Live and learn

Let's see. New story up. In the first few hours it earned itself 9 thumbs down, no thumbs up, and gained 61 views, though only 42 could be bothered to read through to the second chapter. So reading less than 6k words is hard? Wow. Big round of one handed clapping for persistence there guys. And an interesting contrast with my local writing group, who don't know about brony or furry but actually liked the first chapter. And then there's this delightful sentiment:

The cover image. Change it. Nobody wants to read about your furrytaur or whatever it is.

So in addition to being too bucking lazy to read to the end, at least one reader was too bucking lazy to read to the end of the first page, and learn Tara's actual gender.

Now this was always going to be a little experimental, set some 800 prior to the start of the show, and dealing with a younger Celestia still traumatized by having to exile her sister for a millennial, but actual prejudice really wasn't a reaction I expected. This is after all hardly the first time something non-pony has been dumped into Equestria. Such stories aren't universally popular, but I don't remember ever seeing a comment along the lines of, "Get that horrid picture off our site! Noone wants to read about your stoopid hyoomans." Well, actually, I've seen several incarnations of Bon Bon say stuff like that, but never while she's being presented in a flattering light.

I've always suspected a striking cover picture is more likely to generate favs and thumbs up than a striking first chapter, but it honestly didn't occur to me that it could work in reverse as well. Ah well, the more you know.