I am not going to beg for kudos on Mercy, but I am curious.
258 people liked the first chapter of Mercy enough to give it a kudo.
With every chapter that number has declined, to the point that the latest chapter has 63 kudos at the moment.
If you gave a kudo to chapter one, but have since dropped away from liking the story, and you're comfortable sharing, I would really like to know why.
Too short chapters? Too long a break between chapters?
Anything else that might bring you back ?
I really wanted this story to be special. Am I failing at this?
Comments
Interesting.
"If you gave a kudo to chapter one, but have since dropped away from liking the story, and you're comfortable sharing, I would really like to know why."
That happened to me recently as well. Do not worry about it. As long as you get kudos and positive comments you are doing fine.
Sample of One
Judging by my own behavior, I simply forget to give kudos to the later chapters. Not ideal but I know I do it.
Also, I think that a lot of kudos are given on re-reads and earlier episodes get more re-reads.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
kudos
I down load to a reader to be out doors this week is meet the wolf pups for a head count or is that a nose count why not count the reads I read about half of the stories good fiction is hard to come by thanks to all the writers
Have a good day and enjoy life.
People forget to hit that
People forget to hit that kudos button each time. Simple as that.
Means Nothing
IIRC kudos were put in place so that people that didn't have time to leave a comment could click on the kudo button. There is no absolute value that can be assigned to a kudo. Like Erin said, people don't always click on the kudos button for many reasons. I myself often forget to hit kudos after the first chapter, particularly if there are several chapters already posted. The only thing on my mind is continuing on to the next chapter. Or if the story is good sized I'll download the txt version and read it offline. So relax and take a chill pill, there is nothing to worry about.
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Kudos mean everything
To me, Kudos are the only objective measurement of my stories' popularity. Comments represent such a tiny fraction of readers, who are probably not typical of the mass readership. In any case, comments may be good or bad. It really amuses me that there is a totally meaningless comment count column in the "My Stories" page and you can sort on it, whereas you can't sort on the Kudos figure. Crazy!
Generally I turn off public comments and rely entirely on the kudos count to deduce what the majority of readers like and what they don't. Based upon the high kudos for just one of my stories several years ago (which incidentally got one of my worst comments), I wrote more to the same formula, which also got higher kudos than all my other stories. It doesn't mean to say I exclusively stick to that formula, but at least I know what pleases the masses - which is never a bad thing.
The 10% of hits figure used by Samantha is a reasonable benchmark in the early days. Later on, it appears many readers can't be arsed to press the kudos button, or perhaps they feel that authors don't monitor older stories. I do.
But getting down to your basic question about decreasing kudos for your serial chapters, I would say (as a non-reader of it) it indicates it's time to move onto something new. With all serials, you're reliant upon Day One readers sticking through to the end. Inevitably readers get sick, die and get bored. Take the message, finish it off and move on.
Kudos don't mean everthing
Kudos are in no way an objective measurement. You have a self-selected pool of respondents doing the voting which warps the results. If you have ever paid attention to the surveys done by TV stations you will notice they always post a disclaimer concerning the lack of accuracy of the results. Unless a true random pool of participants is used there is no possible way to derive accurate conclusionso from biased data.
Edit/add Example: You post a story that 100 readers see. Of that 100, 60 people don't even click on the story for various reasons - they don't like the keywords or the description in the teaser or maybe they just don't like the author. That eliminates 60 clicks right away.
Of the 40 left 25 click the kudo. The remaining 15 forgot to click on the kudo or they didn't like the story or whatever. But that's alright, 62% liked the story, right? Actually no. There were 100 possible readers of which 25 clicked the kudos. That gives an actual favorable response of 25%. Now, if this were a political poll then 25 were in favor, 15 were opposed, and a whopping 60 were undecided. That kind of response would trouble any campaign, something needs to be done to convert the undecided.
Which brings up another point, although it doesn't necessarily apply here. Certain authors are going to draw better response rates just because of who they are. It's the nature of the human beast. This is demonstrated by moviemakers all the time. Every movie tries to attract the big name talent because that pulls in the audience. If all other things are equal, same cast, same script, same quality of acting, same everything, the movie with the big name star will draw more attendance than the movie with an unknown actor.
So, if you think the number of kudos gives an objective representation of the audience then you are sadly deluding yourself.
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
time and Kudos
Time seems to correct things.
I wrote a piece in 2011 that was posted in 18 chapters. Two weeks ago, the whole set reached 100 Kudos points. Some bits got it at the time of posting.
I have a mental check that divides the Number of Kudos by the number of views. If 1 in 10 readers (or better) gives my piece the thumbs up then I'm happy.
However,
each author has their own measure of success/failure.
Samantha
PS, I often open a piece and decide that it isn't for me. That isn't to say that it isn't a good bit or work but it just does not grab my attention. I'm sure that I'm not alone in that.
Kudos are good, comments are better.
I use the 1-10 system too - mostly or more like 1-20 for me.
I agree that multi-chapter stories can get re-read from time to time and I'm reading too quickly to put a kudos on every chapter. Generally if the story clicks with me, the last current chapter gets the click.
I'd like to be able to attach a kudos to every chapter of a multi-section piece but on the other hand I want so much for the story to be complete when it get to the end. Most authors fail to say on either the last section or by editing the first one that the story is complete (which is a shame). But even this system, while it would get more kudos for middle-chapters would load the count frontwards.
In the meantime, if YOU enjoyed writing the story and you get some quality comments and some kudos - be happy. And write more. Be proud and ignore the boll-weevils of unkindness.
Thanks to all the authors on BCTS
Alys P
Kounting Kudos
Kudos, like the number of comments, have no correlation to the quality of the story -- or the writing.
That being said, I think the one-in-ten benchmark is fairly accurate for the first five hundred readers. Then maybe one-in-fifteen for the next thousand. After that, kudos are only rarely added.
And, that's a shame.
Every writer who makes an effort deserves thanks. When you have a meal at your parent's house do you neglect to thank them, even though they should know by now you don't like green beans? A small number of kudos says more about the readership on BC than it does about the quality of the writing.
A certain percentage of readers are looking for stroke fiction. If your story is PG-rated it's much harder for them to please themselves.
Many readers have very specific desires. If you want a large number of kudos, write about M to F transformations where the 10 - 14 year old protagonist becomes a beautiful young lady with lots of dresses and admirers. Every male in the story should be horribly flawed and severely punished for their misdeeds.
Find several people on BC who share your interests and values, and then write for them.
Mainly write for your own self-discovery and enjoyment.
JIll
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
You over rate porn!
Sorry, Jill, I expressed myself that way in order to be provocative!
But I write stories with varied amounts of sexual content, and my most popular stories, based upon the Kudos, are those which contain least amount of sexual content. I recently tried an experiment where readers could read the adulterated story, or they could click on links to get the unadulterated bits. Only about 10% read the unadulterated sections.
So your assumption that porn gets high kudos is totally at odds with my objectively measured experience.
I agree that we all have different ideas of what makes a good author, but I don't accept that any person has the right to say that what they read is of higher quality than what anyone else reads. I believe that those who cater for the masses are better authors than the James Joyces of this world. And lets not forget that Shakespeare and Dickens wrote for the masses.
losing track of stories
I started out loving this story but real life got in the way. Yours is one of those I've recently to find and start over. There must be a way for me to better organize stories so that I can separate those I can't to keep reading and those I don't.
To Read List
Having been on this site for many years, I still occasionally find new features I never knew about.
Perhaps there already is a "To Read" tag you can apply to a story, and then have a "To Read" list of stories. If it's not there already, it would be one of those things which would be great to have, but of course, I know the time and effort required to implement new facilities. An associated feature could flag up new chapters of a serial or series.
Kudos
If I take the time to read a story or a chapter of an ongoing story because it caught my attention, I'll give it a kudo, then read another piece.
About the only time that I won't give a kudo is if the story irritates me enough that it becomes unreadable, which is quite rare. I've read a lot of stories on this site in the last 32 months, and I think I've refused to give a kudo on maybe half a dozen stories/pieces.