Why Some Stories Hit And Others Do Not - No Pony Can Do That Post Mortem · 1:47am Jan 11th, 2016
I pushed up the rest of Nopony Can Do That today. It is by 3x, the longest thing I have posted here, and the longest piece of fiction I’ve ever written. It was a rock that I needed to push up the hill. I am proud of Nopony, and I really wanted to finish polishing it and get it to the community. But it landed with a bit of a thud.
In my other life, I spent time doing e-commerce optimization: keyword analysis, improving calls to action, trying to get people who were in need of what I was selling to click and buy. So I am interested in why some stories get traction and others do not.
Is it:
* Story quality?
* The title?
* The cover art?
* The characters involved?
* The category (adventure, romance, etc.)
* The short description?
* The day of the week or time of day the story was posted?
* What forums it was uploaded to?
* What kinds of stories the community was interested in at that time?
* How the story was updated?
* What stories the story ends up connected to via the Similar and Also Liked lists?
* Promotion by other users because of social connections
* The relations the author generates by participating in forums, or by creating relationships via PMs, Skype Chats, etc.
Some likely issues:
* The original title (just “Nopony”) may have been a turn off. In email marketing, the Subject Line is the most important part of the email in determining performance. That is why I edited it to “Nopony Can Do That!” Editing the title may have been a mistake though, I got no more traction after changing the title, and I know I broke some links in some comments I had left with users nice enough to add the story to their libraries.
* The story topic, a Fluttershy centric adventure tale, may not have been the most popular choice. Comedy, Romance, and Slice of Life stories are featured over 5x as often as Adventure stories.
* Uploading multiple chapters in one day (and the last five in one day) likely limited discoverability. I think you can only get listed in the Latest Updates list once per day.
* Uploading a lot of chapters on a Sunday, when users update LOTS of stories, likely buried the update in the list quickly.
* I have no social footprint on FimFiction.net
Some learnings:
* Use a more evocative title. Help the reader understand what the story is about, so they will more likely to check it out if they are interested in that kind of story. Suggestions: Fluttershy’s Day To Fly or Fluttershy Is Limitless.
* Stick with uploading one chapter per day for however long it takes to get the story up.
* Engage socially with more users.
* Don't do whatever you did to make it not show up as updated on peoples' bookshelves?
I didn't know that. I am not sure what I did, but I will try to be more careful in the future. Thanks for the info!