It did for me in the beginning but I got used to it after a while. I just had to remind myself that the bookmarks and favorites were better than a like. It let me know someone was interested enough the story to want a notification it was updated. That meant folks enjoyed reading it and wanted more
It's a little annoying for Lois Lane's Night Out because while bookmarks help determine which chapters are updated first, likes determine whether or not a chapter gets updated at all. If a chapter has only four likes and twelve bookmarks, it's not getting a sequel. So that can be frustrating.
I am kinda new at this but I think likes help determine what branch people particularly like. Comments are also useful.
I honestly don’t give a shit what people do. Of course I love it when a chapter gets a lot of likes, but I never feel any particular way of whether they do or don’t. Liking helps me know which branches to really invest in but other than that I really don’t care. I don’t do this for a living or for money. I just do this for myself and for others’ enjoyment.
Well... Personally, I wouldn't stop writing if nobody would read/like it. But I might very well stop making my writing public. And Likes are kind of the payment you get for your effort.
Oh shit... I feel bad now... Honestly I'd never really bothered with likes... It always seemed more annoying to me than anything when I got a notification and it was just that someone liked a chapter, I consider actual engagement, comments, bookmarks, etc... far more meaningful, so it hadn't even occurred to me that people might actually care about likes... I'm sorry I'll try to like chapters from now on.
Well, comments are good, of course, and bookmarks means someone is following your story, but the question still stands: why they don't push the like button too?
I don't know personally as stated, seeing a like on my stories is more annoying than anything to me... It's like having someone review your story by saying, "It's good" it's not helpful... it doesn't tell me anything... I never thought about it as a way of essentially voting, but I can get that idea now.
I feel you. Before I became a writer on this site, I used to favorite/bookmark instead of liking as well. I do that because I simply want to "save" the material when I feel like needing it, and liking the chapter is an unnecessary move (sometimes I just forgot). Sometimes people just want a quick self touching session and the quickest way to do that is access their bookmarks or favorites. Clicking that like button is more like "an extra recognition". I actually went to my bookmarked stories and liked the chapters I used to read a lot, now that I understand how it feels like for authors to get no likes. Views >>> likes > bookmarks > favorites >comments. Just the way it is. Break down your longer chapters into several short ones might also help, sometimes I would get a dozen likes from a single reader for every chapter in a story.
I mean yeah I got that a lot... Just people liking basically every chapter of my story, which is possibly one of the reasons I wrote the concept off...
Lois Lane's Night Out has thousands of chapters, thousands of bookmarks, tens of thousands of likes, has been favorited over a thousand times... ...and dozens of comments. I think a "like" is a bit of a minimal engagement. You get that people "like" something about the chapter, but what they like is basically guesswork.
Might be helping in the derailment of the topic, but in my opinion, I'd rather take likes than a bookmark any day. A like means that someone might've scanned my chapter, or it's just the story owner (probably) appreciating that I contributed to their story. This is also why I give likes to those that write in my stories, as a way to show appreciation and motivate them to write further. As for bookmarks, well, they're no help. As I see it, someone thinks your story's interesting, or maybe a chapter, and possibly never show up again while an upvote is printed at the bottom of a chapter - and in my head, it's much more validating than a notification saying "oh hey, somebody noticed your story and might read it." Comments, however, are much more valuable (to me at least) as it mean that someone took some time of their day, read a story, and comment on it. Granted, they could be a variety of things such as constructive criticism, chapter ideas, simple approval or praise, or it could be someone I'm having a conversation with has replied, however rare that is. I see this a lot in Marcie and Gina, and it's one of those rare places that people - other than the forums - really interact with one another. But of course, that's just my personal opinion.
I mean definitely... Comments are the holy grail, that's actual interaction, that's proof that someone was interested enough in your story to actually take time to express an opinion about it, even a negative opinion still means that they cared enough to do so.
@Warden Well Marcie and Gina do cater more authors, who are naturally more inclined to engage with the community, so its probably a bit cheating. I think the most community activity I ever saw was on wilparus affection multiplier, that one had multiple comments on every chapter, which is pretty dang impressive. Its definitely not the norm tough. I was wondering why you suddenly liked one of my chapters lol by the way, you can turn like notifications off in the settings. I'm surprised at myself how much I care about likes. I used to think them stupid, but once you get hooked on them, you really want that little bit of endorphin validation. Damn drug. Also when someone stops liking your chapters, its the worst lol
When it comes to comments, it depends on what it is. I hate comments that just say “Update”. It’s not really useful to me, and as someone who has been writing online for awhile, it’s just annoying to see. I’d rather have a more thoughtful comment of what you and enjoy, and possibly some ideas on top of that instead of just a blanket “update” statement. Also in my opinion, the comments should really be about the contents of the story not about how I choose to write. First, most constructive feedback isn’t actually constructive, and a lot of it opinionated. So if you’re talking to me about grammar and that stuff, I’d rather that just be left out. If it’s truly unreadable, that’s a different story but there’s also a lot of flaws with trying to tell people about grammar rules because of the origins and intent of a lot of them. Generally though I do enjoy seeing comments as long as it isn’t the copy/pasted “update” comments.
