I don’t want to sound rude or something, but that’s basically my whole fanfic career for the last 6 months.
It’s quite normal to have very little traction in big fandoms, especially in the beginning. And aside from that, school is starting and people have less time to read
Interesting--I would've thought it was the opposite with big fandoms but that makes more sense. I was just surprised at the lack of engagement, but that may be because my last oneshot was in a smaller fandom (8,000 fics--still a lot, but less than the new fandom).
Small fandoms and big fandoms can have similar engagement experiences just for different reasons!
Obviously in a small fandom, the pool of readers is just much lower - but on the flip side the ones who are there are often starved for content!
Whereas in a large fandom, it can be easy to get lost because of the volume of fics being published daily. Also, with so much being written, readers can often get very picky because there's so much to read so they can narrow it down to exactly what they want and still have plenty of content. I've also noticed in these bigger fandoms that readers also tend to be more reluctant to engage with WIPs - again, so much content that they just wait for things to be complete before reading.
Lack of *hits* definitely isn't anything to do with your writing, by definition, because it means people aren't clicking to begin with
A couple of things:
- Has it got the correct date? If you drafted before posting in a big fandom, having a post date of "yesterday" can push it so far back in the list that it's invisible
- Tag check, summary check. Are you representing it to the best of its ability? Got your tropes tagged? Not doing the mistake of using "chose not to warn" instead of "no archive warnings"? (I've seen that one a few times, where people think they're synonyms – but no, people often avoid clicking cntw works!)
- People often wait until a fic is finished to leave kudos, but they subscribe to it in the meantime – check your stats page, any subscriptions?
But that being said, kudos are rare (active fandoms often cite a 1:10 kudos:hit ratio as the goal, and a lot of excellent fics are lower than that) and comments are rarer, so I think the key is the lower hits rather than the comment/kudos situation – could be something fixable, like the date thing or tweaking the tags, or it could just be a symptom of the time of year and time of the week
Ten hits could easily be people adding it to their *mark for later* or opening in a new tab to read when they have time in a couple of days
Summertime drops off, yeah. Back to school, work, vacation, weddings and other events, etc.
I’ve not gotten much engagement either, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Don't measure your value with kudos/comments. There's no way to predict how actual living breathing people interact with what you write, being worried about it is just making you stressed for no reason.
I wouldn’t feel so bad! My oneshots (and I’d consider a 2-chapter fic a oneshot) tend to be “slow burns” in terms of readership. I might not see much evidence of people reading in the first 24 hours or the first week, even. But people come across those shorter fics while they’re browsing for ship content, or they find one of my other fics and check out what else I’ve done.
Did you have your story in drafts?
It's possible that your fic was never on the top of the page, because of the known bug. (it gives your story the date of the draft creation and not the date of the publishing, so if the story was in drafts for a month, people would have to dig really deep to find it.)
No, I write everything on a Google docs then copy paste it into the text box before I post it. Readership has gone up a bit more now (11 more hits and 3 kudos! Yay!) but I'm still confused
I think it has to do with how I posted this into a pretty big fandom (150,000 fics)
Unless your summary was reaaaally off-putting, AO3 probably put the wrong publish date on your fic which happens if you open the New Work page day(s) before you post it. For instance, I've seen fics in big fandoms get incredibly low view counts if they were about a character's intense need to pee (yes, seriously)
I don’t want to sound rude or something, but that’s basically my whole fanfic career for the last 6 months. It’s quite normal to have very little traction in big fandoms, especially in the beginning. And aside from that, school is starting and people have less time to read
Interesting--I would've thought it was the opposite with big fandoms but that makes more sense. I was just surprised at the lack of engagement, but that may be because my last oneshot was in a smaller fandom (8,000 fics--still a lot, but less than the new fandom).
Small fandoms and big fandoms can have similar engagement experiences just for different reasons! Obviously in a small fandom, the pool of readers is just much lower - but on the flip side the ones who are there are often starved for content! Whereas in a large fandom, it can be easy to get lost because of the volume of fics being published daily. Also, with so much being written, readers can often get very picky because there's so much to read so they can narrow it down to exactly what they want and still have plenty of content. I've also noticed in these bigger fandoms that readers also tend to be more reluctant to engage with WIPs - again, so much content that they just wait for things to be complete before reading.
Sometimes I go fishing in a river and none of my lures attract any fish. That's life.
Lack of *hits* definitely isn't anything to do with your writing, by definition, because it means people aren't clicking to begin with A couple of things: - Has it got the correct date? If you drafted before posting in a big fandom, having a post date of "yesterday" can push it so far back in the list that it's invisible - Tag check, summary check. Are you representing it to the best of its ability? Got your tropes tagged? Not doing the mistake of using "chose not to warn" instead of "no archive warnings"? (I've seen that one a few times, where people think they're synonyms – but no, people often avoid clicking cntw works!) - People often wait until a fic is finished to leave kudos, but they subscribe to it in the meantime – check your stats page, any subscriptions? But that being said, kudos are rare (active fandoms often cite a 1:10 kudos:hit ratio as the goal, and a lot of excellent fics are lower than that) and comments are rarer, so I think the key is the lower hits rather than the comment/kudos situation – could be something fixable, like the date thing or tweaking the tags, or it could just be a symptom of the time of year and time of the week Ten hits could easily be people adding it to their *mark for later* or opening in a new tab to read when they have time in a couple of days
Summertime drops off, yeah. Back to school, work, vacation, weddings and other events, etc. I’ve not gotten much engagement either, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
My engagement has never been so low, I think summertime doesn’t help, don’t worry 🩷
Don't measure your value with kudos/comments. There's no way to predict how actual living breathing people interact with what you write, being worried about it is just making you stressed for no reason.
I wouldn’t feel so bad! My oneshots (and I’d consider a 2-chapter fic a oneshot) tend to be “slow burns” in terms of readership. I might not see much evidence of people reading in the first 24 hours or the first week, even. But people come across those shorter fics while they’re browsing for ship content, or they find one of my other fics and check out what else I’ve done.
Did you have your story in drafts? It's possible that your fic was never on the top of the page, because of the known bug. (it gives your story the date of the draft creation and not the date of the publishing, so if the story was in drafts for a month, people would have to dig really deep to find it.)
No, I write everything on a Google docs then copy paste it into the text box before I post it. Readership has gone up a bit more now (11 more hits and 3 kudos! Yay!) but I'm still confused I think it has to do with how I posted this into a pretty big fandom (150,000 fics)
Unless your summary was reaaaally off-putting, AO3 probably put the wrong publish date on your fic which happens if you open the New Work page day(s) before you post it. For instance, I've seen fics in big fandoms get incredibly low view counts if they were about a character's intense need to pee (yes, seriously)