously long, in-depth comments on EVERY SINGLE FIC I write. AND I LIVE FOR THOSE COMMENTS! I’ll see when I get kudos from one reader on a bunch of different fics, and I sit there and beam. IT IS NEVER TOO MUCH.
I just posted my first fanfic amd you have NO IDEA how happy it makes me when someone leaves kudos or a nice comment! If someone left kudos and nice comments on ALL of my works I’d probably love them for all my life!
THIS ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️
Anyone want to weigh in with theories on why older works rarely receive comments? I'm an active author in my fandom (10 years strong!), and I can see by the hits that people are still reading, but once I've marked a work complete, I get 2 days of comments, and then just _nothing_. I hear a lot of readers say they wait to read until a work is finished, but do they comment? What do you think, culturally, is behind the drop-off on finished works? Not a whinge, just really curious.
From what I’ve heard, a lot of readers aren’t sure if comments on older fic will be appreciated. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but there seems to be an impression out there amongst readers that writers don’t want comments on old fic.
It might also arise from some writers no longer write at all and so aren’t checking their inboxes and aren’t replying.
Readers: care to weigh in?
And in case you’re wondering: comment on all of the things. We’ll love you for it - even if we don’t notice for a while :)
THIS THIS THIS.
I recently got a LOVELY comment on a work I wrote a five years ago for a fandom I haven’t written fic in for four years now and LOVED IT. Honestly, that may have been the quickest O have *ever* responded to a fic comment because I was so shocked and thrilled that noy only was it such a nice comment but it was on something FIVE YEARS OLD that not many people had commented on even when it was new, despite it being part of a Big Bang challenge.
The reason the person found my work after so long: they had seen a reblog of the art that went along with the fic and decided to read it.
So, really, just leave a comment. If we can reblog years-old art and years-old Tumblr posts, why can’t we drop in and say “hey, I missed this back in the day, but here I am now and I’m glad I found you.” Like…if an author is going to negatively judge someone for not having been there at the beginning and are coming in late, they maybe need to re-evaluate some things.
I don’t equate this at all to reblogging an old meme. You’re not necessarily out there telling all your friends who already read the fic all about the fic. A comment is just you to the original creator, who is probably not at all tired of people appreciating their work.
[reblogs trimmed] I always love a good story. Thanks for sharing :)
I’m finding the comments on this thread both illuminating and heart breaking; that people feel embarrassed that they came to the fandom late, or are afraid they will be judged for not seeing a work when it was first posted.
I write almost exclusively in one fandom and I came to it late; I didn’t watch any of it when it was originally airing. I came across a couple of new fans recently; people who have just watched the show. Why would I judge them for that? I love them for that. Why would I be annoyed that they weren’t here earlier? They are here now and that is awesome. I would love it if more people would discover this show (it’s on Netflix, it might happen one day, I live in hope).
Equally, I’ve had comments on old(ish) works from fans who were here before me but who missed that fic at the time I posted it. They left me a nice comment so of course I’m happy, I’m not going to mind that they weren’t there on the very day I happened to click Publish. People have other stuff going on.
To anyone reading any of my fics, whoever you are, whenever you watched the show, if you still haven’t watched all of it, if you thought you’d already read everything on AO3 in the tag and can’t understand how you missed it before, if it’s the first fic you’ve ever read and you can even remember what AO3 stands for, for whatever reason you’re reading and whatever you like about the fic, I will love to hear that you enjoyed it. Any time.
Here to support the fact that writers absolutely love getting comments on their older work. Don’t be embarrassed because it’s old! I love knowing that people are still reading my old stuff, and it’s always awesome when you get a comment on one of your old favorites. You don’t have to apologize for being late or not having seen it before. Doesn’t matter to me!
I’ve received just yesterday a long comment on a fic I wrote FIFTEEN YEARS ago! And it was one of the best comment I’ve ever received too. The reader said that my fic marked her deeply at that time when she was still a teenager, that it even helped shape the person she was today (I’m telling you: one of the best comment ever!) and that she realized to never commented on it before so she came back! That was unreal, that moved me so much, brought *me* back to a part of my life I’m nostalgic of and she didn’t leave me an e-mail to answer her! T.T
Don’t ever hesitate to leave a comment on any fic, however long, however old. Ever.
This!!!
@ those people who start binging ur story and leave tons of lil comments so u can track their progress: you rock
@ those people who read ur whole story in one night and leave a huge excited review at the end: you rock
@ those people who have been there from the beginning and make a point to leave a comment on every update: you rock
@ ALL OF THIS: YOU ROCK
So I went looking at Gordon Ramsay videos and found this and laughed for about 10 minutes.
HAHAHAHAAHAH this is fucking amazing
