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.
This is actually really good to know – helpful.
I keep track of what stories are doing well based on the reading to kudos ratio. I aim for close to 10%…and a story that hits between 5% and 10% kudos, to me, is considered a success. That means 10% of all readers liked the story enough to slap the kudos button. For me – that’s a big deal. Enough to struggle with writers block, re-writes, edits, writing when I’m tired, etc etc etc.
A story with a low kudos ration may get taken down as a “not enough liked it to deal with the stress of writing it.”
I just got some people interested in a story I haven’t touched in 2 years. I checked its kudos ration. It’s almost 7% on a self-insert. Damn. I should work on that story. See?
And oddly enough – sometimes I look not at total hits or kudos, but a kudo ratio to see if a long story is worth trying out. Because you may have low numbers, but if you’re hitting close to 10%…I’mma give that story a solid chance and 99% of the time add to that kudos ratio because that means 10% of the readership loved it.
I think…no, I know that I don’t understand marketing numbers well. I know that 10% kudos ratio seems low. Especially since hitting that kudos button is so easy. But then I think about stories I’ve read where I haven’t hit the kudos button and yeah…ok…I get it. I’m guilty of it too. We all are.
So hey – kudos to the people who leave me kudos.
CAKE to the people who leave me a comment. Even if it’s just a whole bunch of ❤ ❤ ❤ <3.
I love you too!
This is interesting because I actually teach online engagement at university. And most online content is lucky to get a 2% “like” rate on a facebook post or a blog. TO expect a 10% response rate is an unrealistic expectation IMHO. If people leave a comment, that’s a higher degree of engagement- it shows a level of personal investment that NO so called “published” author gets to see unless you count Amazon reviews (which are dubious and in the so tiny % per purchasers that it isn’t appropriate to compare). I think authors should also consider the QUALITY of engagement- and also whether it is a one shot or a multi-chapter fic. If it’s long (and I am currently at 50 of a 55 chapter story of over 250,000 words in length, I know that every one of those hits is someone who is *really* engaged with the material. And I write for them. And the comments and exchanges and feelings that get shared are better than leaving a pile of books on a table that says “buy me” as a way of measuring my worth as a writer. Which is why I write fan fiction. Thank you for starting this conversation. I think that my current co-authoress J_Baillier would agree.
Oh yes, co-authoress mine, if one could pick it would naturally be quality over quantity when it comes to reader engagement 🙂 BUT I still love every and each comment and commenter, whether they be three-page essays OR just a smiley face. I constantly feel guilty for how much I read and how little I comment – my only consolation is that perhaps the emphasis of my contributions to the fandom are the stories I write.
In a way, I agree with all of the above, and none of it. I write, because these things pop into my head which I want to put on paper/screen. I would write, and I did write Sherlock stories when I practically had no readership at all. Kudos, comments, recs and reviees are a wonderful bonus and yes, immensely rewarding and an endless amount of fun, but even if their flow suddenly completely ceased, I would not stop writing. I don’t feel entitled to a single shout-out, it’s not why I do this. And that’s why I so cherish every and each time a reader reaches out to me, whether that be in the form of kudos, comments or just a step up on the visitor counter. I have actively told fellow sherlockians about my works, ie done a bit of coy self-marketing, because it’s fun to see my stories find a readership looking for precisely that sort of stuff, but I see RED when I spot author’s notes in the vein of “reviews will make me write faster”, “I will finish this story if I get at least X comments”. I think that for some authors, the fast-delivered satisfaction of getting reviews/comments on chapters of a WIP is actually conducive to the story never getting finished – since the reward has already been received, and attention has been the primary motivation, what reason would they have for forcing themselves to put in the work? I think the whole huge emphasis on seeing attention as a currency that is somehow automatically deserved is a big reason why there are so many forever-WIPs around.
I think that it’s also important to remember that many of us readers download fics so that we can read them on other devices. And if those devices aren’t online—and mine is not—then the process of leaving kudos means that I need, next time I’m online, to (remember to) navigate back to the story on AO3 to leave kudos. And that’s frankly a higher bar, one I tend not to surmount unless I actually intend to leave a comment, as I do with stories that speak to me especially well or that seem to embody a higher quality of writing. I don’t know a way around that, although if an author had access to d/l stats that might help them feel that portion of their readership. Because I only d/l a (completed) work if I really intend to read it; I’ve already skimmed the first chapter to make sure I’ll be invested enough to finish reading it. So for me, a d/l is essentially an unmeasured kudo, and I wonder how prevalent that is throughout fandom readers.
If you’re planning on one day turning your manuscript in to literary agents and publishing houses, you need to make sure it’s formatted correctly. In many cases, your manuscript will be skipped over if it isn’t done to industry standard, so here’s the basics that you’ll need if you don’t want to be ignored. Before I get started, please know that this is aimed specifically at fiction manuscripts. If you’re writing non-fiction or a memoir, the expectations will be different, so it would be wise to Google what you need.
The Basics
Make sure your font is 12 point Times New Roman, Courier New, or Arial. These are the only three fonts you are allowed to pick from.
Your spacing should be 1 inch on all sides of the text. This is the default on most word processors, but double check your settings just to be sure.
Your text should be double spaced.
All of your indentations must be a half inch. Do not press indent. Instead, drag over the top arrow on the ruler to have every new paragraph automatically indent.
The Title Page
The top left-hand corner of your title page will have all your personal information. They want to see your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, the novel’s genre, and word count.
Your novel’s title is allowed to be between 20-24 point font if you want. Bold is also an option, but not necessary.
The title will appear halfway down the title page.
“A novel by [your name]” will be about three quarters of the way down the page.
The Next Pages
If you have a dedication, it will be on its own page.
If you have some sort of verse or quote, those will also need their own pages.
Do not include a page for acknowledgements.
The Chapters
Chapter titles will be 12 point font. No bolding or italics.
Chapters will start from one quarter to halfway down the page.
An easy way to format chapter headings is to press enter five or six times
Make sure you always start your chapters the same way every time.
When you start a new chapter, make sure you use a page break to bump the new chapter onto a new page. This will keep it in place so that it will never budge, no matter how much you cut out or add to the previous chapter.
Page Numbers
Page numbers will start with 1 on Chapter 1 of your manuscript. Page numbers will not appear on the title page or dedication page.
Page 1 will be labeled in the footer of Chapter 1. It should be centered.
Page 2 will be in the header of the next page.
From page 2 onward, your headers will be labeled like this:
If you insert a section break after the title and dedication pages, it will make it easier to insert the page numbers.
For the most part, this is the most important of what you’ll need to know for formatting your manuscript. I used this video as reference, so I’m trusting everything it says is true because it was made by an author who has several novels published, and because it was uploaded this year, it should be up to date.
But just remember, whenever you go to turn in a manuscript, make sure you check the website of the agent or publisher you’re trying to contact. They might have specifications that differ with the ones stated in this video, and you should always do whatever you can to abide by what they want.
Reblogging aggressively. Some publishers will throw your manuscript into the slush pile or, worse, the trash if you don’t follow their desired format. Spec fic publishers are especially strict about manuscript formatting.
As some of you no doubt already know, pronouns work kind of differently in Japanese than they do in English.
We rely on third-person pronouns – he/his, she/her, they/them, etc. – to indicate gender, which means the person talking about us basically gets to decide how to refer to us… and won’t always get it right.
Japanese does have a few gendered third-person pronouns, too – kare, kanojo, etc. – but because of the way the language works, it’s rarely necessary to use them. Someone could easily go forever without gendering the person they’re talking about. There’s a nice example of this in-series: over the entire course of the series, the Earl has never once used a gendered third-person pronoun to refer to the Heart, relying solely on aitsu and yatsu, which are both neutral.
Instead of relying on third-person pronouns, Japanese puts more weight on first-person gendered pronouns, which is something English completely lacks. We pretty much only have “I/me,” which is neutral and universal. In Japanese, there are dozens of ways to say “I/me,” and they can convey a lot of different things about your gender presentation, class, level of respect for the person you’re talking to, and even where you grew up.
Some of the more common ones you’ve heard in anime are things like watashi, atashi, boku, and ore, which are neutral, feminine, polite masculine, and casual/rude masculine respectively. Most of the characters in DGM use one of those; Allen uses boku, Kanda and Lavi use ore, Lenalee uses watashi. And so on and so forth. (If you want to know what anyone uses, drop me an ask and I’d be glad to elaborate for you.)
There are a few weird ones in there, though, and I’d like to talk about two of them today: the Earl’s wagahai, and Chomesuke’s oira.
Sure! For what it’s worth, the Mangastream translation is quite good. It’s not outright wrong about any really major details. That said, I’d be happy to elaborate a bit, because there was quite a bit going on there.
1.) Put a fucking pillow under your ass. Raise that hole up. A butt hole isn’t a vagina, you gotta help that dick reach it.
2.) Missionary is your friend. Start on your back and then you can be adventurous and do dick cartwheels or whatever crazy karma sutra shit you wanna try.
3.) Distraction is fucking key. If you’re not ready to go full throttle dick plunge make your man be sneaky. Lick his ear, have him twist your titties. Idk wharever you’re into but FORGET about a sausage slamming into twizzler hole and let the gates open up by themselves.
4.) Dry dicks = rug burn inside your ass. wetter is better
5.) For fucks sakes take a giant shit before you get into bed. I don’t care how much you don’t think you’ll poop on his dick. You’re gonna poop on that dick. Porn is a lie.
6.) Once the dick is in, don’t feel like you gotta be fancy. Your butt hole isn’t Pink Floyd. It doesn’t need a light show. You can’t start out with all these magic tricks or your butt hole will GIVE UP. It can NOT sustain 30 minutes of pile driving while also doing kegels. RELAX YOUR FUCKING BUTT HOLE
7.) So you’re doing gr8. The dick is in. The poop is absent. Your butt hole isn’t trying to be a fucking gymnast. It’s time for the party tricks:
– Sit on the dick WITH him also sitting up straight. Don’t let that fucker lay down. This is BUSINESS. When you are sitting ontop of him, you have complete control. Squeeze your entire body and push yourself UP AND AGAINST boy whose dick is inside of you. It is important that you push yourself up AND AGAINST said boy or his dick is gonna knock that spot that makes you wanna end it all. I don’t care what Harry Potter fan fic you read, a prostate isn’t a fucking clitoris. You can’t just bang that shit head on and expect to feel like your jizzing. It’s called a PROstate because you gotta leave that shit to the professionals.
– Try doggy style while pushing back when he pushes forward. It makes him think you’re enjoying his dick ripping your beautiful ass hole into a gaping black hole. Also, squeeze like a mother fucker when pulling off the dick. Push back, squeeze forward. Got it? Great
8.) Okay so you’ve tried out some weird shit, you’re getting close to him popping his load. DON’T get fancy here. You had your chance, the time has past. It’s time to stay fucking put and squeeze that asshole until he is done. You don’t have all fucking day. You’re a busy bitch. Hurry that bitch up.
9.) Don’t let that fucker cum in your asshole unless you are prepared to shit it out. NOBODY TELLS YOU WHAT SEMEN DIARRHEA IS GONNA BE LIKE. IT’S LOUD AND FULL OF PAIN. Tops are demons, don’t let them sin inside you.
CONGRATS you are 1 step closer to being America’s Next Top Bottom. Go take a nice long shit you slut, you deserve it
This kid is hilarious and totally cute too.
External image
THIS IS THE FUNNIEST SHIT ON THIS WEBSITE! GOD BLESS!
This is by far the best thing I have read… ever on this site…
Omg… I inhaled my saliva when I went to laugh. I am dying. This is the end! This was too funny! 😂
“Don’t let him sin inside you…” Oh my god.
That last point is so important tbh. Like your biscuit is NOT gonna sop that cum up like some protein gravy but no one shows the bottom sitting on the toilet after a bb scene because it is not cute and you don’t look/feel cute doing it
There comes a point in every relationship where you talk to each other about your past relationships. Here are the Dos and Don’ts for doing it right:
Do
Summarize. Give them the general scope of your past relationships. How long you were together, why you broke up, etc. There’s no need to tell them anymore than the highlights.
Outline the main issues. Give them the big picture of what your issues or problems were in your past relationships without going into the details of every little thing that went wrong.
Try to keep the conversation positive. Don’t turn it into a conversation where you call your ex nasty names and start trashing them. Your anger will put your new partner off and might scare them away.
Ask about their past. Don’t just go on and on about your past without asking about theirs.
Neptune hasn’t completed an orbit since it was discovered
wow dang u slowpoke
Like wow
The moon looks like an excited puppy waiting for Earth to feed it and give it cuddles and Earth is like “MOVE, I CAN’T FEED YOU IF YOU’RE RUNNING UNDER MY LEGS, GOD DAMMIT”
This was supposed to be an interesting and intelligent post. Then you get that^. This is why I love tumblr.
i am just picturing jupiter’s and saturn’s moons high fiving each other when they get close at like the beginning of the gif
lanablack 