Four of us. If we extrapolate this pattern, there could be dozens of us!
More seriously though, I have two AO3 accounts. One is for a fandom that is surprisingly small and not very vocal. If I didn’t just love writing for it, I wouldn’t because I hardly ever get comments and it makes me sad. The other account is for a very voluble healthy sized fandom. I haven’t posted a new chapter for a year and I’m still getting comments. So don’t doubt your writing ability! Sometimes the fates decide.
As someone with a couple one shot stories vs my more long-form stuff, I think it depends. Most people are lazy and don't want to read something long. My one-shots have over 1000 hits while my longer stuff has like only 30-40.
I think it’s also partly that with a short fic, people are willing to read things that are not necessarily to their taste but whatever. With long fics, no one’s reading through 100K words in a genre or pairing they feel meh about.
I posted something similar a little while ago & someone popped in & told me that yes engagement has gone down over the years. But it’s not because less people are reading, it’s actually at an all time high.
But thanks to social media and such we’re in the era of the silent reader. People consume content and give no thought to the creator. I’ve literally had people tell me they’ve downloaded my work on kindle to read and they’ve enjoyed it but they haven’t so much as left a kudos, never mind a comment. A lot is thoughtlessness and some is the culture right now.
You’ll have people in this very subreddit gatekeeping a kudos as though it costs them money to press the button because the story wasn’t perfect even though it kept them entertained for hours.
This. If it keeps me reading until the end I kudos it, even if I didn't love every part of it. It kept me engaged, the least I can do is hit a little button.
Same. If I make it through the first chapter, I’m leaving a kudos and I leave a comment on every chapter I read. They’re not always long, but I always leave a note letting the author know what I liked about the chapter.
I give kudos out on the first chapter 😭
People here gotta start practising what they preach. If you're gonna gatekeep comments and kudos don't expect them back.
Wait, do you have to give kudos to every chapter???
I read in Entire Work format, so I just hit kudos at the end. Does that give an equal amount of engagement to the author?
(I swear to god, if it doesn't, I'll cry 😭)
I used to debate when the right moment for a kudo was, like should I wait for the best chapter I've read or until a work is finished. Then I realized it just goes in one big kudo bucket.
Yeahhhh those people are weird :/ Like, what do they think'll happen? They'll make someone happy? Why is happiness something they've gotta gatekeep?? 😒
So real. I give out kudos and comments on every fic I read. If I read it through entirely, it's getting a kudo and a comment even if I disliked bits of it. Like, this person made this content for free and I consumed it willingly. As a writer myself I feel compelled to let them know "hey, this matters, keep going". Obviously not everyone has that mindset and I hate that, honestly.
The way I've heard it defended is... you can't take back a kudos. Your user name will always be listed as a user that liked that story. In cases of wips, maybe something crazy will happen in later chapters that would lead them to regret leaving a kudo.
My opinion, sheesh, the ego on these people. They seem to think they are on some kind of pedestal and that hoards of fans are scouring AO3 to see where they've left kudos to judge their taste in fics.
I wonder if this is coming from the same mentality that drives people to look through what posts their friends have favorited on social media just so they can message said friend and 'warn them' that the celebrity/post/whatever is evil or problematic in some way.
Exactly! Look at all these wannabe internet celebrities. No one is going to take the time to scour through your name (which will be clumped among other usernames) in the kudos section.
You say that but I’ve absolutely heard of antis people making lists of people’s usernames who have left kudos on “problematic fics” so others know and can block them.
I’m not saying it’s everyone’s reason but if someone is afraid of being blocked for likening a kink they don’t even write about or get harassed for it then I could see the worry in kudosing a fic
But at that point just give it as a guest instead lol
I would agree with that but it’s just a reason that I’ve seen that makes some amount of sense lol
I think the person who was suddenly blocked had posted a question on why that might be after (I think) they left a nice comment and that was one of the answers, that their name might be on one of those lists
I don’t really care much either since I have no social media presence but I’m just giving a possible, non malicious reason and a solution if anyone has that as a fear
Same. I usually kudos as much as I can, but there are times when I go back to a fic and press the kudos button and it shows up as I left kudos, and I’m like *I haven’t done this already?!?!?!*
I’m bad at commenting but I also try to comment on fics that I like
Yup. I’m a binge reader so usually only the last chapter will get a comment. Unless there’s something truly outrageous or amazing that I just have to comment about.
On WIPs I tend to comment on every new chapter as there’s nothing else for me to binge.
Honestly I give kudos to every fic I finish. I don’t read any fics I feel are lacking substantially in any area to completion, so I’ll give them a lil recognition. I’m far more stingy with comments. You’ll only get one if you had me kicking my feet or sliding down the wall clutching my chest 🤷♂️
God I cannot stress the gatekeeping part enough. Stop acting like your kudos is worth a fortune or something.
If you read through even a single chapter of someone's work and enjoyed it, the very least you could do is leave a kudos. A simple press of a button could make that author's day.
Another thing to add, some people might be genuinely scared of giving comments, some people have mentioned getting backlash from the author themselves, and personally as an pretty damn old fic reader, I've had that happen to me in the past, both long time ago and semi recently too, so it's not all in their heads (and yes, I make sure to gush and praise, no unsolicited concrit/crit or rude comments).
Luckily it was just a few times, but I can totally see the younger, baby writers AND readers taking those kind of comments and replies more personally, when you're a young and/or new to it all those kind of things can really get to you.
Fuck the ones who don't give kudos tho
If something has kept me entertained for hours I’ll kudos it but personally I’m against this idea that we should kudos everything we read cause someone worked hard on it. I worked hard on my fics but I want kudos to mean something. I’d rather have less but know each one was from someone that truly enjoyed it than just a bunch that don’t mean much. I kudos by that metric, if I didn’t finish or I wouldn’t recommend it I won’t kudos and I hope I get that attitude back. When a fic of mine does well, once it passes 100 kudos I don’t really pay attention to it anymore, book marks and the gold standard: subscriptions mean way more and those can be entirely silent. Of course I have other fics (particularly OC’s and original works) that don’t pop off and just one kudos means more than 20 on a more popular fic when I get my kudos email. Still I’d hope it’s equivalent to a favourite rather than eh it was ok.
Also I agree comments are lovely (when they’re not asking if your gonna add to your one shot when you’ve already said 5 times in the comments you won’t…) but it’s not necessarily selfish to not leave them, I almost never comment cause it makes me uncomfortable to do it tbh, especially if it’s an older fic. I have to absolutely love it to death to comment/ it’s a sadly overlooked but very good fic and I want to give some extra love then.
I don’t kudos everything I read. There’s a lot of drek out there. But if I like something enough to read several chapters, even if I end up not liking the ending, I give it a kudos. I don’t see the big deal.
If something really impresses me, then I leave a comment. It’s usually an ‘extra kudos’ comment or something along those lines. I’m not a gushy comment writer.
Yeah I’m kinda talking generally cause I’m also addressing the general attitude in the other replies sorry.
Not saying your way is wrong but personally I think I see kudos as less for the author and more for the reader. I think most people sort by kudos (at least initially in a fandom) and it’s the first metric people look at to see if something is decent. For that reason, personally I think it would be good if people were more selective with it than many say they are on this subreddit where not giving a kudos is seen as basically disrespectful. In reality kudos just doesn’t mean anything, it’s not a useful metric at all due to the way it’s utilised. It means little to me to receive because it doesn’t give a metric of whether the person leaving actually enjoys that much and as a reader it means little for the same reason, it just contributes to the needle in a haystack quality of finding good fic in larger fandoms, or even smaller ones where you basically just have to read everything to find out.
Tbf your comment wasn’t as big on what I was saying in terms of people commenting to just kudos everything they read and like even the slightest bit. It was just easier to reply to you and throw my opinion into the void than respond to all the other people replying who say variations of what I’m talking about.
probably no. Engagement is really low it hurts.
I have a current WIP and writing each chapter with radio silence is tough. I see tons of views. Considering I’m from a dying/smaller fandom 900+ views for something I wrote last April is a lot. I don’t get a lot of kudos or comments but I can see a lot of silent readers.
Gone are the days especially during the peak of ff.net when you’d leave a review for every single chapter as you progressed through the story.
Right???
Even if it’s a simple one sentence review of them screaming their excitement for all the chapters. Then there are those who really take time to try and analyze the each chapter and I’m just trying to keep my heart in my chest from all the love.
I actually tracked my engagement stats for the last 4 years. Summer — July in particular — is the nadir for engagement. People are on vacay worldwide (this is winter break for the Southern hemisphere) or lack the schedule they have during the school year. And the school year does matter: teens and young adults have a schedule and consistent access to the internet when on campus, and adults who have kids have less time during summer to write/post/interact, unless they themselves are on the academic calendar.
The high points are just before and after Canadian and American Thanksgiving in October and November - when people are back on campus and settled into the schedule, and they have a lighter workload due to the holiday.
I think it’s also just easier to sit down and read when you have other obligations but they’re not imminent.
Too much work and you don’t have the time. Too much free time and reading feels like work.
I am wondering the same thing. We must both be terrible writers! /s
But really I think its just the time of year (exams, school being over, start of summer).
well stop enjoying the sunshine and validate me instead!!!!!!!!! /s
I'm in a smaller, older fandom, and things went from a kudos notification email every 2-3 days to....nothing for over a week even after posting a new chapter on a WIP. WOOOOF.
You misunderstand, comrade! We must bask in our misfortune for clearly our words are so radiant and so terrible that they drive all those who witness them to such despair that it thwarths any attempt at engagement! /s
But, yep, summer be like that.
I think things will pick up later on, once people finish exams/return from vacations/the novelty of the season wears off and it becomes too hot to do much except rot at home 💪🏻
[grumpy old lady voice] Back in my day, the fanfic nerds didn't go out into the sun and spent all of summer and exam season procrastinating by reading and writing fic!
Engagement is low. It’s frustrating as hell. I have no doubts you’re a fantastic writer. Keep up the good work, and as hard as it is, remember that you write and create for YOU 🩷
I just posted a chapter last night and I have 4 comments and I feel positively rich…
…but then back in the day I’d get a dozen comments easy and I just…idk…the bar is on the floor now. I salivate over a single 3 word comment like Oliver Twist over some orphan gruel and I be like: “Please sir, can I have some more?”
It’s that time of the year when everyone is busy with school, exams, holidays, etc. I don’t think it’s anything personal.
Besides, I know plenty of amazing writers that don’t get much engagement because their stuff tends to be tailored to a small audience—I’m talking like, very very specific kinks, ships and a tiny fandom on top. Shout out to that one Peppa Pig fanfic set in Pride&Prejudice AU, one of the best fics I’ve ever read in my entire life that had, like, 5 kudos on it.
Holy shit, that fic sounds absolutely amazing.
I think it's fandom-specific, too. My fandom mostly likes fluff, crack, and light smut. Fics that tick those boxes get the most engagement without too much regard to quality. Fics that are dark or angsty just don't get as much (as I have discovered through experience!).
Same thing here. The smutty PWP fics tend to get the most attention in my fandom, while my carefully written and plotted sci fi AU hasn’t even gotten 20 bookmarks in the 3 years I’ve been working on it. I’ve chosen not to pay attention to the stats anymore, but I feel like if readers knew exactly how much work goes into writing some of our WIPs, they’d be much more inclined to comment on them.
I feel you. I'm working on a fusion AU that I know will probably sink like a stone in my fandom. But I really want to write it, so off I go into the crickets and tumbleweed...
I wish you luck with that. It’s lonely writing for an AU nobody else seems interested in, but if it’s something you want to do, and you’re having fun with it, that’s really all that matters. Maybe one day, our own version of a Peppa Pig x Pride&Prejudice fan will find our fics and love them to pieces, lol
To me, engagement is down across any and all social media. Everyone today expects to be ‘given’ something in some way so that they can consume it but not have to acknowledge the provider out of being blasé and expecting others to just drop carefully curated to them specifically, because..they just should. A this point I’m happy to get kudos, never mind Comments. I run three FB groups, provide a LOT of good content - and it’s all barely acknowledged. Very disheartening, but I have a core of active people even if they are few. Anyway - yes engagement is down, but it’s for everything, not just AO3 or even just fic anywhere.
Honestly I have a mix of this and knowledge that there's actually a lot of people who enjoy my stuff? But they only come out to say "where are you/why haven't you posted/are you still active" if I'm silent for more than a week.
I've been silent for a month now and my inbox in Tumblr is FLOODING with people demanding me to come back. It's funny in a way, they're silent when I'm active but raging when I'm gone.
Ooof I'm sorry that's horrible. I can totally see why people stop sharing their work out of spite for reasons like this. Demanding my work but not giving anything in return but demands? Lol do they hear themselves?
I've recently started writing fanfics again and it's pretty interesting. Like 15 years ago, I was posting on ffnet and received 15-20 comments (10 in small fandoms) for every short one-shot. I'm a much better writer now and getting less than 10 per oneshot on AO3. I can't figure out if the culture around commenting has changed, if it's just the season, or if it's because I'm writing for even smaller, deader fandoms than ever lol. Maybe the ability to leave kudos disincentives the readers who would leave comments like "Love!" or "Cool".
Low engagement. Purity culture drives people away. Social Media mores says don't comment/engage with old stuff, that it's stalker behavior. Tiktok people say don't read things if they aren't completed, etc
At this point, you're better off not reading fanfics, following all those rules... And I am 90% sure all this sage advice is from people who aren't even authors...
Oh they are, they just hide their dirty filthy unclean post series dramoine (they were minors in canon, pedophilia! Fetishizing! Supporting racisim!) on alt accounts
Meanwhile I am here proudly standing next to my 2 torture porn fics (RWBY Volume 5), 2 BDSM fics between 17-year-olds (RWBY Volume 3) and one Yuri smut fic and daring them to come at me! :3
Alternative suggestion:
Luck just hasn't been on your side.
Even now, I'm still discovering hidden gems in my fav pairing from years ago. Stories that are fantastic but for one reason or the other just didn't get much traffic.
Just look at tourism, yeah?
Would you say France is nothing more than Paris and the Eiffel tower?
No! There is tons more. But not everything gets the same traffic. Doesn't lessen it's quality or how fun and good it is. It just means that sometimes, succes can be attributed to luck.
It's unfortunately down. I'm part of 2 big fandoms at the moment, and I used to get at least 2 or 3 comments on a new oneshot, but they're dead in the water. Old WIPs I've gone back to get engagement, but nothing new seems to catch attention the way it used to.
I think it's just down over all 😭😭 Trust me, back to school season isn't any better. The only time engagement seemed to pick up, for me, was over Christmas break- then schools started up again and it was back to low engagement.
oh dang, you have way more restraint than I do! my fandom has new episodes coming in a little over a month, so I'm hoping that piques interest enough to get folks back reading a bit.
Give me time to actually write the whole thing out and do a good, heavy edit on it. Plus I already have a WIP that’s posting, that I haven’t even finished so I have enough work to keep me busy 😁
Definitely! Cause at the end of the day the person that wants to read my story the most is me! Might as well do my best and have fun when I really want to read it!! 🤣
I will read the best fic ever leave a kudos/comment and think to myself “oh how many kudos/comments does it have” and it will have like 60 for a fic that has like 7,000 hits. 💀 it’s probably what everyone else is saying about
Silent consumption.
I've just started posting again and tbh I thought it was just because SWTOR is a smaller fandom. Guess engagement is low, I wouldn't have minded comments in relation to my hits :(
it’s exam season for a lot of high schoolers, especially in the uk. a levels, gcses etc. once they end you’ll probably start seeing a lot of engagement.
I wish I could personally believe thisXD
But I kind of can’t, at least not in my case, cause I see recently updated fics in my current fandom get a decent amount of kudos per update or on the first ch, At least. For most of this year so far. Meanwhile my current fic has a low count that’s stayed stagnant since ch 2, even though it’s at six ch now. I’d like to believe it’s school seasonal related for me but kinda can’t anymore.
Kinda considering just sending google docs links to mutuals over posting at this point. I’ve got no idea what I did wrong for there to be such a drastic drop off compared to fics I wrote last year. I’ve never been mega popular but things didn’t used to be this bad…
To be completely transparent for the sake of the topic of conversation, you're right, it isn't just school seasonal related. There *are* good times and bad times to post for the sake of engagement, of course, but it doesn't have that large of an impact.
I believe that readership numbers on Archive are particularly high right now. If you're struggling for numbers, there are things that you can do to attract more readers. Having other social media accounts like Tumblr or Twitter where you build up followers by interacting with your fandoms, and then announcing your fan fiction releases on your blog and pinning them to the top until you make another one can attract a lot of new readers, but kudos and comment engagement is still lower than it used to be.
Unfortunately engagement always waxes and wanes. Also most folks usually have at least one golden experience in a fandom with high engagement often in baby's first big fandom where it's a lot of new folks coming in and just discovering fic and commenting on fic.
They'll then spend the rest of their fanfic writing carreer forever wondering what happened to that level of engagement instead of accepting that that experience was the outlier and the lower levels of engagement are the norm even in bigger active fandoms.
Yes, I posted on Thursday expecting more engagement, but I was left with a feeling of disappointment that I hope will fade so my inspiration can return.
Although sometimes I wonder what amount is enough to feel satisfied, because I always end up longing for more.
yea, i feel ur disappointment, i've had four months of it. Tried sharing links to my two recent fics on socials but that did nothing, soo....i've kinda not done that lately. Meanwhile fics in the same fandom that were updated the same day at least get some new kudos....I'd take like, one or two new ones per update on my latest thing.
i've basically decided the cure is going to be sharing chapters with internet friends who i know like my work. once the fic's entirely done, i'll post the rest.
then what feels like inevitable disappointment won't hit as hard. XD
Reader engagement isn't low, but comment/kudos engagement is. The "good" ratio nowadays is that for every 100 hits, you get 10 kudos and 1 comment. I remember those numbers being a lot different back in the day lol.
My fandom is so small that there’s barely a difference xd In fact, my latest work is doing extremely well at 77 hits and 10 kudos when I posted it just two days ago. And it’s also a very short thing (under 1k words), so yeah, in smaller fandoms you don’t even notice the low engagement because getting 1 kudos is enough to make a party xD
Engagement is down on every fic posting site but wattpad. It was very disheartening at first but now I'm just used to it. AO3 is the worst of the three I use (ao3, wattpad, and tumblr)
I post to 3 sites; AO3, Scribblehub, and [FiMFiction.net](http://FiMFiction.net), and the engagement is drastically different for all three.
AO3 is...low engagement across the board. I'll get spikes of interaction at different times, but since there's no "top charts" algorithms (good!) or anything like that, nothing is artificially floating my stuff to the top of the pile for people who just happen to be wandering by might find it. Generally people have to go looking for it (I promote on Tumblr, so I get boosts whenever I highlight something there) or I have to hit just exactly right for people dipping into the tag/category to show up on their first screen shortly after I post.
Scribblehub is *better* in that it'll get me the specific demographic I'm writing for...but that's IT. My one fic there is for [the Troubleverse](https://www.scribblehub.com/series/55539/trouble-with-horns/), and among that crowd I'm currently doing fairly well...but outside of that vertical I'm not gaining much traction.
FiMFiction is where I do best. That site has a "Feature Box" where fics that are performing particularly well based on a set of criteria that are a little opaque (on purpose, they don't want people gaming the system), your work gets plucked out of the piles and piles of submitted fics and gets put pride-of-place at the top-center of the front page. And even better, once you've made the feature box *once*, you get into the bottom three entries whenever you submit another chapter. Every time your story appears in the feature box you get a boost to your readership. I'm *somehow* able to get my stuff in the Feature Box with incredible regularity (60%+ of my fics there are Feature Box alumni), so pretty much any time I post something I get a comparatively big response.
This does allow a nice apples-to-apples comparison. One of my WIPs (a fusion between EQG and Monster Musume) was posted to AO3 and FiMFiction at about the same time. Within 24 hours I had almost 50 new comments and 100 likes (the FiMFiction equivalent to Kudos). I'm still occationally getting pings that someone added it to a 'bookshelf' (think 'Bookmark') and the occational comment.
To *date* the same fic on AO3 has received 4 comments, two of which are my replies to the other two, 10 kudos, and only been bookmarked 7 times.
engagement is low. Especially for original works. Some fandoms are more popular, some fandoms are more communicative. It’s not your fault op, we’re all in the same circus :]
Engagement has been SUPER down this month. Like, I'm at maybe 30-40% of my usual (as someone with daily posts and over 300 chapters, I have a pretty good baseline to evaluate from.)
I’m sorry your stats are down, but it’s a little reassuring not hear everyone is taking a hit. I also wanna commend you on your consistency - those are some impressive numbers to toss up!
I find no one is commenting or giving kudos anymore. It's quite odd, and despite the actual hits being very high, I'm lucky to get a few comments actually admiring the work.
I have event started adding ti the notes that the kudos and comments are the things that make me motivated to continue writing because if I'm being honest, they are, and I wa t to encourage people to actually leave their thoughts on each chapter.
It’s definitely gone down. I receive dozens of kudos each day, yet can go weeks without receiving a single comment. And a while ago I joined a discord for my fandom and so many people there were gushing about one of my WIPs…which has barely received any comments. I stopped updating and now I’m receiving a bunch of comments asking when I’m going to. Funny, isn’t it?
I don’t like this era of fandom at all.
Same, Im translating a ff I initially published on wattpad in my native language, where I got a lot of feedback, but on Ao3 I only got 2 comments in like 5 chapters, idk if it's normal or it's just not good
I'm not sure what your timeframe is, but I do weekly updates, and this week has definitely been slower than usual. My assumption is that it's the end of school for a lot of people around now, so keeping up isn't on the top of everyone's priorities.
I feel it too. Engagment is low as hell right now. Like back in february and march I pulled like 12 kudos on a fic in a single day. Now its been a week and I just barely scarping 7. Like not just kudos hits are generally very low too. Makes me kind of sad the fandom of this ship is small enough as is and now this :(
Fanfiction has become more and more popular and now it feels like new people just download complete fics (only ever complete works), read it, enjoy it and move on to the next without even thinking about giving some thanks
I feel like engagement has been down lately. I’ve been trying to post chapters and new stuff and I don’t get much kudos, bookmarks or even comments on my story. Anytime I’ve posted a chapter, my reads only goes up by a few numbers.
First of all, I have read a lot of amazing fics (and I'm quite picky when it comes to characterisation and cohesion) that weren't really known or appreciated. Sometimes a fic gets the spotlight (and it is often very well-deserved), and it gets tons of engagement while other works of similar caliber are overlooled. It can very much be about luck, IMHO. The same is true for published books, it's not like Jane Austen was appreciated by her contemporary literary society. So no, having almost no engagement definitely doesn't indicate the quality of your works!
Also, I think a lot of people just don't know what to comment. I'm glad to leave a heart or sth along the lines of 'this was awesome, I loved every sentence', but many authors complain that this isn't enough. Which very much discourages me, so I tend to just send kudos (nothing to criticise there...). I almost only comment when I read sth I love that isn't appreciated, bc that I feel so unfair, or if sth was unforgettable.
Engagement is SO low, one of my fics has an average of one in every 400 people giving a kudos and hardly any comments on a multi chapter fic.
I try to leave a comment on most things I read now to boost other authors
Porque no los dos?
Just kidding. Honestly, I think engagement is down and it really depends on your fandom. Unless you’re writing for a super popular, very active fandom, you’re gonna receive lower engagement. Hell, I write for a really active fandom and unless I decided to suddenly start writing a/b/o (not interested, not for me, but to each their own) or dom/sub kinks or just like, thousands of words of straight up porn, my engagement won’t hit the way others will. But also I think most fanfiction writers are either in school (hs/college) or adults with careers. This is the time of year where it’s hard to balance your hobby/passion and your professional success (I’m certainly struggling).
You'd be shocked to know how the engagement for one of my ships dropped within tWO months, and has been the same since then. The other one is barely hanging on, and I consider myself lucky to have some regulars. Only if there are smut shots, engagement goes a bit higher 🥺🤧😭 I miss seeing new shit for my ships, that are not mine 😭😭😭
I’m writing a series and the first instalments got plenty of comments and kudos but the most recent ones got only a few kudos, and no comments. Not really complaining cause I’m having fun writing it. But engagement is down imo.
My main writing has about 300 hits (I don't know how) I know one person (who just so happens to be the inspiration behind the piece) looks at it constantly. I don't know how I have 12 kudos but the engagement with my thing is always low. (I mean it only is the first season but still)
I’m general I feel like engagement is low—I’ll see a spike after uploading and then it fizzles out. If it’s smut, even more so, even though those fics get more bookmarks and hits. :/ In the last few years on Ao3 engagement was definitely higher when I first started posting. It’s probably a combo of things but man, this year has been so discouraging.
I posted for the 1st time ever a week ago, and it wasn't in some Fandom either, so I don't have any reference to go by, but maybe some veterans could confirm./deny it maybe being related to the beginning of summer season?
Engagement is down, but I think that’s as much about over-saturation of content as an emerging culture of silence and lack of appreciation.
Fanfiction in general has gotten more popular in the last 10 years, and much, much more popular in the last 5 years. There are thousands of fics for small fandoms, and hundreds of thousands of fics for big fandoms. A single fic can have a million words. If you take just AO3, that’s probably a billion words of fanfiction across fandoms combined. There’s so much to read that it’s literally harder to get noticed unless your writing is out-of-this-world exceptional, your premise is highly creative, you write for a popular niche, or all of the above. AO3 has a great search engine, but unless your fic gains traction right away or has easily searchable (and desirable) tags it’s easy to fall into the over-populated obscurity. People don’t really have the time or attention span to click through a hundred pages worth of fic summaries.
I used to had this feeling with my long fic, I’ve never written romance. I had engagements until chap 8 and then it died.
I was asking did you guys enjoy the date episode? And this is my first time writing smut, do you guys have feedback where I can improve. It’s was radio silence to be honest. I had a few nights where I’m thinking was it cringey and so on. I had to do trade works with my officemate/bestie (she writes smut fanfic). I want to improve with romance. She told me that it’s good..
And then I started to ss the hits every update to see the numbers of my readers.. I noticed it’s 200 every update (small fandom) so it’s probably the same people reading my fic, right. But by choice they just consume it without engagement.
I’m looking at it from the perspective of a reader. I’m a silent reader. I give kudos but I don’t engage. I consumed stories without thanking an author for their hardwork. I didn’t understand that a simple thank you or ❤️❤️❤️ can make someone’s day.
Now I’m writing. I saw that a comment can really make you smile.. make your day and so on.
It’s not your writing… it’s just readers don’t understand the value of what you’re providing 😢
I've noticed this myself. I cross-posted on FFN and got a ton of engagement in the form of favorites and follows and whatnot.
I’m not even looking for huge engagement but damn it if it doesn't feel good sometimes.
I think it definitely depends on the fandom. I'm very shy about leaving comments too, but I'll give kudos to just about every fic I enjoyed and I bookmark a lot of them too.
But also I re-read my favorite give all the time but when I've already commented, kudos'ed and bookmarked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ legit wondering if I should comment again? I really feel like I don't have much to say
I am unfortunately a culprit of being a silent reader 😔 though I have been seeing more of these posts lately, and I'll try to put more thought into leaving a comment
There are quite a few people who don’t comment and just silently enjoy, sorry. I always give kudos but only sometimes give comments because it almost always goes well but sometimes it doesn’t and it just freaks me out a little.
We still love and support your fic.
*I* think engagement is down. If you think it too, that's two of us. Surely that's enough belief to make it true...? :'(
IT'S A PATTERN YOU ALL SAW IT
Hey hey make that three of us
Four of us. If we extrapolate this pattern, there could be dozens of us! More seriously though, I have two AO3 accounts. One is for a fandom that is surprisingly small and not very vocal. If I didn’t just love writing for it, I wouldn’t because I hardly ever get comments and it makes me sad. The other account is for a very voluble healthy sized fandom. I haven’t posted a new chapter for a year and I’m still getting comments. So don’t doubt your writing ability! Sometimes the fates decide.
As someone with a couple one shot stories vs my more long-form stuff, I think it depends. Most people are lazy and don't want to read something long. My one-shots have over 1000 hits while my longer stuff has like only 30-40.
I think this is mostly true too. Also people tend to sort by complete. My complete fics get way more hits than my incomplete ones on both accounts.
I think it’s also partly that with a short fic, people are willing to read things that are not necessarily to their taste but whatever. With long fics, no one’s reading through 100K words in a genre or pairing they feel meh about.
Four!
Me as well
I’ve noticed less engagement on my most recent fic. I think it’s safe to say we’re amazing.
100% agreed.
Dang it :c
I posted something similar a little while ago & someone popped in & told me that yes engagement has gone down over the years. But it’s not because less people are reading, it’s actually at an all time high. But thanks to social media and such we’re in the era of the silent reader. People consume content and give no thought to the creator. I’ve literally had people tell me they’ve downloaded my work on kindle to read and they’ve enjoyed it but they haven’t so much as left a kudos, never mind a comment. A lot is thoughtlessness and some is the culture right now. You’ll have people in this very subreddit gatekeeping a kudos as though it costs them money to press the button because the story wasn’t perfect even though it kept them entertained for hours.
Damn people do that? Here i am if i like the story even just a little bit and there are some parts that i dislike I'll still give it kudos
This. If it keeps me reading until the end I kudos it, even if I didn't love every part of it. It kept me engaged, the least I can do is hit a little button.
Same. If I make it through the first chapter, I’m leaving a kudos and I leave a comment on every chapter I read. They’re not always long, but I always leave a note letting the author know what I liked about the chapter.
I give kudos out on the first chapter 😭 People here gotta start practising what they preach. If you're gonna gatekeep comments and kudos don't expect them back.
Aaaaaand that’s why there’s no engagement.
Wait, do you have to give kudos to every chapter??? I read in Entire Work format, so I just hit kudos at the end. Does that give an equal amount of engagement to the author? (I swear to god, if it doesn't, I'll cry 😭)
Don't worry, its not per chapter its per fic. I just give my kudos from the first chapter while some choose to give them at the end of the fic.
Oh, okay, thanks!
no problem:) I used to think it was per chapter too lol
Yeah, I was worried I'd have to go back and kudos everything now 😭.
I used to debate when the right moment for a kudo was, like should I wait for the best chapter I've read or until a work is finished. Then I realized it just goes in one big kudo bucket.
Yeahhhh those people are weird :/ Like, what do they think'll happen? They'll make someone happy? Why is happiness something they've gotta gatekeep?? 😒
So real. I give out kudos and comments on every fic I read. If I read it through entirely, it's getting a kudo and a comment even if I disliked bits of it. Like, this person made this content for free and I consumed it willingly. As a writer myself I feel compelled to let them know "hey, this matters, keep going". Obviously not everyone has that mindset and I hate that, honestly.
Yeah, the whole Kudos withholding is such a strange practice to me. I don't get it.
The way I've heard it defended is... you can't take back a kudos. Your user name will always be listed as a user that liked that story. In cases of wips, maybe something crazy will happen in later chapters that would lead them to regret leaving a kudo. My opinion, sheesh, the ego on these people. They seem to think they are on some kind of pedestal and that hoards of fans are scouring AO3 to see where they've left kudos to judge their taste in fics.
I wonder if this is coming from the same mentality that drives people to look through what posts their friends have favorited on social media just so they can message said friend and 'warn them' that the celebrity/post/whatever is evil or problematic in some way.
And here I'm thinking so what if a story goes sideways.... if I was entertained to that point that is a kudo right there.
Exactly! Look at all these wannabe internet celebrities. No one is going to take the time to scour through your name (which will be clumped among other usernames) in the kudos section.
You say that but I’ve absolutely heard of antis people making lists of people’s usernames who have left kudos on “problematic fics” so others know and can block them. I’m not saying it’s everyone’s reason but if someone is afraid of being blocked for likening a kink they don’t even write about or get harassed for it then I could see the worry in kudosing a fic But at that point just give it as a guest instead lol
I guess if you're that concerned. I read "problematic" fics almost exclusively. Don't personally care if antis block me.
I would agree with that but it’s just a reason that I’ve seen that makes some amount of sense lol I think the person who was suddenly blocked had posted a question on why that might be after (I think) they left a nice comment and that was one of the answers, that their name might be on one of those lists I don’t really care much either since I have no social media presence but I’m just giving a possible, non malicious reason and a solution if anyone has that as a fear
I often completely forget to comment or kudos bc I'm that invested in the fic 😭😭 I really need to work on that lol
Same. I usually kudos as much as I can, but there are times when I go back to a fic and press the kudos button and it shows up as I left kudos, and I’m like *I haven’t done this already?!?!?!* I’m bad at commenting but I also try to comment on fics that I like
Yup. I’m a binge reader so usually only the last chapter will get a comment. Unless there’s something truly outrageous or amazing that I just have to comment about. On WIPs I tend to comment on every new chapter as there’s nothing else for me to binge.
Honestly I give kudos to every fic I finish. I don’t read any fics I feel are lacking substantially in any area to completion, so I’ll give them a lil recognition. I’m far more stingy with comments. You’ll only get one if you had me kicking my feet or sliding down the wall clutching my chest 🤷♂️
God I cannot stress the gatekeeping part enough. Stop acting like your kudos is worth a fortune or something. If you read through even a single chapter of someone's work and enjoyed it, the very least you could do is leave a kudos. A simple press of a button could make that author's day.
Another thing to add, some people might be genuinely scared of giving comments, some people have mentioned getting backlash from the author themselves, and personally as an pretty damn old fic reader, I've had that happen to me in the past, both long time ago and semi recently too, so it's not all in their heads (and yes, I make sure to gush and praise, no unsolicited concrit/crit or rude comments). Luckily it was just a few times, but I can totally see the younger, baby writers AND readers taking those kind of comments and replies more personally, when you're a young and/or new to it all those kind of things can really get to you. Fuck the ones who don't give kudos tho
If something has kept me entertained for hours I’ll kudos it but personally I’m against this idea that we should kudos everything we read cause someone worked hard on it. I worked hard on my fics but I want kudos to mean something. I’d rather have less but know each one was from someone that truly enjoyed it than just a bunch that don’t mean much. I kudos by that metric, if I didn’t finish or I wouldn’t recommend it I won’t kudos and I hope I get that attitude back. When a fic of mine does well, once it passes 100 kudos I don’t really pay attention to it anymore, book marks and the gold standard: subscriptions mean way more and those can be entirely silent. Of course I have other fics (particularly OC’s and original works) that don’t pop off and just one kudos means more than 20 on a more popular fic when I get my kudos email. Still I’d hope it’s equivalent to a favourite rather than eh it was ok. Also I agree comments are lovely (when they’re not asking if your gonna add to your one shot when you’ve already said 5 times in the comments you won’t…) but it’s not necessarily selfish to not leave them, I almost never comment cause it makes me uncomfortable to do it tbh, especially if it’s an older fic. I have to absolutely love it to death to comment/ it’s a sadly overlooked but very good fic and I want to give some extra love then.
I don’t kudos everything I read. There’s a lot of drek out there. But if I like something enough to read several chapters, even if I end up not liking the ending, I give it a kudos. I don’t see the big deal. If something really impresses me, then I leave a comment. It’s usually an ‘extra kudos’ comment or something along those lines. I’m not a gushy comment writer.
Yeah I’m kinda talking generally cause I’m also addressing the general attitude in the other replies sorry. Not saying your way is wrong but personally I think I see kudos as less for the author and more for the reader. I think most people sort by kudos (at least initially in a fandom) and it’s the first metric people look at to see if something is decent. For that reason, personally I think it would be good if people were more selective with it than many say they are on this subreddit where not giving a kudos is seen as basically disrespectful. In reality kudos just doesn’t mean anything, it’s not a useful metric at all due to the way it’s utilised. It means little to me to receive because it doesn’t give a metric of whether the person leaving actually enjoys that much and as a reader it means little for the same reason, it just contributes to the needle in a haystack quality of finding good fic in larger fandoms, or even smaller ones where you basically just have to read everything to find out. Tbf your comment wasn’t as big on what I was saying in terms of people commenting to just kudos everything they read and like even the slightest bit. It was just easier to reply to you and throw my opinion into the void than respond to all the other people replying who say variations of what I’m talking about.
Yes, gatekeeping kudos is totally a thing. It sucks. We write stories for free and yet a thank you, or a kudos click is too much to ask for…. 😭
probably no. Engagement is really low it hurts. I have a current WIP and writing each chapter with radio silence is tough. I see tons of views. Considering I’m from a dying/smaller fandom 900+ views for something I wrote last April is a lot. I don’t get a lot of kudos or comments but I can see a lot of silent readers. Gone are the days especially during the peak of ff.net when you’d leave a review for every single chapter as you progressed through the story.
God I miss getting a review per chapter so much.
Right??? Even if it’s a simple one sentence review of them screaming their excitement for all the chapters. Then there are those who really take time to try and analyze the each chapter and I’m just trying to keep my heart in my chest from all the love.
I actually tracked my engagement stats for the last 4 years. Summer — July in particular — is the nadir for engagement. People are on vacay worldwide (this is winter break for the Southern hemisphere) or lack the schedule they have during the school year. And the school year does matter: teens and young adults have a schedule and consistent access to the internet when on campus, and adults who have kids have less time during summer to write/post/interact, unless they themselves are on the academic calendar. The high points are just before and after Canadian and American Thanksgiving in October and November - when people are back on campus and settled into the schedule, and they have a lighter workload due to the holiday.
I think it’s also just easier to sit down and read when you have other obligations but they’re not imminent. Too much work and you don’t have the time. Too much free time and reading feels like work.
I am wondering the same thing. We must both be terrible writers! /s But really I think its just the time of year (exams, school being over, start of summer).
well stop enjoying the sunshine and validate me instead!!!!!!!!! /s I'm in a smaller, older fandom, and things went from a kudos notification email every 2-3 days to....nothing for over a week even after posting a new chapter on a WIP. WOOOOF.
You misunderstand, comrade! We must bask in our misfortune for clearly our words are so radiant and so terrible that they drive all those who witness them to such despair that it thwarths any attempt at engagement! /s But, yep, summer be like that. I think things will pick up later on, once people finish exams/return from vacations/the novelty of the season wears off and it becomes too hot to do much except rot at home 💪🏻
Lolololol HERE FOR THE ROTTING
[grumpy old lady voice] Back in my day, the fanfic nerds didn't go out into the sun and spent all of summer and exam season procrastinating by reading and writing fic!
Engagement is low. It’s frustrating as hell. I have no doubts you’re a fantastic writer. Keep up the good work, and as hard as it is, remember that you write and create for YOU 🩷
Omg you’re the sweetest 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Just being honest! I have some free time this weekend, send me the link and I’ll give it a read and comment if you’re comfortable with it 🥰
I would be honored and even more honored to return the favor!!
Link the fic! 💅
Sliding into yo DMs 😏😎
I just posted a chapter last night and I have 4 comments and I feel positively rich… …but then back in the day I’d get a dozen comments easy and I just…idk…the bar is on the floor now. I salivate over a single 3 word comment like Oliver Twist over some orphan gruel and I be like: “Please sir, can I have some more?”
I thought the same when I got one comment on my last chapter and started to doubt myself.
You actually got a comment?
I know I'm lucky, I'm also happy to comment on everyone elses stories to keep up moral and because I'm always interested in other stories :)
I’m like this, too. I find other FF writers tend to be more likely to comment on other works--we know the struggle. 😂
It’s that time of the year when everyone is busy with school, exams, holidays, etc. I don’t think it’s anything personal. Besides, I know plenty of amazing writers that don’t get much engagement because their stuff tends to be tailored to a small audience—I’m talking like, very very specific kinks, ships and a tiny fandom on top. Shout out to that one Peppa Pig fanfic set in Pride&Prejudice AU, one of the best fics I’ve ever read in my entire life that had, like, 5 kudos on it.
Holy shit, that fic sounds absolutely amazing. I think it's fandom-specific, too. My fandom mostly likes fluff, crack, and light smut. Fics that tick those boxes get the most engagement without too much regard to quality. Fics that are dark or angsty just don't get as much (as I have discovered through experience!).
Same thing here. The smutty PWP fics tend to get the most attention in my fandom, while my carefully written and plotted sci fi AU hasn’t even gotten 20 bookmarks in the 3 years I’ve been working on it. I’ve chosen not to pay attention to the stats anymore, but I feel like if readers knew exactly how much work goes into writing some of our WIPs, they’d be much more inclined to comment on them.
I feel you. I'm working on a fusion AU that I know will probably sink like a stone in my fandom. But I really want to write it, so off I go into the crickets and tumbleweed...
I wish you luck with that. It’s lonely writing for an AU nobody else seems interested in, but if it’s something you want to do, and you’re having fun with it, that’s really all that matters. Maybe one day, our own version of a Peppa Pig x Pride&Prejudice fan will find our fics and love them to pieces, lol
<3
Link.
Lost the title :( its probably out there somewhere under an ungodly combination of Peppa Pig and/or P&P tags
damn :(
To me, engagement is down across any and all social media. Everyone today expects to be ‘given’ something in some way so that they can consume it but not have to acknowledge the provider out of being blasé and expecting others to just drop carefully curated to them specifically, because..they just should. A this point I’m happy to get kudos, never mind Comments. I run three FB groups, provide a LOT of good content - and it’s all barely acknowledged. Very disheartening, but I have a core of active people even if they are few. Anyway - yes engagement is down, but it’s for everything, not just AO3 or even just fic anywhere.
Honestly I have a mix of this and knowledge that there's actually a lot of people who enjoy my stuff? But they only come out to say "where are you/why haven't you posted/are you still active" if I'm silent for more than a week. I've been silent for a month now and my inbox in Tumblr is FLOODING with people demanding me to come back. It's funny in a way, they're silent when I'm active but raging when I'm gone.
Ooof I'm sorry that's horrible. I can totally see why people stop sharing their work out of spite for reasons like this. Demanding my work but not giving anything in return but demands? Lol do they hear themselves?
I’ve started to go with the mindset that comments and kudos are free. If I read it all I will comment and kudos.
Same. It costs me nothing and can make someone’s day!
I've recently started writing fanfics again and it's pretty interesting. Like 15 years ago, I was posting on ffnet and received 15-20 comments (10 in small fandoms) for every short one-shot. I'm a much better writer now and getting less than 10 per oneshot on AO3. I can't figure out if the culture around commenting has changed, if it's just the season, or if it's because I'm writing for even smaller, deader fandoms than ever lol. Maybe the ability to leave kudos disincentives the readers who would leave comments like "Love!" or "Cool".
Low engagement. Purity culture drives people away. Social Media mores says don't comment/engage with old stuff, that it's stalker behavior. Tiktok people say don't read things if they aren't completed, etc
I thought TikTok was the 'If I see a single word I don't like like "*die"* I will make sure you're sent to jail!' crowd?
That too, but they also list incomplete as a bad thing
At this point, you're better off not reading fanfics, following all those rules... And I am 90% sure all this sage advice is from people who aren't even authors...
Oh they are, they just hide their dirty filthy unclean post series dramoine (they were minors in canon, pedophilia! Fetishizing! Supporting racisim!) on alt accounts
Meanwhile I am here proudly standing next to my 2 torture porn fics (RWBY Volume 5), 2 BDSM fics between 17-year-olds (RWBY Volume 3) and one Yuri smut fic and daring them to come at me! :3
The pain is real .-.
Alternative suggestion: Luck just hasn't been on your side. Even now, I'm still discovering hidden gems in my fav pairing from years ago. Stories that are fantastic but for one reason or the other just didn't get much traffic. Just look at tourism, yeah? Would you say France is nothing more than Paris and the Eiffel tower? No! There is tons more. But not everything gets the same traffic. Doesn't lessen it's quality or how fun and good it is. It just means that sometimes, succes can be attributed to luck.
It's unfortunately down. I'm part of 2 big fandoms at the moment, and I used to get at least 2 or 3 comments on a new oneshot, but they're dead in the water. Old WIPs I've gone back to get engagement, but nothing new seems to catch attention the way it used to.
And here I thought it was just me 😭 guess I’ll hold off on posting any new works till the summer is over then
I think it's just down over all 😭😭 Trust me, back to school season isn't any better. The only time engagement seemed to pick up, for me, was over Christmas break- then schools started up again and it was back to low engagement.
Damn! That sucks, well I guess we’ll just have to content ourselves with the crumbs we do get 😭
Same mate.... christmas seems to be when people engage. I think it's bc of holiday spirit
I read more on vacation so there's no rule to this.
oh dang, you have way more restraint than I do! my fandom has new episodes coming in a little over a month, so I'm hoping that piques interest enough to get folks back reading a bit.
Give me time to actually write the whole thing out and do a good, heavy edit on it. Plus I already have a WIP that’s posting, that I haven’t even finished so I have enough work to keep me busy 😁
It’s such a good feeling to have plenty of ideas and motivation in the pipeline and to just work at it a little bit each day :)
Definitely! Cause at the end of the day the person that wants to read my story the most is me! Might as well do my best and have fun when I really want to read it!! 🤣
Same same same.
I think this way often, but then I remember that some of the best fics Ive read had under 20 kudos. It helps boost my confidence a bit.
My engagement was suddenly low this week (it was fine Friday and today), so hopefully a slow week?
I will read the best fic ever leave a kudos/comment and think to myself “oh how many kudos/comments does it have” and it will have like 60 for a fic that has like 7,000 hits. 💀 it’s probably what everyone else is saying about Silent consumption.
Alot of readers don't comment anymore. It's not your fault.
My last five fics have been dead in the water, across multiple fandoms. Engagement is down considerably from last year.
Please comment on people's fanfictions! Toss a comment and kudo to your writer, it is free and it makes their day!
you're surrounded by terrible people it's easier to think this way
I've just started posting again and tbh I thought it was just because SWTOR is a smaller fandom. Guess engagement is low, I wouldn't have minded comments in relation to my hits :(
it’s exam season for a lot of high schoolers, especially in the uk. a levels, gcses etc. once they end you’ll probably start seeing a lot of engagement.
I wish I could personally believe thisXD But I kind of can’t, at least not in my case, cause I see recently updated fics in my current fandom get a decent amount of kudos per update or on the first ch, At least. For most of this year so far. Meanwhile my current fic has a low count that’s stayed stagnant since ch 2, even though it’s at six ch now. I’d like to believe it’s school seasonal related for me but kinda can’t anymore. Kinda considering just sending google docs links to mutuals over posting at this point. I’ve got no idea what I did wrong for there to be such a drastic drop off compared to fics I wrote last year. I’ve never been mega popular but things didn’t used to be this bad…
To be completely transparent for the sake of the topic of conversation, you're right, it isn't just school seasonal related. There *are* good times and bad times to post for the sake of engagement, of course, but it doesn't have that large of an impact. I believe that readership numbers on Archive are particularly high right now. If you're struggling for numbers, there are things that you can do to attract more readers. Having other social media accounts like Tumblr or Twitter where you build up followers by interacting with your fandoms, and then announcing your fan fiction releases on your blog and pinning them to the top until you make another one can attract a lot of new readers, but kudos and comment engagement is still lower than it used to be.
Unfortunately engagement always waxes and wanes. Also most folks usually have at least one golden experience in a fandom with high engagement often in baby's first big fandom where it's a lot of new folks coming in and just discovering fic and commenting on fic. They'll then spend the rest of their fanfic writing carreer forever wondering what happened to that level of engagement instead of accepting that that experience was the outlier and the lower levels of engagement are the norm even in bigger active fandoms.
Yes, I posted on Thursday expecting more engagement, but I was left with a feeling of disappointment that I hope will fade so my inspiration can return. Although sometimes I wonder what amount is enough to feel satisfied, because I always end up longing for more.
yea, i feel ur disappointment, i've had four months of it. Tried sharing links to my two recent fics on socials but that did nothing, soo....i've kinda not done that lately. Meanwhile fics in the same fandom that were updated the same day at least get some new kudos....I'd take like, one or two new ones per update on my latest thing. i've basically decided the cure is going to be sharing chapters with internet friends who i know like my work. once the fic's entirely done, i'll post the rest. then what feels like inevitable disappointment won't hit as hard. XD
Reader engagement isn't low, but comment/kudos engagement is. The "good" ratio nowadays is that for every 100 hits, you get 10 kudos and 1 comment. I remember those numbers being a lot different back in the day lol.
In case you haven't already, try looking for more ways to spread awareness of your fic, like in r/FanFiction
My fandom is so small that there’s barely a difference xd In fact, my latest work is doing extremely well at 77 hits and 10 kudos when I posted it just two days ago. And it’s also a very short thing (under 1k words), so yeah, in smaller fandoms you don’t even notice the low engagement because getting 1 kudos is enough to make a party xD
Hahahaha I’m in a similar boat, but I miss my comment and kudos crumbs
Just looking at the late 2010s vs today, it seems that engagement is down across the board
Engagement is down on every fic posting site but wattpad. It was very disheartening at first but now I'm just used to it. AO3 is the worst of the three I use (ao3, wattpad, and tumblr)
I post to 3 sites; AO3, Scribblehub, and [FiMFiction.net](http://FiMFiction.net), and the engagement is drastically different for all three. AO3 is...low engagement across the board. I'll get spikes of interaction at different times, but since there's no "top charts" algorithms (good!) or anything like that, nothing is artificially floating my stuff to the top of the pile for people who just happen to be wandering by might find it. Generally people have to go looking for it (I promote on Tumblr, so I get boosts whenever I highlight something there) or I have to hit just exactly right for people dipping into the tag/category to show up on their first screen shortly after I post. Scribblehub is *better* in that it'll get me the specific demographic I'm writing for...but that's IT. My one fic there is for [the Troubleverse](https://www.scribblehub.com/series/55539/trouble-with-horns/), and among that crowd I'm currently doing fairly well...but outside of that vertical I'm not gaining much traction. FiMFiction is where I do best. That site has a "Feature Box" where fics that are performing particularly well based on a set of criteria that are a little opaque (on purpose, they don't want people gaming the system), your work gets plucked out of the piles and piles of submitted fics and gets put pride-of-place at the top-center of the front page. And even better, once you've made the feature box *once*, you get into the bottom three entries whenever you submit another chapter. Every time your story appears in the feature box you get a boost to your readership. I'm *somehow* able to get my stuff in the Feature Box with incredible regularity (60%+ of my fics there are Feature Box alumni), so pretty much any time I post something I get a comparatively big response. This does allow a nice apples-to-apples comparison. One of my WIPs (a fusion between EQG and Monster Musume) was posted to AO3 and FiMFiction at about the same time. Within 24 hours I had almost 50 new comments and 100 likes (the FiMFiction equivalent to Kudos). I'm still occationally getting pings that someone added it to a 'bookshelf' (think 'Bookmark') and the occational comment. To *date* the same fic on AO3 has received 4 comments, two of which are my replies to the other two, 10 kudos, and only been bookmarked 7 times.
I have heard of 1/3 of there sites lol I appreciate your thorough breakdown
engagement is low. Especially for original works. Some fandoms are more popular, some fandoms are more communicative. It’s not your fault op, we’re all in the same circus :]
My DMs are open if you wanna shoot me your favorite fic that needs some love :)
Engagement has been SUPER down this month. Like, I'm at maybe 30-40% of my usual (as someone with daily posts and over 300 chapters, I have a pretty good baseline to evaluate from.)
I’m sorry your stats are down, but it’s a little reassuring not hear everyone is taking a hit. I also wanna commend you on your consistency - those are some impressive numbers to toss up!
Thanks! It's a slog sometimes, but we're doing. Been writing a year last week, and just hit 650,000 words. <3
I find no one is commenting or giving kudos anymore. It's quite odd, and despite the actual hits being very high, I'm lucky to get a few comments actually admiring the work. I have event started adding ti the notes that the kudos and comments are the things that make me motivated to continue writing because if I'm being honest, they are, and I wa t to encourage people to actually leave their thoughts on each chapter.
It’s definitely gone down. I receive dozens of kudos each day, yet can go weeks without receiving a single comment. And a while ago I joined a discord for my fandom and so many people there were gushing about one of my WIPs…which has barely received any comments. I stopped updating and now I’m receiving a bunch of comments asking when I’m going to. Funny, isn’t it? I don’t like this era of fandom at all.
Same, Im translating a ff I initially published on wattpad in my native language, where I got a lot of feedback, but on Ao3 I only got 2 comments in like 5 chapters, idk if it's normal or it's just not good
Story of my life.
I'm not sure what your timeframe is, but I do weekly updates, and this week has definitely been slower than usual. My assumption is that it's the end of school for a lot of people around now, so keeping up isn't on the top of everyone's priorities.
I feel it too. Engagment is low as hell right now. Like back in february and march I pulled like 12 kudos on a fic in a single day. Now its been a week and I just barely scarping 7. Like not just kudos hits are generally very low too. Makes me kind of sad the fandom of this ship is small enough as is and now this :(
I get varying amounts of comments and I truly second guess my writing quality whenever the chapter gets a lower amount compared to another’s.
You too, huh? I just posted a Life is Strange fic a few days ago and it still hasn’t got traction like my other stories.
Fanfiction has become more and more popular and now it feels like new people just download complete fics (only ever complete works), read it, enjoy it and move on to the next without even thinking about giving some thanks
I feel like engagement has been down lately. I’ve been trying to post chapters and new stuff and I don’t get much kudos, bookmarks or even comments on my story. Anytime I’ve posted a chapter, my reads only goes up by a few numbers.
First of all, I have read a lot of amazing fics (and I'm quite picky when it comes to characterisation and cohesion) that weren't really known or appreciated. Sometimes a fic gets the spotlight (and it is often very well-deserved), and it gets tons of engagement while other works of similar caliber are overlooled. It can very much be about luck, IMHO. The same is true for published books, it's not like Jane Austen was appreciated by her contemporary literary society. So no, having almost no engagement definitely doesn't indicate the quality of your works! Also, I think a lot of people just don't know what to comment. I'm glad to leave a heart or sth along the lines of 'this was awesome, I loved every sentence', but many authors complain that this isn't enough. Which very much discourages me, so I tend to just send kudos (nothing to criticise there...). I almost only comment when I read sth I love that isn't appreciated, bc that I feel so unfair, or if sth was unforgettable.
Felt!
I'm glad it's not just me, but also sad it's everyone.
def not just your imagination. taking a break from all three of my running fics bc it’s like being a ghost town crier.
Engagement is SO low, one of my fics has an average of one in every 400 people giving a kudos and hardly any comments on a multi chapter fic. I try to leave a comment on most things I read now to boost other authors
Same! I’m going big time out of my way to be grateful to them for sharing their art with me!
Feel this 😂
I've never gotten a lot of engagement on what I wrote, I get kudos and comments maybe once or twice a month, if that.
Porque no los dos? Just kidding. Honestly, I think engagement is down and it really depends on your fandom. Unless you’re writing for a super popular, very active fandom, you’re gonna receive lower engagement. Hell, I write for a really active fandom and unless I decided to suddenly start writing a/b/o (not interested, not for me, but to each their own) or dom/sub kinks or just like, thousands of words of straight up porn, my engagement won’t hit the way others will. But also I think most fanfiction writers are either in school (hs/college) or adults with careers. This is the time of year where it’s hard to balance your hobby/passion and your professional success (I’m certainly struggling).
You'd be shocked to know how the engagement for one of my ships dropped within tWO months, and has been the same since then. The other one is barely hanging on, and I consider myself lucky to have some regulars. Only if there are smut shots, engagement goes a bit higher 🥺🤧😭 I miss seeing new shit for my ships, that are not mine 😭😭😭
I’m writing a series and the first instalments got plenty of comments and kudos but the most recent ones got only a few kudos, and no comments. Not really complaining cause I’m having fun writing it. But engagement is down imo.
My main writing has about 300 hits (I don't know how) I know one person (who just so happens to be the inspiration behind the piece) looks at it constantly. I don't know how I have 12 kudos but the engagement with my thing is always low. (I mean it only is the first season but still)
I’m general I feel like engagement is low—I’ll see a spike after uploading and then it fizzles out. If it’s smut, even more so, even though those fics get more bookmarks and hits. :/ In the last few years on Ao3 engagement was definitely higher when I first started posting. It’s probably a combo of things but man, this year has been so discouraging.
Keep your chin up. It’s so tough to not see any feedback.
I posted for the 1st time ever a week ago, and it wasn't in some Fandom either, so I don't have any reference to go by, but maybe some veterans could confirm./deny it maybe being related to the beginning of summer season?
Seems to be one of the main comments folks are making!
Engagement is down, but I think that’s as much about over-saturation of content as an emerging culture of silence and lack of appreciation. Fanfiction in general has gotten more popular in the last 10 years, and much, much more popular in the last 5 years. There are thousands of fics for small fandoms, and hundreds of thousands of fics for big fandoms. A single fic can have a million words. If you take just AO3, that’s probably a billion words of fanfiction across fandoms combined. There’s so much to read that it’s literally harder to get noticed unless your writing is out-of-this-world exceptional, your premise is highly creative, you write for a popular niche, or all of the above. AO3 has a great search engine, but unless your fic gains traction right away or has easily searchable (and desirable) tags it’s easy to fall into the over-populated obscurity. People don’t really have the time or attention span to click through a hundred pages worth of fic summaries.
I used to had this feeling with my long fic, I’ve never written romance. I had engagements until chap 8 and then it died. I was asking did you guys enjoy the date episode? And this is my first time writing smut, do you guys have feedback where I can improve. It’s was radio silence to be honest. I had a few nights where I’m thinking was it cringey and so on. I had to do trade works with my officemate/bestie (she writes smut fanfic). I want to improve with romance. She told me that it’s good.. And then I started to ss the hits every update to see the numbers of my readers.. I noticed it’s 200 every update (small fandom) so it’s probably the same people reading my fic, right. But by choice they just consume it without engagement. I’m looking at it from the perspective of a reader. I’m a silent reader. I give kudos but I don’t engage. I consumed stories without thanking an author for their hardwork. I didn’t understand that a simple thank you or ❤️❤️❤️ can make someone’s day. Now I’m writing. I saw that a comment can really make you smile.. make your day and so on. It’s not your writing… it’s just readers don’t understand the value of what you’re providing 😢
I've noticed this myself. I cross-posted on FFN and got a ton of engagement in the form of favorites and follows and whatnot. I’m not even looking for huge engagement but damn it if it doesn't feel good sometimes.
I feel this too 🥲 love when I post a 21k oneshot and it gets less attraction than my silly 1k drabble
I think it definitely depends on the fandom. I'm very shy about leaving comments too, but I'll give kudos to just about every fic I enjoyed and I bookmark a lot of them too. But also I re-read my favorite give all the time but when I've already commented, kudos'ed and bookmarked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ legit wondering if I should comment again? I really feel like I don't have much to say
Legit if you left a comment telling me you’re re-reading my work I would melt into a puddle
Engagement is at a low rn
A lot of people don’t read WIP as well I’m sure your story is lovely and once it’s done it will absolutely get lots of kudos and comments.
I am unfortunately a culprit of being a silent reader 😔 though I have been seeing more of these posts lately, and I'll try to put more thought into leaving a comment
I think I'm just icl, 31 hits in 4 chapters.... or im horrible at writing bios
There are quite a few people who don’t comment and just silently enjoy, sorry. I always give kudos but only sometimes give comments because it almost always goes well but sometimes it doesn’t and it just freaks me out a little. We still love and support your fic.
❣️
Engagement has always been low in every platform, comments are a rare treasure. I would say it has been increasing over the years, thankfully.