How many times has this happened to you?

Your fanfic is finished. It's been edited twice over. You're sure it'll do well. 100 likes minimum.

And then... for whatever reason, it goes unnoticed.

Don't lie, we've all felt this.

The truth is... Titles, descriptions, and cover art matter A LOT.

In fact, many times they're more important to a story's success here than the actual content and writing in the story.

But how do you know if your title, descriptions, and cover art are good enough?

Enter A/B testing. A process used by countless professional authors to finalize the finer details of their stories.

It's simple. You pick your best options for a title, short description, long description, and cover art... and then ask your audience to choose their favorites for you!

This way, you get feedback right from the source, the people who'll be reading your stories. Who better than your audience to tell you what title, descriptions, and cover art they prefer?

A real-life example:

Before publishing my first fic here, I needed a description.

I had two options:
A) Rainbow Dash accidentally pranks Princess Celestia. Her life is basically over.
B) Rainbow Dash is doomed.

So I asked a couple of users here to vote on which one they found better.

7/8 of them went with option A, so that was the one I picked. After all, they were the ones who were going to be reading my work.

Let's just say that I'm glad I went with listening to my audience.

EThe One Pony You Never Prank

• MLP: FiM
• Random
• Slice of Life

Rainbow Dash accidently pranks Celestia. Her life is basically over.

• Rainbow Dash
• Celestia

Deep · 31k words  ·  1,085  116 · 13k views

Three or more options work too, but two is generally the best. Try to have your best options finalized before A/B testing them with your audience.

See ya!

7264477

Rainbow Dash accidentally pranks Princess Celestia. Her life is basically over.

I didn't like this one. Only when I saw option b) did I reinterpret it correctly. The way I understood the description is that Celestia's life was over because RD pranked her. When you say 'She' it usually refers to the last character you mentioned, and that would be Celestia.

I think you should change your short description.

7274581
Haha, just give me a time machine so I can let my past self know.

Glad to see you in the group, dude!

7275177 You speak for all humanity? Are you a telepath or do you just assume everybody with a different opinion than yours is wrong?

7275210 I'm not sure I follow. Your past-self is obviously doomed, but if you agree with me, why not fix it for the current-you and the future-you?

7275219
Well, for one the description I chose definitely helped sell the story well, so I see no reason to change it now (especially since no one is looking at that story anymore).

Also, I personally find that description too hilarious to change haha.

7279232 But what if an alien race discovers your fanfiction and they all get hurt by your long description because you didn't fix it?