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Fed up with the lack of comments on your latest story?
Frustrated that it didn't earn as many Kudos points as you thought it deserved?
Do yourself a favour. Click on 'My Stories' and count the number of 'Daily Hits' your other pieces attracted. You may be surprised.
The last story I posted has managed about 150 daily hits so far. Of those, well over a quarter have gone on to take a look at 'Stop', and there has been significant interest in my earlier work too.
So I must be doing something right.
Comments
As I have
about twenty pages of my stories, it takes about two years to load, if it does so at all.
Angharad
amazing things
The one amazing thing and I don't even know how to explain it, is that The Dress Punishment still gets 30-50 reads a day, every day. That is wild. It has a lot of reads (over 30k) and I wonder what day it will hit 50k. Someone is reading it. Occasionally I'll even get another kudo on it so I know it's a real person somewhere. I wonder if I can ever capture lightening in a bottle like that again
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
It hurts me.
That my stories do not get lots of Kudos and Comments hurts me, but it is survivable. Yet, the "read" numbers are quite high. Does this mean that the majority of the readers simply do not care who they hurt? I can't say much because I am one of the guilty non-commenter types at times, those fowl personages.
Still there is a core, as small as it is, of other authors who tell me all sorts of soppy, embarrassingly kind things that make me blush to my toes. So, it is pleasing and gratifying that my work appeals to at least a few people.
Gwen
It's fun to see the total
But I don't put much stock in them. All the number of hits tells you is that someone looked at your story. I like to see the final number on the last installment of a series to show how much of a story is read. The way I figure it the final number are the folks that really read the story and didn't close it before it was read. The way it works out is that about one third of the people who open the first chapter will finish the story. Take a series and look at the last post and that's the amout of readers who read your story. If the story is a stand alone take the number of reads and divide the number by three and that's approximately the number that read your story. Kudos and comments are accurate ways of showing interest in your story, but remember there are a lot of readers too lazy to even touch the kudos button, let alone comment. I treasure comments because it shows someone took the time to show their appreaciation for your work. This is just my point of view and my math could very well be wrong, but I looked at my stories and they all seem to work out the same. Like I say, I write for myself and if others like it then I'm pleased, Arecee
One Caveat...
...especially for stories with sequels or others using the same characters, there tends to be a lot of double-dipping, so to speak, by readers when or just before the new series starts. For that type of story, the next-to-last installment is probably a better indicator.
A number of other multipart tales have the same characteristic but to a lesser degree, and by no means do all of them fit that model.
Some examples: There are 500 "extra" hits on the final chapter of Admiral Krunch's Being Christina Chase, 500 extra on Sara Lynn Morgan's The Unicorn's Gift, 400 on Louise Anne Smithson's Pandora's Trunk, 450 on Grover's End of the World. Many others, like Arecee's own Twins and Lashes, have fewer hits on the final chapter (700 less and 300 less respectively) than the penultimate one. I haven't been able so far to spot a trend as to where the difference lies, if it's not random noise. Seemed worth mentioning, though.
Eric
I am thankful for each and
I am thankful for each and every kudo and comment and more importantly the daily hits I get. I do use them to see which stories are more popular and try to write stories in that vein. Comments can be a double edge sword in that sometimes stories can provoke responses that are not favorable. I do try to use those comments though to evaluate how I could have made a better story. Again I want to thank each and everyone of you who read my stories and enjoy them and that I think is the important thing, isn't it?
Kudos Button
The problem with the Kudos button for me is having to be logged in for the button to work.
Clicking the kudos button is the least I can do in return
The stories here at BCTS are given to me to enjoy for free. Each has been a great effort to create and the least I can do is show some appreciation.
I have adopted a general rule: When ever I read something, either a complete story or "just" a part of a series, I give a kudos if the story was interesting/good enough for me to read it to the end.
I don't know if the Kudos button works in the "printer friendly" version (It does say: 'Thank you for the kudos') and I faithfully click on the button for each part in a series.
I rarely leave a comment, because often the only thing I can think of saying is: "I loved this story."
Kudos and comments are wonderful
It is nice to get kudos and comments. It's probably like unto an emotional paycheck. As a reader I understand that and leave a long trail of kudos for any story I read and like which is most of them. I comment if I have something to say that hasn't already been said six times. I don't think repetition helps that much.
What you writers may not remember is that most of the readers are not members, so to speak. Right now there are 31 "members" signed in to BCTS. They are the only ones who can leave kudos and comments. I'll bet that there are a lot more readers who like your work but haven't for whatever reason signed in so that they can comment. Your reads number is probably a better indicator of your real readership. If the numbers continue as a story progresses then you have readers who like your story. If the numbers trail off after a few chapters then interest may be falling off.
If you are a writer who posts a chapter of a given story only once every month or two then people may not be reading because they have forgotten that they have been reading a given story. For a story that looks promising, I may wait until I think it is complete or nearly so before beginning to read the story. My memory is not such that I can remember the early chapters of a story that started months ago and the chapters appear sporadically. I would much rather read a story straight through rather than stretch it out for months. The exception to this is a story that goes on for years but has a posting almost every day. We all know of what I speak. I don't understand a writer who has six or eight stories going at one time and posts a chapter of any given story once every two or three months. My thought is to work on them one at a time and post that story more frequently.
These are my thoughts. Thank you for allowing me to share and for listening. The stories you write and posted here and on Amazon are a very important part of my days.
Thanks,
ValerieR
Much Love,
Valerie R
I'm guilty
I probably read stories here a year before I registered. Even after registering it wasn't until I started to post my own story that I understood what kudos were and how to give them.
I don't comment much because most of the time I don't feel I can contribute much or else it pushes an emotional hot button and better left unsaid. I don't know that it would help but if there was a quick reply option it might help people to comment. Or maybe that is what the "Good Story" is for?
But I do want to thank all the writers that have provided me hours of entertainment. And it is the welcoming spirit of this community that gave me the courage to begin to write after so many years of excuses of not "good enough." And that is a club I have wielded often on myself.
I remember a study that asked people to describe the people in a room and their own description. The result was that harshest description of ourselves are ourselves.
But thanks again to you writers.
Katelyn
I've added a special request.
I've added the picture below as the last line in my story. It does seem to make some difference, increasing the number of Kudos by up to 20%.
But the number of Kudos is only a small percentage of the total number of reads, and I guess it's just one of those things which you have to get used to. I have found Kudos incredibly useful in providing objective feedback.
It was observing that a story about SIGHS (my readers will know what I'm talking about) was my most highest marked story in Kudos points which caused me to write several more stories in the SIGHS series. Now, my five SIGHS stories are the top five stories in Kudos points out of the 40 or stories I've written.