I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week. At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read. I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos.
People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom. I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it. On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button. Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked. Let’s look at the one shot posted before that – less than 16% left kudos. Before that – 10%, and then 16%. I’m not even going to get into the comments. Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot. I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc. And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.
Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted. Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them? Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button. It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert.
TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.
Reblogging again
So much this
You know, kudos and comments are much beloved by all esp. yrs truly, but I have to say: I’ve been posting fic for 20 years, and I have never in my entire life had a story stay above a 1:9 kudos to hits ratio (or comments to hits, back when kudo wasn’t an option). Usually they don’t stay above 1:10, once they’ve been around for a few weeks.
I also have a working background in online marketing. In social media 1:10 is what you would call a solid engagement score, when people actually care about your product (as opposed to “liking” your Facebook page so they could join a contest or whatever). If BNFs are getting 1:5 – and I do sometimes see it – that is sky-high engagement. Take any celebrity; take Harry Styles, who has just under 30M followers and doesn’t tweet all that often. He regularly gets 3-400K likes, 1-200K retweets. I’ve seen him get up to just under 1M likes on a tweet. That’s a 1:30 engagement ratio, for Harry Styles, and though some of you guys enjoy my fics and have said so, I don’t think you have as lasting a relationship with my stories as Harry Styles’s fans do with him. XD;
Again, this is not to say we, as readers, should all go home and not bother to kudo or comment or engage with fic writers. That definitely is a recipe for discouraging what you want to see in future. But this is not the first post I’ve seen that suggests a 20% kudo ratio is the equivalent of yelling into the void, and I’m worried that we as writers are discouraging ourselves because our expectations are out of whack.
I think about this a lot, because it’s important to know what a realistic goal to expect from an audience is, even though I admit it definitely is kind of depressing when you look at the numbers. I was doing reading on what sort of money you can expect to make from a successful webcomic, and the general rule of thumb seems to be that if your merchandising is meshing well with your audience, about 1% will give you merch. I imagine ‘subscribe to patreon’ also falls in this general range.
Stuff that is ONLY available for dollars are obviously going to have a different way of measuring this, but when it comes to ‘If people can consume something without engaging back in any fashion (hitting a like button, buying something, leaving a comment)’ the vast majority will.
And as a creator that is frustrating but as a consumer it’s pretty easy to see how it happens. I have gotten steadily worse at even liking posts, much less leaving comments on ones I enjoy, since I started using tumblr. It’s very difficult to engage consistently. I always kudo on any fanfic I read and comment on the vast majority, but then again I don’t read a lot of fanfic, if you are someone who browses AO3 constantly/regularly for months or years, I could see how it’s easy to stop engaging. I don’t remember to like every YT video or tumblr fanart I see, much less comment on them.
When we are constantly consuming free content it’s hard to remember to engage with it or what that engagement means to the creators. And lol, honestly that sucks. Certainly as consumers we should be better about it. But also like, as a creator be kinder to yourself by setting a realistic bar of what you can achieve.
And IMO, if numbers matter to you (kudos, comments, etc) be honest about the fact that you CAN improve those things by marketing yourself better. The ‘I just produced my art and put it out there and got insanely popular because it was just so brilliant’ is less than a one a million chance. Lots of amazing content is overlooked every day because there is a lot of good content and a metric fuckton of mediocre to bad content. You can only SORT of judge the quality of your work based on the audience it generates, but if what you WANT is an audience there is way, way, WAY more you can be doing than simply producing whatever you immediately feel like. Marketing yourself is a skill and if you want the benefits of it you have to practice it.
I have a professional background in internet marketing as my day job and a moderate hobby business. My definition for “moderate” is “it pays for itself, keeps me in product, and occasionally buys groceries.”
In the day job, which is for an extremely large global company, there are entire teams of people whose entire purpose of employment is to ensure a 3% conversion rate. That’s it. That is for a Fortune 100 company: the success metric is for 3% of all visitors to a marketing web site to click the “send me more info” link.
My moderate business that pays for itself has a 0.94% conversion rate of views to orders. Less than 1%, and it’s still worth its time – and this is without me bothering to do any marketing beyond instagram and tumblr posts with new product.
I know it feels like no one is paying attention to you and you’re wasting your time if you don’t get everyone clicking kudos or commenting but I promise, I PROMISE, you are doing fantastically, amazingly well with your 10% rate. You probably aren’t going to go viral AND THAT’S FINE. You’re only hurting yourself if you’re expecting a greater return – don’t call yourself a failure, because you’re NOT. You’re just looking at it the wrong way. I promise, you’re lovely just the way you are.
Reblogging this bc it is a take on fan engagement at AO3 that I haven’t seen before, and as a writer I find it helpful to have this reality check. Also I wonder which came first: the overall low engagement rates in internet commerce, or the freaking shit-ton of unwanted spam and advertising we’re constantly bombarded with?
I think as writers our assumption (my assumption anyway) is that the portion of hits that don’t convert to kudos equals the portion of readers who looked at your fic, didn’t like it, and never finished it. But it would seem that is an overly pessimistic assumption.
I should know this, because I ‘like’ very sparingly here and reblog only less sparingly, and yet I read and enjoy a lot of posts I don’t like or reblog.
Kitty here! Umm, I know this is a bit unorthodox, but… Y’all Tumblr bebes are super sweet about this sort of thing, so I’m posting something here and here only.
I just got a cat.
When New Cat is named and fully acclimated, she will def join the dogs, guinea pigs, and chickens as a Tumblr/Instagram regular.
But I have…mixed feelings.
My last cat died six months ago. We didn’t get another cat to replace her–c’est impossible, she was irreplaceable. Rather, we did it because we know two things:
1. A house that’s had a cat in it will always feel empty without a cat in it.
2. We have money and space and time and patience and love, and shelters are full of cats who don’t got none of those things.
Still, I’ve been thinking about my last cat Clementine a lot. And I think it would be healing to me to share a few photos of her.
This was Clementine. We adopted her when she was 14 years old. That’s old. If she were human, she would’ve been in her early seventies. Her previous owner had moved into a nursing home. She was lucky to land in one of the few no-kill shelters with enough resources to accept a cat of her age. Many don’t.
Clementine was terribly stressed out being in the shelter after so many years in one person’s home. Her fur started to fall out, and she refused to eat. She hid all the time and hissed if approached. No one applied for her.
We saw a lot of great cats at the shelter. For some reason, she was the one my partner and I both couldn’t stop thinking about. We talked about it, and decided we had the patience, emotional maturity, and financial stability needed to address the realities of adopting a shy geriatric cat. So we took her home, and released her under the bed.
“We might never see this cat,” I told my partner. “We might just know she’s here by periodic dips in the level of the food bowl.”
“I’d be okay with that,” he said.
“I would too.”
We didn’t see her for 36 hours.
Then, I heard a little sound while I was sitting in bed–not a meow, but a chirp. I looked down, and she sitting there, looking up at me. She chirped again. I patted the blanket. She sprang up beside me and started purring. Surprised, I took this blurry, crappy photo.
Within a week, she was climbing into our laps and kneading us with rapturous abandon. Sometimes she would start to drool out of pure joy.
Now, one complication was our dog. Clementine had never met a dog before, and I’d intended to introduce them very slowly and carefully. When she caught her first glimpse of our dog Brother, I was focused wholly on him, making sure he didn’t lunge or startle her. She darted past me, and ran to rub her face against him.
She was sleeping on top him by the end of the week.
To our complete surprise, Clementine was not scared of dogs.
Clementine loved dogs.
All dogs. Any dogs.
We foster dogs, and every new one that came home got the same treatment. She ran to them like an old lover, chirping her barely-audible chirps, paws warming up to give them a deep tissue massage the moment they sat down.
She put in an application to adopt Sunny, a red heeler mix who was our our 13th or 14th foster. We accepted her application and made him our second dog.
In the course of her four-year career, she cat-trained over a dozen dogs, making each of them infinitely more adoptable. Many went on to permanent homes with cats.
I was always hovering around her and the dogs, incredibly nervous that one might injure her. She’d been declawed by her first owner; she was defenseless.
But she knew exactly how to handle each one. She sat calmly and accepted sloppy licks from overly-affectionate dogs. She hid from excitable, high-energy dogs until after their playtime. We had one that was so afraid of cats that she was borderline aggressive towards them, but Clementine was absolutely determined. That dog was sleeping peacefully next to her after a month of relentless displays of patient friendliness.
Clem was the Nurse Joy of the house. She always knew if someone was hurting, emotionally or physically.
In this photo, our older dog Brother was suddenly deathly sick. Underneath the blanket he’s swaddled in more blankets and many layers of towels, because he was uncontrollably oozing blood. When we brought him home from the emergency vet, Clementine immediately crouched on top of his head, purring and kneading so intensely that it felt like she was in some kind of trance. He recovered fully.
When a (human) friend of ours was recovering from a horrible trauma, Clementine parked herself on her chest and refused to budge.
“But… But… I don’t like cats…” our friend said, a last feeble protest before submitting to Clementine’s healing ministrations.
We had four glorious years with Clementine. She made it to 18–a great age for a cat. She died peacefully, without pain, and is buried on our property, underneath a her favorite catnip plant.
I don’t know what her life was like before we met, but I know she was happy in those four years. She showed it to us every single day.
I’m so glad we took a chance on a shy senior. There were a lot of risks and a lot of unknowns. We were so focused on accepting those that we weren’t prepared for what we got: the best outcome of all possible outcomes.
That’s all I wanted to say, really! Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
New Cat is 14, the same age Clementine was when we adopted her. She’s in the early stages of renal disease, but we’re hoping she has a few good years left. I’m excited to get to know New Cat. I’m looking forward to posting pictures of her as she finds her place in our house.
I wrote an article soon after she died about why I think senior pets are totally worth it. You can read it here:
I’m so amazingly touched by all of the responses. I knew I could count on Tumblr bebes to appreciate Clem’s story! Thank you so much. My heart feels healed knowing she might convince others to give senior rescues a chance.
Also I’m happy to introduce New Cat.
This is Clover.
Like a clover: she is very smol and easily overlooked, but it’s good luck that we found her.
Three years ago, my constantly worsening sleep deprivation and stress resulted in a burnout. I’m 30 years old now, at the time of posting this comic, and I still haven’t recovered fully. I still have the heart symptoms – even the smallest amount of stress brings the symptoms back. It’s likely I will never recover enough to work a fulltime job again and I can’t go back to high-stress environments like customer service. But that’s alright. I am more than just my work. I’m slowly learning to be merciful towards myself and to show myself the same kindness I show others, and I think that’s very important.
This is my story and I won’t be ashamed any more.
I needed this. Especially the percentage part. As someone who compares myself to others a lot, I really needed that.
Your best is yours, not anyone else’s
Just to emphasize
You’re doing amazing, all of you guys are. I believe in you all, and I’m proud.
2) why does he look like mustacheod Mads Mikkelson
III) what is happen
?) ARE THEY BOYFRIENDS?????
AHEM! *dons his lore cape*
This is Biggs Darklighter, Luke’s best buddy growing up on Tatooine. There was a big chunk of story cut from A New Hope where Luke looks up at the sky, sees the Star Destroyer and Princess Leia’s ship shooting at each other in orbit, and jumps in his landspeeder to tell his friends like an excited puppy.
He arrives at Tosche Station (from the infamous line “But I was gonna go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!”) and is surprised to find Biggs there, who had just gotten his certification from the Imperial Academy (mentioned in the line “That’s what you said when Biggs and Tank left” when Luke was trying to coax Uncle Owen into applying). Luke drags everyone outside to look but by that time the two ships have stopped shooting, so they write it off as Excitable Dumbass Luke getting his dumb hopes up again and go back inside.
It’s worth noting that Biggs takes the first look through Luke’s binoculars and says it’s probably just a freighter refueling. Having been to the Imperial Academy he’d know damn well what a Star Destroyer looks like and that having one in orbit over Tatooine means Srs Bsns is afoot. But he doesn’t mention this and lies, probably in an effort to keep Luke from going “ZOMG ADVENTURE!” and trying to get involved.
When everyone else inside, Biggs and Luke go for a walk and Biggs lets Luke in on a secret: he and a bunch of other Academy grads are going to mutiny and defect to the Rebel Alliance the first chance they get. Luke basically goes “GEE WHIZ!” and Biggs shuts him up. He explains that this is stupidly dangerous and is going to make him a wanted man if he survives, so this is the last time the two are probably ever going to see each other. Luke still doesn’t Get It yet and is mostly envious of all the excitement and adventure Biggs is about to embark on.
Fast forward past: Luke discovering real and innocent people get murdered by the Empire (courtesy of Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru’s smoking remains), finding out that dashing rogues can really just be selfish, trigger-happy assholes thanks to Han Solo, and watching the man who opened his eyes to a bigger universe get killed by the monster who Luke thinks murdered his father. His boyish naivety has taken quite the beating. But as he gears up to help attack the Death Star, who should he run into but his best buddy Biggs! How bad can war be when your best friend is at your side?
… oh.
Biggs gave his life to protect Luke, physically blocking Vader from shooting his best friend for as long as he possibly could. Between that, the reassuring words of Obi-Wan, and the timely return of Han (who Chewie threatened to tear the arms off of if they didn’t go back), Luke learned a critical truth: the universe was a lot darker than he ever realized, but no matter what there is always hope.
So this was the first comic I made, published exactly ten years ago: December 29, 2008.
Port Sherry was to feature mostly video-game related comics, like Penny Arcade (or to be more precise, a by then already defunct strip called Eegra Hilarity Comics, by Patrick Alexander). At some point I believe it was going to be called Infinite Lives. I found out quickly that I didn’t have the time or money to keep up with the gaming scene, so I just started making comics on whatever caught my fancy. And I guess that has remained as a descriptor to this day.
It seems pompous to devote a space to mark the date, the number, my credit and even a dedication. Truth is, I made a mess of the layout and ended up with a blank space I needed to fill somehow (this happened a lot in my early comics). I see it now as important information, however: on that day, I made the first of 638 comics, on not even my own domain, using my real name. But more importantly, my wife Sara, who met and married me long before either of us knew I had any of this in me, had been, since day one, the biggest supporter, fan and believer of Port Sherry. It is true now as it was 10 years ago: none of this would exist without her. Thank you, my beautiful princess. Here’s to ten more and beyond. . (We’ll cut through the treacle before the year ends, I promise.)
