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alias_sqbrThere's been a bunch of discussion amongst fanfic writers about what they write, how popular it is and how many comments it gets. Apart from the fact that I also tend to get around 100 hits per comment my experience is VERY different to the general consensus (which doesn't make everyone else wrong, it just makes me weird), and since I was bored I looked at various patterns and crunched some numbers. If text bores you scroll to the end, there's graphs :D
It's important to note that I mainly make comics and art, but they seem to get similar general responses to my prose.
So, the general trends people have mentioned:
Plus various theories about hits and comments.
For context: I have all my art at DeviantArt, my non-drabble fic is at fanfic.net, and all my fic and some of my art is at AO3. It's pretty much all G or PG rated and humourous/cheerful and tends to be gen-ish. Most of it is for Dragon Age: Origins.
My works about trans characters do tend to be less popular then they deserve, imo. My works with original (or original-ish) characters generally do worse but not always. My original art does very poorly indeed. But being about male, white or ablebodied characters doesn't seem to help a work's popularity, nor does being femslash seem to hurt it.
My most popular work at AO3 is gen with an entirely original non-white/POC cast (plus a cat and an alien)
My hands down most popular work at fanfic.net is femslash, despite me only ever linking to the AO3 version.
My most popular work at DeviantArt is het, but the second most popular is m/m/f with a non-white/POC protagonist.
The same works do not get the same relative number of hits or comments at different sites. This is partly due to me uploading and linking to different versions in different contexts eg the AO3 version of comics submitted to AO3 challenges are more popular than the DeviantArt version, and Dragon Age fans seem to prefer fanfic.net versions if they're available. But even taking that into account there are definitely major differences.
Fanfic.net readers seem to prefer romance, even if it's m/m or f/f. Thus gen is the least popular overall, though happy gen beats unromantic het/femslash.
Popular pairings are popular at AO3 and DeviantArt but not overwhelmingly so (and I tend to avoid them), and other than that the ship category doesn't seem to make much difference.
DeviantArt people seem to like pretty and/or funny and there's a lot of Dragon Age fans. The emphasis on individual works of art means plotty multipage comics don't seem to do quite as well.
AO3 people seem to like funny and clever and aren't so much into Dragon Age. Prettiness doesn't seem to make much difference which makes sense since there's no thumbnails.
I made a spreadsheet of hits, comments and bookmarks at the three sites. I didn't do all my works, just the most and least popular at AO3.
A summary:
Bookmarks are WAY more popular at DeviantArt than AO3, and there are usually more bookmarks than comments. I'd say they're more popular at ff.net too but I couldn't find any stats.
DeviantArt gets a lot more hits than AO3, a max of 8800 versus 1500. The comment ratios are the same order of magnitude, though if you include bookmarks the average for AO3 is 1 comment per 1000 hits while at DeviantArt it's more like 1 in 500. I can't find overall comment stats for ff.net, but adding it up my most popular story has 1061 hits, which is about on par for my popular fic at AO3. There are a lot more works with no comments at AO3, including one with 1500 hits, but a lot of them got comments at the lj communities I posted them at. DeviantArt groups don't split comments that way which may explain why I get more comments there. I get a lot less comments at Fanfic.net than the other two sites, but that's not counting bookmarks and author alerts. Fic seem to get more comments than art at AO3.
Since the text is tiny for some reason: red is DeviantArt, blue is AO3. I'm comparing the ratio of (comments+bookmarks)/(number of hits).
I would describe the graphs but apart from the trends described above there's not much discernible pattern. After making these graphs I removed one story on AO3 that got a bunch of comments before the hit counter was added since it was throwing off my averages.
The moral here for me is I guess to just make what I like and not think I'll be able to tell how popular it will be. Which won't won't stop me looking for patterns in the data, since looking for patterns in data is fun :D If I can get over my pure mathematician's fear of stats I might do some regression analysis or something. I guess I could compare stuff with male/female, white/POC etc protagonists too.
EDIT: Thinking about why my het isn't more popular than my femslash etc: Despite creating fanworks I still like to try be be original and do something that hasn't been done before. With femslash or stories about underrepresented characters I've achieved that goal before I've begun, and so feel able to make something that is otherwise pretty standard romance or humour etc. But with, say, het about a popular pairing, I want to do something different so it ends up more unconventional and thus less popular than it would otherwise have been. Though my odd bit of conventional het about popular pairings doesn't do very well so...I don't know.
I'd be curious to know if other people's experiences are similar to mine though I realise most people couldn't be bothered mucking about with spreadsheets.
EDIT: Update in February 2011 since I was reminded of this post.
Since Kudos were introduced at AO3 I've gotten feedback on some of those popular stories with no comments, even though at this point they're quite old.
I got an art Tumblr on which I get almost no feedback at all, but my most popular picture is original art! On the whole people seem to respond to prettiness and stuff which encourages conversation.
I got into Homestuck fandom which maybe seems more inclined to like ugly funny art than Dragon Age fandom.
Otherwise the patterns have remained much the same.
It's important to note that I mainly make comics and art, but they seem to get similar general responses to my prose.
So, the general trends people have mentioned:
- Stories about white cis able-bodied men are more popular
- femslash is much less popular
- Nobody likes stories about original characters
Plus various theories about hits and comments.
For context: I have all my art at DeviantArt, my non-drabble fic is at fanfic.net, and all my fic and some of my art is at AO3. It's pretty much all G or PG rated and humourous/cheerful and tends to be gen-ish. Most of it is for Dragon Age: Origins.
My works about trans characters do tend to be less popular then they deserve, imo. My works with original (or original-ish) characters generally do worse but not always. My original art does very poorly indeed. But being about male, white or ablebodied characters doesn't seem to help a work's popularity, nor does being femslash seem to hurt it.
My most popular work at AO3 is gen with an entirely original non-white/POC cast (plus a cat and an alien)
My hands down most popular work at fanfic.net is femslash, despite me only ever linking to the AO3 version.
My most popular work at DeviantArt is het, but the second most popular is m/m/f with a non-white/POC protagonist.
The same works do not get the same relative number of hits or comments at different sites. This is partly due to me uploading and linking to different versions in different contexts eg the AO3 version of comics submitted to AO3 challenges are more popular than the DeviantArt version, and Dragon Age fans seem to prefer fanfic.net versions if they're available. But even taking that into account there are definitely major differences.
Fanfic.net readers seem to prefer romance, even if it's m/m or f/f. Thus gen is the least popular overall, though happy gen beats unromantic het/femslash.
Popular pairings are popular at AO3 and DeviantArt but not overwhelmingly so (and I tend to avoid them), and other than that the ship category doesn't seem to make much difference.
DeviantArt people seem to like pretty and/or funny and there's a lot of Dragon Age fans. The emphasis on individual works of art means plotty multipage comics don't seem to do quite as well.
AO3 people seem to like funny and clever and aren't so much into Dragon Age. Prettiness doesn't seem to make much difference which makes sense since there's no thumbnails.
I made a spreadsheet of hits, comments and bookmarks at the three sites. I didn't do all my works, just the most and least popular at AO3.
A summary:
Bookmarks are WAY more popular at DeviantArt than AO3, and there are usually more bookmarks than comments. I'd say they're more popular at ff.net too but I couldn't find any stats.
DeviantArt gets a lot more hits than AO3, a max of 8800 versus 1500. The comment ratios are the same order of magnitude, though if you include bookmarks the average for AO3 is 1 comment per 1000 hits while at DeviantArt it's more like 1 in 500. I can't find overall comment stats for ff.net, but adding it up my most popular story has 1061 hits, which is about on par for my popular fic at AO3. There are a lot more works with no comments at AO3, including one with 1500 hits, but a lot of them got comments at the lj communities I posted them at. DeviantArt groups don't split comments that way which may explain why I get more comments there. I get a lot less comments at Fanfic.net than the other two sites, but that's not counting bookmarks and author alerts. Fic seem to get more comments than art at AO3.
Since the text is tiny for some reason: red is DeviantArt, blue is AO3. I'm comparing the ratio of (comments+bookmarks)/(number of hits).
I would describe the graphs but apart from the trends described above there's not much discernible pattern. After making these graphs I removed one story on AO3 that got a bunch of comments before the hit counter was added since it was throwing off my averages.
The moral here for me is I guess to just make what I like and not think I'll be able to tell how popular it will be. Which won't won't stop me looking for patterns in the data, since looking for patterns in data is fun :D If I can get over my pure mathematician's fear of stats I might do some regression analysis or something. I guess I could compare stuff with male/female, white/POC etc protagonists too.
EDIT: Thinking about why my het isn't more popular than my femslash etc: Despite creating fanworks I still like to try be be original and do something that hasn't been done before. With femslash or stories about underrepresented characters I've achieved that goal before I've begun, and so feel able to make something that is otherwise pretty standard romance or humour etc. But with, say, het about a popular pairing, I want to do something different so it ends up more unconventional and thus less popular than it would otherwise have been. Though my odd bit of conventional het about popular pairings doesn't do very well so...I don't know.
I'd be curious to know if other people's experiences are similar to mine though I realise most people couldn't be bothered mucking about with spreadsheets.
EDIT: Update in February 2011 since I was reminded of this post.
Since Kudos were introduced at AO3 I've gotten feedback on some of those popular stories with no comments, even though at this point they're quite old.
I got an art Tumblr on which I get almost no feedback at all, but my most popular picture is original art! On the whole people seem to respond to prettiness and stuff which encourages conversation.
I got into Homestuck fandom which maybe seems more inclined to like ugly funny art than Dragon Age fandom.
Otherwise the patterns have remained much the same.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-03 06:44 am (UTC)um, i have nothing intelligent to say. i've turned off the counters at AO3 because i generally prefer not to know how (un)popular my stories are. but i know i'm definitely not representative of anyone else. oh, except i did once see someone commenting somewhere who said basically the same thing. so maybe there are two of us?
*admires your graphs some more*
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 02:53 am (UTC)