How do you know your public perception as a CHYOA Author?

How do you know if people like your stuff? And whether or not you are one of the more popular CHYOA authors or if you need to put more effort in?

As far as I know my stories have never reached the top Stories of the Day. And my stories are typically very niche; sci-fi, Fantasy, transformation, and mind control. But I feel like I do alright as an Author as far as engaging with my readership.

Kind of curious how people think about writers here. Is there anyone you particularly like? And what do you like most?

Getting critiques that a writer can build from here is typically very difficult. Especially given the nature of erotica being seen by many as private.

 

How do you know if people like your stuff? And whether or not you are one of the more popular CHYOA authors or if you need to put more effort in?
Okay well, judging by your profile I'm guessing your question is more abstract than literal. I mean... how do you define popularity exactly? Currently? Unless you are Fantasy, ThreeNipps or Funatic you aren't that popular in the grand scheme of things. You can be popular within niches but even then... I mean some niches.... how do you measure popularity in likes? Like 10? 20? 40? It's impossible really given the small base of people that actually like stuff rather on this site. I don't know if you should really be worried about popularity as a writer and more about having fun. It does get weird if you write stuff and no one likes it and it feels like you are sending messages out into the darkness or a tree falling in an empty wood but if you are having fun you can just try different things and improve.

Getting critiques that a writer can build from here is typically very difficult. Especially given the nature of erotica being seen by many as private.
Yep. Unless you are very bad (mostly lots of grammar and spelling) or very good, most people won't comment or critique. I mean... they just want to fap and move on and that's fine. You can always try writing for a popular story that aligns with your fetishes and see if you get a response there.

You can always check the feed from time to time and see the stories that are constantly popping up and compare it to yours or check authors that get tons of likes and compare it to your writing. From what I gather from your own writing the stuff is quite terse and needs more meat but that's just a quick glance.

 

For what it's worth, here's my advice on gaining a following and building a successful/popular story.

1. Buildup is everything. You need the readers to care about the characters and story. If they don't, tons of them will leave after the first sex scene. Also, if readers are emotionally invested in what's happening before the dirty deed takes place, the payoff will be a lot higher.
2. Engage with readers in the comments. One way to do this is to leave a brief comment after you publish a chapter. Something like, "I was thinking about so and so... what do you think?" It encourages feedback/interaction and you'll notice a lot of the same folks showing up in future comment sections.
3. Don't exclusively write in one category. I know this sounds weird considering virtually all of my stuff is in the incest section. However, I've noticed that my contributions to "The Affection Multiplier" and The "Anything" Promise have led to readers trying my other stories. For example, I'll notice someone new liking chapters in my TAM branch and then they'll check out "Living in Your Sister's Shadow." After I finish some of the projects I'm currently working on, I plan on trying out some of the other popular categories.
4. Collaborate with other authors. What's better than 1 person working on a story? 2. Or 3. Or 4. Or like 50 if it's one of the large public stories. A bunch of people that follow another author that you're working with will run across your work simply because you're writing in the same story. I've been working a lot with wilparu lately and it's a ton of fun. If you're having fun, your work will be at it's best.
5. Try to be consistent putting out content. This is something that I struggle with. Sometimes you just get busy and don't have time to write for a week. Something that I've been meaning to do (I think Durzan recommended it at one point) is to have a backlog of chapters saved up. It can feel amazing to publish like 5 chapters in a day. But maybe it's more advantageous as an author to hold on to a couple of them for later in the week when you're going to be swamped at work and too tired to do any writing when you get home. Like, that's literally what happened to me this past week.

I'll add more if I think of anything.

 

All great advice from an excellent author.

 

I suppose the obvious answer is the amount of likes. You know you’re really doing well if you get lots of chapter comments, that’s what I use as a judge of a very good chapter.
I’d actually say ‘don’t worry about it’ though. The most important thing is that you enjoy what you do and get a kick out of it. Everything else is a bonus .

 

I know my work is not for everyone. I'm lucky to get 10 likes on a post. I don't think any of my stories or chapters will ever make the most popular list.

 

Personally, I think likes can be a bit of a flawed perception when it pertains to quality.

A story that is frequently updated is naturally far more likely to get exposure and people liking content even if there are objectively better, but less known stories. Genre popularity plays a factor and also in the fact that a rough estimate would be that at least more than half of people just read things without hitting like even they enjoyed them. For a few reasons. Ranging from people without accounts to people just embarrass about admitting they are into a certain kind of thing.

Yes, likes are more likely on a good story, naturally. I just mean that it's difficult to quantify them as actually being a good indication of how well received something is versus just being how well known.

 

I don't know if there's a established way to measure popularity. Like Auraicide says, likes can be flawed way to see popularity. Depends on the user, some users prefers a medium quality writing if the story is about their interests, and other don't. I don't know if watchers could be seen as a popularity measure either.
But as FreeUse92 said,

, you should worry more about having fun writing that beign popular.
I think that's the principal pinnacle on what CHYOA.com stands: Respecting some minimal rules, write as you want, and whatever you want.

 

I think the best way to measure your popularity is occasionally. By which I mean, try to not think about it, which is incredibly difficult to do when you get alerts for every like or comment. I myself can never resist checking to see how my new chapter is ‘doing’ but I tell myself that I’m just interested in seeing if I’m getting better as a writer and if my story is striking a chord with the readers.

As others have said, simply using likes is a flawed stat because some genres are much more popular than others and there are other factors. Writers who have many smaller chapters tend to do well versus those who write very long chapters, but it’s not worth obsessing over those things. Comments are always precious to me as a writer, but as explained very well by others most readers won’t comment that often and that’s fine.

As a fairly new writer, I started looking at my own average likes per chapter as a rough guide. That way I’m only really gauging myself against my previous works. Now and then I’ll go to my profile and take a look at my total likes and see if my per chapter average is going up. If it is, great! If not, uhm, I’ll assume that some larger social force is at work and it’s a temporary dip. Oh, also look at authors in your genre you respect and use them as a benchmark, but maybe don’t pick the most popular one. I once made a note of my likes per chapter and was feeling good so I checked ThreeNipps profile and did the math and yikes I have a ways to go


Now, let’s talk about those people who read a dozen chapters of your story and then bookmark every single chapter but don’t like any. I mean, everyone should use CHYOA in whatever way works for them, but still I can’t help but be like

 

You can go into notification settings and turn off notifications for bookmarks.

 

I forgot about that, I should definitely do that. But still... why would someone have like 15 bookmarks of consecutive chapters in the same story how are you using bookmarks lol it just confuses me.

 

I found out the "Story of the Week" thing is shit after I learned it has like a 25 chapter depth minimum. I gave up trying to obtain it since I'm more likely to write one thick chapter rather than split it into three shorter ones.

I think I was pretty well received, despite my bum schedule and solo-authoring my stories. My stories are packed with intercourse, sexy-time in almost every chapter, I have images, and the quality is consistent throughout the story since I'm the only one writing. I'm not really sure what exactly I did right; maybe I just gave the non-con audience what they wanted, except I proofread, paragraphed and added pictures to my longer-than-most chapters.

 

I agree likes are not a wholly reliable gauge but in the absence of a better system it’s what we’ve got.

 

On a chapter basis, likes are actually a good way to measure popularity.
But popularity doesn't mean quality.

 

Admittedly there are times that I like chapters to encourage writers to keep on writing.

I've been in the pit where I'm not inspired to write because nobody reads my stories. So I thought I could try and help people out by liking chapters.

I can see how I could inflate their worries instead of helping them. So yes, I do agree on the fact that likes don't automatically mean the quality of a story, as they might just be a lazy reader pressing the thumbs up button and skimming through the page to the next one.

 

I don't know if likes per chapter is a good indicator that the writer is popular or the story is popular. I think it's a combination of likes/followers/writer's contribution range. If you look at some writers for Affection Multiplier (*ahem* like DimUse92) and the Gamer, they have huge likes per chapters but low followers so I'm guessing it's more to do with the story's popularity than the writer.

However take someone like ThreeNipps, Control Freak, and Fantasy who write for many different stories but can get huge likes per chapters regardless of what stories they contribute to and also their large followers count, you can reasonably say they are pretty popular. Again with such a low base of people that "like stuff" it's just silly to measure it IMO but there are levels to it.

 

(In that regard, I define popular as "accepted, followed, used, or done by many people," not "liked or enjoyed by many people")

Well, the best way to measure popularity might be to count "unique views per chapter." (you could create an average for an author's chapters though that number would be flawed as there would be less unique views deeper down the story.)

For quality, you could use "likes per unique views per [chapter/story/author]." The depth of a branch or number of chapters wouldn't matter then. (Different numbers of readers wouldn't matter then, though a higher/lower percentage of readers who don't like chapters at all would change the number as well.)

(The idea of "likes per unique views" is explained in more detail in the respective thread of the Suggestion subforum.)

 

As a one-story author, it's difficult for me to judge - when I do finally finish this story and start a new one, it'll be interesting to see how many folks still like/bookmark things - but hey, the story's been successful enough to get a spin-off, so I think that shows some degree of likeability.

 

I would say that chapter likes can be misleading in a frequently updated story. My most liked chapters all start from the initial branches, with the earliest being the most liked. That doesn't mean they are the most popular with readers that read the full series, just that more people are likely to read the early chapters. And since almost all my chapters have sexual content, readers can "finish" reading fairly early on.

However likes deep in or likes well after a later chapter is published do give me some idea what is popular. Comments and messages more so, but of course these are even rarer.

Bookmarks are a great way to see what people want to see more of. I wish there was a way to see how many bookmarks a chapter has like you can with "likes".

 

Strongly agree about bookmarks.