State of the Me + story rec · 6:06pm May 4th, 2016
I finished my class, and started publishing stories. (Not in that order, but there was some causal link.) I remember when I published "Keepers" in, gee, 2014, and it got only 500 views, and I began to worry. This week, "Displacement" and "Twinkie" each got a little over 200 views.
(BTW, I don't understand how "Popular Stories" works. "Displacement" has stayed on the first page of "Popular Stories" since it came out, dropping slowly from #9 or so to #40. "Twinkie" disappeared from all 4 pages (top 240 stories) sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning, I think, and hasn't made it back into the top 240 since then, despite getting many more views and better ratings than "Displacement" in that time.)
Part of this is the decline in fimfiction. I used to wait for "users online" to hit 2700 before publishing. Now I wait for 1600. (I suspect 1000 of those are AFK.) It hasn't reached 2000 in months. But mostly, my followers are zombies. I guess I have about 400 live followers left. Turns out posting blogs is not an effective way to get followers on a fanfiction site.
On the downside, I'm almost starting from scratch. On the plus side, I have a zombie horde. 
(Will the zombies in the room please raise their hands?)
Whenever I think that I could gain followers again if I published again, I can just check Pascoite's follower count. He's turned out solid stories like clockwork for 3 years. (Not quite--his stats say he missed September, 2015.) 49 of them have been on EQD. Yet his follower count hasn't moved much over the past year. There seems to be a cap on people who appreciate good fiction, and it isn't high.
I'm not feeling optimistic about writing. On the one hoof, readers like stupid stuff. I'm reminded of this not just by the fimfiction featured box, but also every time I go to a science fiction and fantasy convention and find stacks of books about the Chosen One on a quest to save Generic Fantasy World (or, increasingly, contemporary Earth) from an evil overlord.
(Obligatory link to HULK EXPLAINS WHY WE SHOULD STOP IT WITH THE HERO JOURNEY SHIT. BTW, there's a Displaced story in the featured box. I think I can claim some credit for that.)
On the other hoof, there's an existing industry which sifts the wheat from the chaff for publication and review. That's good, right?
Except this industry comes in three flavors:
(A) The old-school literary press, which publishes promising new upper-middle-class authors who have MFAs from the right writing programs and friends on staff.
(B) The progressive literary press, which publishers promising new authors who have interesting ethnic backgrounds.
(C) Commercial genre fiction, which seeks a compromise between the stupidity of the masses and the wishes of the (relatively) elite. (Though accusing SF&F publishers of "elitism" conveys images of dinner parties with silver plates and caviar which are entirely misleading. That's the New Yorker senior staff.)
I'm currently becoming disillusioned about the wishes of those semi-elite. More on that later, maybe. Since I'm also growing more disillusioned about the utility of writing this blog, maybe not.
Sweet story rec: Making Up a Bedtime Story by lord_steak. This is just about the sweetest thing on fimfiction. It's competently, though not especially skillfully, written. It's not really a story--it's a slice of life, and in fact it's a slice-of-life within a slice-of-life, so it's two not-stories in one. So why am I recommending it?
It's immersive. It's a convincing moment of ideal life: a tired, loving father challenged by, but enjoying, caring for his daughter in an amateurish yet sincere and effective way. Rather like the story itself.
There's just too much ponyfiction for everyone to handle. That, and we've been around for almost 6 years now.
Speaking as a zombie, thanks for the rec - it was sweet.
Well, now I feel a little bad for not actually following you for your blogs yet. I just keep getting directed here by bookplayer blogs and other places. I should probably cut out the middleperson.
I honestly thought blogs were where people got their followers from if they didn't post stories often. Maybe you need both. As well as a whole jar of pixie dust.
Well, blogging got you at least one follower....
I'm not sure if I'm a zombie, but I still read and enjoy your stuff.
Braaains?
(A) The old-school literary press
(B) The progressive literary press
(C) Commercial genre fiction
Or oversimplified, the fantasy publishers who used to make money, the fantasy publishers who are stunned that they're not making money, and the fantasy publishers making money. Or even more oversimplified, Daw, Tor, and Baen.
Actually, I've been collecting followers and (checks Pascoite)... Um. Yeah, that is low for the exceptional quality he produces. I need to do more author promo. Where was I? Oh, yeah.
Just a casual observation here. With the general youth and inexperience of the MLP fanbase, deep thoughtful literature does not get as many readers as... um... porn and silly things that make us laugh. I had a blog post back when I had 998 watchers (lurkers/stalkers/guilty bystanders) in which I threatened to do terrible things to a changeling when my counter reached a thousand. Most of my blog posts clock in at 200-300 reads. That one hit 900, my watchers hit 1,000, and I gave the poor changeling to Pinkie Pie.
So I'm not saying you should take hostages, but...
Raises hand
To be fair, as someone who has read 20/29 of your stories now, I didn't really feel like reading "Twinkie" or "Displaced". I did end up reading the latter, but I feel they're not nearly as attention-grabbing as many of your other stories. "Keepers" is similar for me, and though I ended up reading that one too, I'm not surprised the views aren't as high as for "Elpis" or "Moments".
3919294
Seconded on FiMfic followers and story attention. Making Rainbow Dash kiss Twilight or Applejack is also a fairly safe bet, as always.
I'll also note that I haven't been publishing a lot here, but either my back catalog is bringing people in regularly or having blog posts aimed at a similar audience of non-academic writers and people who want to talk pony manages to bring in followers. (It's hard to tell which.)
And in terms of original fiction publishers, there are a ton of small presses and indie publishers these days, of varying quality but available for pretty much any niche. They don't have a lot of reach, but let's face it, it's not like a first time writer is going to get much support from a traditional publisher anyway.
I'm not a zombie! Might be a lich, though, haven't checked in a while...
Speaking of the future of writing in general... I'm having growing hopes for different forms of literature. Visual novels, for example. (calling them games is silly) Things unexplored, not explored sufficiently, tickling the brain in different ways. Among the growing number of people, enough readers surely exist. The problem is finding them in the growing noise.
And something needs to be done about horizontal propagation on fimfiction...
STAAAAARSSSS!!
3919352 What's horizontal propagation (on fimfiction)?
3919372 It's zombie David Bowman!
3919396
As far as I can tell, the primary source of new readers -- that is, readers who have previously never heard of the author and don't track them -- is not readers learning about stories from other readers, but the feature box and new stories. Which I decided to call "vertical propagation" -- sources available to everyone and shoved into everyone's face, like the feature box and popular stories list. "Horizontal propagation" would be finding new authors by word of mouth through weak links.
Fimfiction offers no unified horizontal propagation mechanics, at least not convenient ones.
I don't know how to make a living by writing, but I presume the trick is similar to success in academia: you need to pick a topic that resonates with ponies and "strike while the iron is hot".
I don't think pony is going to die off much more than it has, at least not for a while. I definitely missed the period when it was ripe here. I still don't know what ponies here like, but I'm pretty sure quality is far down the list.
The writing I need to do (which I plan to do heavily over the Summer) is mostly nonfiction, though I realize now I'll be injecting parable-like fiction into it because I have enough of a strength there. I don't expect to be famous for what I'll be writing, but it's possible. It's one of those things with great potential but a highly uncertain future.
I don't know if any of that was useful, but there you go.
3919410 Could you consider the right-hand links horizontal propagation? Because I do tend to use them for "If you liked this story..."
It seems worth noting that Fimfiction is about as niche as it is possible to be, and that the fandom it was created to service is highly mature and probably in a state of decline, which is a thing that happens.
It worries me sometimes. It isn't like the parts of ffnet that serve now-defunct fandoms just vanished. They're still there, and supported by the bits of that website that remain relevant. Fimfiction is very... targeted, and one day might not be able to justify its existence.
Also too, semi-related: AO3 users often complain about what they call the "cold culture" over there, where users engagement with a story, if they're lucky, consists of clicking the "kudos" button, which is the equivalent of hitting like on Facebook or Tumblr or the thumbs-up button here. Actually getting people to leave a comment is apparently tooth-pullingly hard, and the comments interface and the author profile pages are very, very bland and do not invite engagement.
It isn't to be understated how hugely knighty's design decisions have directly influenced the longevity and engagement of readers with this website. The mere fact that we can upload avatar pictures and make blog posts and that comments are not just easy to make, but easy to read and engage with, is a big big BIG deal.
3919473
They should be -- but they don't exactly mean "what people whom I follow/listen to liked", they mean "what those who liked this liked", which is a considerably different thing. It seems that to appear in this list for story X, a story needs to be liked by at least two people who liked story X, so the list is usually quite random...
3919479
Knighty supposedly has plans to make a mirror/sister site with the same system as FiMfic, focusing on something other that FiM (I've heard either multiple other fandoms or original fiction floated) at some point. Or something. I believe it's expected after the Improved Story Tagging Which We're Never Going to Get.
Yay I'm not a zombie! I follow you more for your blog posts than your stories. Same with Aragon and Estee
3919479 Couldn't agree more. I'm somewhat angry at the crowd whenever he makes a minor change and everyone threatens to castrate him with righteous fury, since the UI of fimfiction.net is unmatched in internet literature sites (that I engage in, obviously).
Finished reading Hulk's article... This is just as insightful as it is painful to read. And my two units of appropriate currency into that particular piggy bank: Read some Blake Snyder, if you didn't already.
This gentleman is just as insightful as he has it backwards: It's not that the structure he describes is universal to all "good stories". It's that if one doesn't use it, they don't get a "good movie," but something else, which makes it inappropriate for showing in a theater the way movies are shown, to the people who go to the movies, for the reasons they go to the movies.
Which is the reason I think that books about the Chosen One going out to Save the World from an Evil Overlord are an artifact of how books are read and sold, and to see something else, something that needs to be read in a different way is a promising option...
I initially followed you because of your blog.
3919410 I often look for and find new stuff through other people's Favorites bookshelf (or other publicly visible bookshelves).
3919641
"Often" is not not often enough to make a difference sitewide, though. Imagine a setup like this:
* By default, every Favorites bookshelf is designated 'for subscription'. Which can be turned off.
* When following a user, by default, you also listen to anything that appears in their 'for subscription' bookshelves, stories added there show up in your feed. Which can also be turned off.
* For ease of filtering, these show as their own separate "recommendations" notification category.
And we suddenly get weak links propagation in abundance.
I'm pretty new to the site and to the fandom (relatively speaking) and I just started following because of your cute twilight and pinkie story.
I'm not saying im not a zombie, though...
I feel more validated by reading this sentence than I have from anything in years. This includes getting my master's degree.
In other news I've always considered reader stupidity to be something of a natural disaster that decent authors need to learn to deal with to get anywhere. As the saying goes life is easy if you plough around the stump. In the case of fimfic I've lost interest in the series itself quite a while ago and only show up here on the off chance of seeing an unfinished story update. You have to get pretty stupid for me to still get interested in something new.
I have no clever thing to say, no joke, no obscure reference, no pun in Latin... just this: Please don't go Bad Horse. I would miss you terribly.
Brains!
Which is to say, I'm dedicating mine to other things these days, like raising my offspring and trying to do well in a rather demanding job. Sadly, my free brain-time capacity for FiMFiction has taken a significant hit to the vitals.
*raises hand sheepishly and thinks long and hard about making a meaningful comment but honestly has nothing to say but still really wants to show support in some way*
Brains
FWIW, I think you are a wise horse, well-versed in many important topics, and I always like to know what you think.
I am a sucky follower (for you and everyone), but that doesn't change the fact that you're awesome.
BH, in the words of Ken M, have you considered staying classy?
3919410
What about groups? While these vary in level of curatorship, they are generally a means by which individuals with similar tastes share stories that explore similar themes or niches. New story inclusions also appear in your feed. My own understanding was that a lot of readers discover new fics this way, simply by joining the groups for Rarijack or Displaced or My Little Yandere, or whatever.
Also, what about reviewers? Your people like Present Perfect or Titanium Dragon, or your groups like Royal Canterlot Library, who build up a sizable following simply by weighing in on stories and opining which are worth a look.
Seattle's Angels is a weird horizontal/vertical hybrid, since we're reviewing a particular kind of story, but getting sitewide exposure. In our heyday, SA would get 2000-2500 views on the sitepost, and around 100 new views on the stories recommended, barring the occasional runaway hit. I'm not sure how many story views we pull nowadays since I haven't kept track as closely, but the blogposts themselves are down to 1300, so proportionally I'd expect only 50-60 story views from a siteblog. Since RCL and the new Round Robin system are targeting different niches, they might have better ROI. I also don't know how that ROI would compare to something like the Featured Box, though given its clickbaity tendencies, I'd imagine it's higher.
I have not read all or even most of your stories. What I have read I greatly enjoyed. At this point im following you more for your blogs. My read later list keeping me from reading anything more then a one shot at this time. Currently plowing through a 50 chapter epic. I do plan or have some of your works on that list I will be reading.
And while I consider myself undead I dont consider myself a zombie.
3919953
There are basically two kinds of groups - narrow thematic sets, and groups so large that the only thing that differentiates them from the new stories list is that their authors are not total newcomers to the site. They work decently well as a catalog system for aspects not covered by tags, but as a recommendation system they're inedibly cumbersome. (No, not a typo.) Notice that reviewers don't usually use groups to recommend stories either.
Reviewers in general are a cross between horizontal and vertical. They are not the kind of weak link I mean. While they are doing a necessary job, (someone has to tell you why you should read it, sometimes, which a notification-based recommendation system would not) horizontal propagation only really starts when you get long chains that gravitate by taste, and everyone acts as a repeater even if they don't put in a reviewer's effort.
As it is, Fimfiction has what looks at a glance like a social network mechanism without the key part that actually supports a network. There might be technical reasons for it (I'm pretty sure that ranking stories is actually a batch job, for example, and things like roleplaying groups are supposedly banned because the server couldn't handle the strain.) or this might simply be an oversight, but that definitely affects what is popular and what is not.
3919953 I'm classy by definition.
3919479 I think all of these are key to the knighty formula:
- Fimfiction has DOWNVOTES. No other fanfiction site has downvotes. Can you believe that? ponyfictionarchive.net has ratings, which are better in some ways. But fanfiction.net, etc., have ONLY UPVOTES last I checked. So sorting search results by "number of kudos" is nearly the same as sorting by number of people who have read the thing.
- It counts one person reading a story as one view. Most sites only tell you the total number of views, so fics with more chapters have higher "views". And many count re-reads by the same viewer twice. I'm not sure that's legit, especially since it also counts browser refreshes.
- Previous comments and the comment box are RIGHT THERE when you're done reading the story. On other websites, you have to click somewhere to see comments or to comment, THEN fill in the comment and click again. Seems reasonable, yet every click cuts participation by a factor of 10 (I think)! And if you never see the comments, you won't be inspired to reply by one.
- The avatars. I thought they were stupid at first, but they help me recognize people.
- The... I hate to say it... the featured box. It gives people a starting point for conversations.
3919743 Welcome! Have you got your brain chip yet?
Never pay a blackmailer
Never go to law
Never trust a publisher,
Or you'll sleep on straw.
In his lighter moods Ernest Hemingway kinda reminds me of Dr. Seuss. A hard-drinking, two-fisted Dr. Seuss.
Well, yes. Blogs are mostly read by people who are already followers. Were you writing these for followers or fun?
Well, yes. So? They like the good stuff, too, and it gets remembered longer.
The Singing Nun outsold Louie Louie the year they were both released but I know which one people remember now.
3920659
3919479
Agreed, Fimfiction has one of the best formats of the fanfiction websites I've visited, like a hybrid of a normal archive site and a forum.
3919506
The plan is for both.
I think Knighty is going to be hugely successful if he does it, too; every other writing site I've been on makes me want to take out my eyes with spoons.
Of course, the fact that if we actually had a decent original fiction website that lots of people used, it would just further undercut the publishing market for such things is something which I've thought about...
But oh well.
The real secret is to cross-contaminate the entire site with links to your interesting blog posts.
Or at least, with blog posts that people are foolish enough to click on.
I get a fairly decent flow of new followers simply via the power of "oh, this guy reviews stories."
Yeah, but Twinkie is a collection of unrelated shorts, which is pretty far down my list of reading priorities. It also has a summary that is completely without a hook. I wouldn't have looked at it at all if it wasn't by you and even so I put it off longer than usual.
Follows link:
Huh, this sounds a little like something I just said to you, though he takes it in a different direction.
Yes. Which means it's entirely possible to tell a good story using it, but that most writer's don't. Just like when The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were big hits and every comic publisher assumed they were good because they were dark and proceeded to make dark schlock. The problem isn't with the Heroes Journey nor is it with darkness, its with rip-off artists who ape the form of things without understanding the qualities that actually made them good.
I'm one of those people that has become slightly zombified. There are frequently times when I go days (days!) without checking fimfiction, or anything pony related for that matter. It's not for lack of interest though. I would read and respond to nearly every single one of your stories and blog posts if I could just freeze time.
I think it can be done, and I don't think it has to violate your idea of a worthwhile story. Surely there must be something Pascoite has been doing wrong if the goal were to get more followers.
I know a story has been published. <- proper advertisement I'm tempted to read it. <- unintuitive and reasonable I know I'll regret not reading it. <- answer an important question I know I won't be disappointed if I read it. <- sound intelligent when advertising I know it'll tell me something I want to hear. <- make it personal The story made me think. <- unintuitive and reasonable I know other people that would benefit from reading it. <- solve a common problem I would feel bad if I didn't tell them. <- answer an important question I'm comfortable recommending it to friends <- well-written, universal appeal (humor?) I think it's deeper than I know. <- references, symbolism, abstract inference I want to talk about it with others. <- references, abstract inferenceIt's a theory. I'm curious to know how you factor the problem of writing a popular, worthwhile fic.
Also, try buying ads.
Now I feel guilty for not having read your stories yet :l
They've been open in tabs. I really enjoyed seeing new material from you, Bad Horse.
Do you have many stories planned, or are you waiting to see what strikes you?
You said it yourself in Fifty Shades of Landfill, didn't you? Marketing is, sometimes, everything.
You can be a great writer and have lots of followers.
So many people have left fimfic because you're getting boring. It's all your fault.
Write because you have a story to tell. Yeah, acclaim and followers and fans are nice. But some of my
favoritemost meaningful stories I've written are my least-viewed.I'm still waiting for Anonymous Dreams
3919479
Yea, my understanding is 'both' - it wouldn't surprise me at all if the 'fandom' section is implemented via tags too, so crossovers can appear on both fandom portals, and the portals themselves can be created and quickly skinned ala Wikia allows people to launch new wikis - create your fandom portal, scan it, add in character tags, add in a fandom tag, and you're ready to launch.
Pony isn't really declining so much as it has has hit homeostasis - the rate of people coming in is about the rate going out, now, and because the bulk are now old hat to the herd, the excitement-fervor isn't there like there was in S2 in particular. It's akin to Star Trek or Star Wars now in a lot of ways - a new Trek series I'm sure would be exciting, but it won't electrify the internet. Pony's staying power is huge, though; I mean, the Stevens seem to be fading already, or that's how I feel externally to that fandom.
I'm not a zombie, I've just got a massive backlog because exaaaaaams.
Braaains