The Unreviewed

[JayDee]

Oh, yeah, and it’s not been explored elsewhere in the thread but – sometimes if you review other peoples stories, they’ll review one or more of yours, maybe even your unreviewed ones, even if you say “I am not review whoring” because they just quote Neil Gaiman and say ha “writers are liars, my dear”. I think an element of this – and it is absolutely not one that always applies – is that if, eg, you write futa stories and you review someone else’s futa stories, that might make them aware you’re writing in the same theme and be interested because of their existing tastes and so read and review your stories. And then there was the time I left a rave review on a beautiful non-porny but erotic waffy story, not expecting any kind of reply back, and the writer responded to say they’d looked at my work and the nausia was finally starting to pass. Just a passing semi-coherent brain wave I suppose.

[Desiderius Price]

1 hour ago, JayDee said:

Not really any need to elabroate, you’ve pretty much covered it! In some jurisdictions Minor1 and other concent is illegal to view even in text or drawn form so it is very useful to have the tags to avoid legal trouble aside from tigger factors or personal ickyness factors. It’s also why I raised picture hotlinks appearing in the forum  – I think I suggested that they should instead just have a link to content with description, and the forum adapted the current policy as the most workable.

This is where I really appreciate the first amendment in the US, and it’s one the supreme court holds pretty dear to its heart.  It may not be perfectly upheld, corporations try to sway it, but, AFAICT, the strongest protection to free speech on the planet.  And, the whole concept of ruling a law as unconstitutional *isn’t* explicitly stated in the constitution either, that has a history too (Mauberry vs Madison is the case that established the court’s authority to rule as such).  I just hope the current prez’s attempt to demonize free press doesn’t bear fruit.

That said, a little tinkering for the purposes of tackling “anchor babies” in the US (ie, the birthright citizenship), or to allow prayer in school (religious right), to the fourteenth amendment (that’s what carries the first amendment protections down to the other levels of government AND grants birthright citizenship), and a nasty war or two with some Muslim countries and/or Russia and/or China (all very real possibilities), and we could have the universe that *my* stories are portraying, where a resurgence in the religious right means that the government now has a duty to see that promote every person’s spiritual well being, and we get…

2 hours ago, swirlingdoubt said:

Is your 10K one Jefferey? That one did catch my eye because you seemed to be very happy with it in your Promote thread. Sci-Fi is one of my favorite genres so I will read a few others, too.

Yep, and it starts off with an eight year old boy “Jeff” who goes from taking a bath to finding himself in a nudist camp, which lets me explore a group who doesn’t appreciate the government trying to promote their spiritual well being and the implications of that.  My universe here is hard-sci-fi, which means any tech has to be plausible/buildable with today’s general understanding of the world; and with the general setup, there’s an implied suppression of the creative talent who’d be advancing the state ofthe art as “promoting the devil”.

2 hours ago, JayDee said:

Sci-fi doesn’t have to be in the future though, It really depends which elements you include. Same as fantasy doesn’t have to be in the past with a map and such. All you need is a Gorgon trying to get her hair tamed in time for the commuter train into the city. “Yeah, I had another groper today. My bush bit him right on the fingers.”

True, future doesn’t have to be “sci-fi”, though it generally is.  I’ve been listing some of mine under Originals/Misc because its sufficiently non-tech enough that sci-fi may or may not be appropriate, despite being in the future and having some elements of tech.  Heck, a recent episode I wrote involved Amish, and while they had a tablet computer at their market for scanning/adding prices, that was the only real tech they had.  I do make the tablet a ubiquitous item in my worlds, because I figure that’s the form factor that today’s laptops will go to for the general user; iPads for normal work (editing documents, watching shows), and smart phones; but even that line is blurring today.  Wireless keyboards might still be a thing for a power user.

With how I’ve setup my universe, as the religious right resurges in the US, and across the globe, with the US government’s “Department of Homeland Morality”, people who disagree with this, people who wish to value their freedom to think independently, tend not to have to worry about it for too long as they get weeded out.  Thus, to show the interesting stories are with the young adults, the teenagers, so that’s where I tend to pick up those minor1/minor2 tags.

2 hours ago, swirlingdoubt said:

Thank you for the info. I added some additional warnings and put the rape tag back in, just to cover the bases. I don’t think I went terribly over a line for the context but you never know.  Like you say, it is a tough balance when you could potentially mislead people in different directions, either false advertising or not warning them enough.

When in doubt, keep it in.  Now, you do have flexibility to where you put the warnings tags, your options are 1) summary, 2) top of the story, and/or 3) top of the relevant chapter.  I tend to avoid #3, because that’s too much of a spoiler, I prefer “somewhere in the story” vs “in this chapter”, unless it’s a series of oneshots at which point, top of the chapter is better.   So more recently, I’ve been putting major/significant tags to the summary, and ALL tags at the top of the story; this warns the reader without cluttering up the summary.  So, if the story is ten chapters describing a lick by lick on a blowjob, then [oral] would be advertised in the summary, but if its a half line of “sucked his cock”, one of a handful throughout a M/M or M/F story, and none really significant to the plot other than “built a little bit onto the relationship”, it’d be at the top of the story.  Now, [rape] is more of a general trigger tag, like Minor1 or Minor2, and I tend to suggest keeping those in the summary.  Lots of shades here.

[Desiderius Price]

16 minutes ago, JayDee said:

Oh, yeah, and it’s not been explored elsewhere in the thread but – sometimes if you review other peoples stories, they’ll review one or more of yours, maybe even your unreviewed ones, even if you say “I am not review whoring” because they just quote Neil Gaiman and say ha “writers are liars, my dear”. I think an element of this – and it is absolutely not one that always applies – is that if, eg, you write futa stories and you review someone else’s futa stories, that might make them aware you’re writing in the same theme and be interested because of their existing tastes and so read and review your stories. And then there was the time I left a rave review on a beautiful non-porny but erotic waffy story, not expecting any kind of reply back, and the writer responded to say they’d looked at my work and the nausia was finally starting to pass. Just a passing semi-coherent brain wave I suppose.

I’m less of a reader these days, so that’s not always guaranteed, I came to AFF because I wanted to post what I was writing, explored the TOS carefully before I signed up.  However, when I do read a story, I try to make a point of dropping a review on it.  I use the “promote a story” to make people aware of my stories.  And I also made a conscious decision a while ago to become more active on the forums so people know I exist around here.  This all also helps with some social anxieties that I have, which included getting over the hesitation to talk about my own stories when it seems germane and relevant to the topic at hand (I still fight that hesitation, but the bar is now lower than it used to be).

[BronxWench]

11 hours ago, swirlingdoubt said:

Has anyone found a ratio of how many “dragon prints” to reviews stories get, on average? It seems very stratified, so maybe that wouldn’t be valuable.

I thought it was interesting that I had a rape tag on a fic, but I changed it because it wasn’t really quite the right tag, and noticed the “dragon prints” rate dropped significantly (from about 30 per hour to 30 per 4 or 5 hours).

In addition to the popularity of the subdomain and the tags, I would think the more visibility (or at least visibility to a target audience, even if small) the better chance of a review.

I don’t think there’s really a correlation between hits (dragon prints) and reviews. A lot of it is based purely on the fandom—the more active a fandom’s reader base, the more likely you’ll get a review, even if it’s someone questioning your sanity and parentage for not writing their particular OTP. I tend to write fan fiction for more obscure fandoms, and I don’t expect reviews, so any I get are exciting. The only reason my Dragon Age story got reviews like it did is that it began as a series of responses to the weekly Dribs, Drabs and Doggy Tales challenge prompts. (The Quarter of Insanely Obnoxious Words was particularly challenging, but I am proud to say @JayDee and I both managed every single word.)

Certain tags draw readers as well. If the reader has an incest fetish, they will look for that tag, for example. But tags are vital, and we mods do monitor them closely, because some things are highly triggering, like rape, incest, and Minor1/Minor2 content. We get emails from readers who were sandbagged by content they didn’t expect to see, and some of them, quite frankly, are heartbreaking to read. Real life can be ugly, and maybe that’s why some of us write, but our readers deserve forewarning of even the most dubious content. I used the Rape tag on a oneshot with an offstage, not very graphic mention of rape just to be safe. As far as published work, my publisher has exceedingly narrow parameters for even mentioning rape.

One way to try and gain a bit of visibility for a story is to use the Promote A Story thread. @Desiderius Price does use it, which I’m sure helps readers find his work. You can post for each new chapter for a multi-chapter work, and readers who are forum members can follow your post, giving them an email notification every time you post about a new chapter. Very useful, in lieu of a formal “follow this story” feature.

And to sort of finish up for this post, at any rate, I will confess to not being as good about reviewing as I’d like to be. As a moderator, I read new chapters and new stories weekly in an ever rotating set of subdomains, checking for Terms of Service compliance. In that capacity, I only review if I find a disclaimer issue, or have had to hide a story. Sometimes I read something, and I want to go back later and review it in my own pen name, but real life sidetracks me, and I’m always bothered by that. I read it, enjoyed it, and want to comment. But as a further confession (and this is where tags come back into the conversation) when I read for pure enjoyment, I do avoid certain content. It’s not appealing to me, and if I don’t have to read it for moderating purposes, I’d rather not encounter it. So, that’s a partial mea culpa for not reading/reviewing certain things even if written by an author I like, who’s a good writer with an engaging style.

[JayDee]

Oh, I love to read, but I do find it hard to have the time and even recently getting a new phone AFF stories I’d rather not read on my commute. For reasons. But as noted before I will always try to review what I’ve read unless I can’t think of anything positive (and I mean properly positive not backhanded compliment positive). I like to think every fanfic writer is more likely than average to review what we’ve read because we know what it’s like to get the reviews. 

Looking back at my unreviewed as well as being oneshots, 6 of the 10 are in games – but then I’ve got 31 stories in games, which is more than twice as many in the next highest of Originals, and 31 is even more than 7 of the other subdomains put together so not a surprise really on a quantity basis.

Edited July 8, 2018 by JayDee

[Desiderius Price]

22 minutes ago, JayDee said:

Oh, I love to read, but I do find it hard to have the time and even recently getting a new phone AFF stories I’d rather not read on my commute. For reasons.

Dunno, it’d be different to read ‘em out loud on a crowded train/bus   

[swirlingdoubt]

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

No problem! It will be later today so I don’t have half a dozen things distracting me as I read, and of course if you want you can start a review reply thread and link it in your story for other reviewers (like Mine for my original stories, here have replied to your review and thank you!), s’what a lot of us do so reviewers can see replies 

Thanks, I might make a review thread but I wasn't actually expecting reviews. I noticed most of the Pokemon fiction have very little feedback. I originally planned on putting it on ff.net but saw they did not accept “MA”, so came here. Reviewing seems more popular there. I’ll get to more of your stories later this week when I have more time, as well as @Desiderius Price stories (sci-fi as a vehicle for socio-political commentary is the only way to go).

6 hours ago, JayDee said:

Oh, yeah, and it’s not been explored elsewhere in the thread but – sometimes if you review other peoples stories, they’ll review one or more of yours, maybe even your unreviewed ones, even if you say “I am not review whoring” because they just quote Neil Gaiman and say ha “writers are liars, my dear”. I think an element of this – and it is absolutely not one that always applies – is that if, eg, you write futa stories and you review someone else’s futa stories, that might make them aware you’re writing in the same theme and be interested because of their existing tastes and so read and review your stories. And then there was the time I left a rave review on a beautiful non-porny but erotic waffy story, not expecting any kind of reply back, and the writer responded to say they’d looked at my work and the nausia was finally starting to pass. Just a passing semi-coherent brain wave I suppose.

Hahaha, I got pretty nauseous with Spoiled Meat. It was also funny, though. I did not leave a review for it because 1) it was very old, 2) I did not have anything valuable to say. I wouldn’t wish you to read mine if you didn’t care about it. I don’t know much about the majority of fandoms you’ve written about (although I saw you have a Spyro Challenge in there, which is absurd ). That is the catch with “finding your audience”, I suppose. You are a great writer and much more prolific. I don’t have much experience writing erotica (or writing), and have never had feedback on my writing, so your input would be informative.

I apologize I  took this a bit off topic! But, maybe this thread is a good way for authors to actually get some reviews haha.

[Desiderius Price]

22 minutes ago, swirlingdoubt said:

Hahaha, I got pretty nauseous with Spoiled Meat. It was also funny, though. I did not leave a review for it because 1) it was very old, 2) I did not have anything valuable to say. I wouldn’t wish you to read mine if you didn’t care about it. I don’t know much about the majority of fandoms you’ve written about (although I saw you have a Spyro Challenge in there, which is absurd ). That is the catch with “finding your audience”, I suppose. You are a great writer and much more prolific. I don’t have much experience writing erotica (or writing), and have never had feedback on my writing, so your input would be informative.

I apologize I  took this a bit off topic! But, maybe this thread is a good way for authors to actually get some reviews haha.

Reviews can be a love note too, even if it’s an old story, they’re definitely nice to have.  Heck, on my old potter fic, a good review could stir me to actually *finish* it, it’s been on hiatus for years now (started 15 years ago).  Constructive criticism, points of like/dislike are nice, but at the end, even a simple “I like this” review goes a long way to stoking the ego.

 

[JayDee]

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Thanks, I might make a review thread but I wasn't actually expecting reviews. I noticed most of the Pokemon fiction have very little feedback. I originally planned on putting it on ff.net but saw they did not accept “MA”, so came here. Reviewing seems more popular there. I’ll get to more of your stories later this week when I have more time, as well as @Desiderius Price stories (sci-fi as a vehicle for socio-political commentary is the only way to go).

At least if you have a review thread linked on the story people who do leave a review know where to look for a reply. In Mal’s case noted earlier in the thread he gets considerably more reader interaction in the thread than he does from reviews left on the archive.

I appreciate anyone looking at my stories who wants too, but – and this isn’t me fishing for compliments or being self-depreciating – there’s some nasty shit there, both in terms of quality and content.

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Hahaha, I got pretty nauseous with Spoiled Meat. It was also funny, though. I did not leave a review for it because 1) it was very old, 2) I did not have anything valuable to say. I wouldn’t wish you to read mine if you didn’t care about it. I don’t know much about the majority of fandoms you’ve written about (although I saw you have a Spyro Challenge in there, which is absurd ). That is the catch with “finding your audience”, I suppose. You are a great writer and much more prolific. I don’t have much experience writing erotica (or writing), and have never had feedback on my writing, so your input would be informative.

I apologize I  took this a bit off topic! But, maybe this thread is a good way for authors to actually get some reviews haha.

You make a pretty food contribution to the topic here – I was suggesting earlier that with older oneshots the actual age can put people off leaving a review and here you’re confirming it in your case! I don’t see a whole lot of a way around this from a writer’s perspective. On my author profile I put a note asking people to review no matter the age, but a lot of readers won’t necessarily see the profile doing general searches or topic checks. Only thing that might work for writers with less stories would be to go through each story every few months and put a note at the bottom like “Hey, I am still awaiting any reviews you have as of July 8^th in the year 5.5/apple/26 “ or whatever but once you get into double figures it’d be too hard as with keeping abreast of changes to story codes.

Ha, the Spyro story… I played some of the games years ago at least. Couldn’t remember much now. There was a user on another forum with a Spyro snuff fantasy. I did a few sub-flashfic length scenes for ‘em as well as the long one as story exchanges. Weirdly I’ve just checked and it was the same user who requested the Dragon Ball GT story I am polishing up to repost now. It just looks prolific because I’ve been writing as JayDee since 2005 (none dated before 2007 on archive due to taking some down and re-posting), and did 52 prompts in one year at one point, of which around 40-45 were seperate flashfics. In the last two years I think I finished two stories.

Thank you for the compliments and the feedback, and all I’ll say is that if you like writing and keep at it it can be fun and rewarding and also a life stealing demon muse. Keep on keeping on! From what I read earlier you’re nailing the erotica and the non-sex stuff flowed fine.

20 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

Reviews can be a love note too, even if it’s an old story, they’re definitely nice to have.  Heck, on my old potter fic, a good review could stir me to actually *finish* it, it’s been on hiatus for years now (started 15 years ago).  Constructive criticism, points of like/dislike are nice, but at the end, even a simple “I like this” review goes a long way to stoking the ego. 

 

This too! Even a “Hey, I liked this.” is nice to get. As nice as they are, a 20000 word dissertation on the the intertextual meanings between the alternating placings of the money shots isn’t required

Edited July 8, 2018 by JayDee

[Mal]

On 7/8/2018 at 2:48 AM, Desiderius Price said:

Rape is one of those trigger tags, stands out like Minor1.  Having a shit ton of tags can be a detractor, so I’ve been shifting most of my tags into the top of the story, keeping the major/advertising types (+other) in the summary.   The distinction helps those searching for tags they want to read vs those they just need to know are incidentals (ie isolated  handjobs), I’ll even qualify those incidentals if warranted (ie, why a tag is being applied if its kinda iffy or even “maybe/anticipated”).

On 7/8/2018 at 2:50 AM, swirlingdoubt said:

Ha, I was trying to figure out how the tags worked since it is the first time I have posted anything. I found this forum very helpful and I had to go back and fix the archive submission after I understood it better.

I honestly don’t want higher views because people think there is rape in it. I tried to be as accurate as possible with the tags given. There is a thread about this, I saw, so I might ask more questions over there.

Rape is a trigger tag, one that can gain you a good deal of readers due to the fact that fiction is the only way fans of this fetish can legally experience it. However, I feel that it is also a tag one absolutely must include in any circumstance which is even borderline (i.e. Coercion, Blackmail, DubCon (which to me is just a bullshit way of trying to make rape sound less rapey...) and even NC/Con (where a non-consenting individual becomes consenting) should most likely include the rape tag. Because rape is such a traumatic event, something that can leave a survivor of it scarred for the rest of their life, the tag can and should be used when there is any dubious content around consent. To me, as a writer of such fiction, i know I don’t want someone, especially someone who has experienced it, accidentally stumbling into a story with rape content. That, to me, is one of my greatest fears as a writer. I might bring that subject to life and fantasize about it, in a fictional sense, but to people who have experienced it, it is not a subject to handle lightly it is something we must respect at the utmost level and do everything in our power to warn away those who have an aversion to such things. In my stories, there is usually very little doubt about when the rape tag is needed, but its my philosophy is that its better to include it and warn away someone who might be reminded of a traumatic experience than to not have it and gain a few dragon prints.

On 7/6/2018 at 10:30 AM, JayDee said:

Thank you! I appreciate it! That was always one of my more popular original stories it seemed. Someone once requested to write a sequel where a Christian student saved her from her imprisonment at the end by the power of love. Sent the request from a religious college email. I never heard from them again, but suspect the IT team asked questions about the stories they’d been reading.

I just have a mental block against rating most things I’ve written very highly, I guess. Some authors I like have said they like my stuff and I’m half sure they aren’t just returning a compliment, and one character and story I did went on to appear in a bunch more by another writer (who asked!) so I’m sure there’s something in it, but when I look at most of it I just think it’s bad. I’m reading through a story I did in May 2008 at the moment, haven’t looked at it since then and my every other thought is WTF?

Ahh well, for my part I just tend to avoid celeb stuff these days for personal fears and reasons but if you ever do anything with original or fictional characters let me know and I’ll have a read!

I’m not sure how a Christian student could save Luzurial from her fate at the hands of Eparlegna…. unless he also happened to be some badass Witcher or an archmage or something...but I have a feeling both of those are against the rules of being Christian anyway… lol… I think its hilarious picturing some IT tech at a Christian University scanning browser histories, especially in this day and age, when you know every 18 and 19 year old boy in every dorm is streaming Pornhub like 24/7 lol…. You can picture them bent over their computer screens, brows dripping in sweat and thinking what the hell has this world come to…

I’ve read a several of your stories…. come to think of it, I think I’ve been a bit hypocritical since I never left you a review <ducks> but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything I’ve read so I really don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. As to going back and looking over past work, that to me is always cringe worthy. I’ve on occasion re-read some of my earliest chapters of Billion Dollar Harem, my first serious attempt at fan-fiction, and I think “oh god, why did I do this… or what the hell was I thinking...” So I completely understand that. I feel like I should go back and re-work them but then I also think well how different would the story be if I went back and changed something that happened 30 chapters ago. In then end I feel its better to just move on to the next thing and try not to think about it.

I can’t say I completely understand people’s aversion to celeb fiction (or any fiction which has had a character portrayed by an actor), since to me it isn’t real. As our disclaimer’s loudly announce, it is fiction. Part of writing and reading is parsing what is real from what isn’t and I just don’t understand not being able to separate those things. But I do really appreciate the offer the offer. I have been considering what I might do after Billion Dollar Harem is over. My two options at this point are 1) a Hogwarts Harem story set in an alternate version of the Harry Potter universe, and 2) doing some originals, which I’d practice on first by posting some stories here, before I then move on to writing stories that I’d try to market on Amazon. The problem with 1 is simply the proliferation of HP fiction and the propensity for such work to get lost in the veritable hurricane of such works. The problem with 2 is I’d have to write much tamer work if I ever hoped to make money with writing it.

[Desiderius Price]

1 hour ago, Mal said:

Rape is a trigger tag, one that can gain you a good deal of readers due to the fact that fiction is the only way fans of this fetish can legally experience it. However, I feel that it is also a tag one absolutely must include in any circumstance which is even borderline (i.e. Coercion, Blackmail, DubCon (which to me is just a bullshit way of trying to make rape sound less rapey...) and even NC/Con (where a non-consenting individual becomes consenting) should most likely include the rape tag. Because rape is such a traumatic event, something that can leave a survivor of it scarred for the rest of their life, the tag can and should be used when there is any dubious content around consent. To me, as a writer of such fiction, i know I don’t want someone, especially someone who has experienced it, accidentally stumbling into a story with rape content. That, to me, is one of my greatest fears as a writer. I might bring that subject to life and fantasize about it, in a fictional sense, but to people who have experienced it, it is not a subject to handle lightly it is something we must respect at the utmost level and do everything in our power to warn away those who have an aversion to such things. In my stories, there is usually very little doubt about when the rape tag is needed, but its my philosophy is that its better to include it and warn away someone who might be reminded of a traumatic experience than to not have it and gain a few dragon prints.

We’ve got other forum threads on “is it rape” and when to tag.  I absolutely agree that nobody shouldn’t come across it without a warning, but sensitivity does vary from reader to reader, which is why I try to provide more information with that tag, as a reader may or may not be able to handle a character merely stating “He raped me X years ago” vs a rape scene.   Ditto for abortion, making the distinction between on-screen and off-screen, but still listing it.  Intensity of the tag matters too, a single short scene with the tagged content, as an aside to the plot vs it being the center of the plot; both get listed, just a distinction made so the reader can decide, “do I proceed?”  Most of the time, they do.

[JayDee]

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I’m not sure how a Christian student could save Luzurial from her fate at the hands of Eparlegna…. unless he also happened to be some badass Witcher or an archmage or something...but I have a feeling both of those are against the rules of being Christian anyway… lol… I think its hilarious picturing some IT tech at a Christian University scanning browser histories, especially in this day and age, when you know every 18 and 19 year old boy in every dorm is streaming Pornhub like 24/7 lol…. You can picture them bent over their computer screens, brows dripping in sweat and thinking what the hell has this world come to…

Ahh, well to be fair in 2007 or whenever I originally uploaded it streaming was still in its infancy even for porn and broadband still not as widespread. A lot better than downloading 30 second clips on dial up though I guess! He just said it would be through the power of love, as I recall. Probably something like the kid from Captain Planet with the power of Heart, backed up by Hughie Lewis. Anyway Eparlegna got bested by a human champion at the end so no doubt someone could write a story where his magic got overruled too – my policy whenever anyone asked to write something based on my stuff was “Sure!” I remember getting one review about six-seven years later along the lines of “I’ve been enjoying this story for years and I only just got Eparlegna’s name.”

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I’ve read a several of your stories…. come to think of it, I think I’ve been a bit hypocritical since I never left you a review <ducks>

It’s never too late!

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I can’t say I completely understand people’s aversion to celeb fiction (or any fiction which has had a character portrayed by an actor), since to me it isn’t real. As our disclaimer’s loudly announce, it is fiction. Part of writing and reading is parsing what is real from what isn’t and I just don’t understand not being able to separate those things.

I absolutely understand the difference between fantasy and reality. Lotta weirdo stalkers out there don’t though and some of the feedback I got on my celebrity stories was pretty worrying. I’ve said it before but for me I guess the overriding factor today is pretty much that it is so so easy on the modern internet for someone to show the celebrity of their family/friends the story featuring them as a person. It’s nowhere near as bad if, say, it’s “This is the story about me holding hands with X!” but I find thinking about how they might react to “This is my story about raping the shit out of X.” when it’s something I wrote unpleasant, and feel for them too. I think there’s a degree removed with portrayed characters – I’d even argue a number of, say pro-wrestling stories could easily go in TV rather than celeb because shockingly Papa Shango had no magical powers so any story about him with magic is based on the character rather than the wrassler. Another factor is that there was an obscenity trial in my jurisdiction that only happened because the writer wrote celebrity fanfic – they weren’t convicted or anything, but it still fucked their life up. Plus, you know, I am a big ol’ hypocrite myself. That helps with decisions on content I read and write and while I don't read or write celeb fics now, I don’t critise folks for writing it or go around leaving flames or whatevers.

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I have been considering what I might do after Billion Dollar Harem is over. My two options at this point are 1) a Hogwarts Harem story set in an alternate version of the Harry Potter universe, and 2) doing some originals, which I’d practice on first by posting some stories here, before I then move on to writing stories that I’d try to market on Amazon. The problem with 1 is simply the proliferation of HP fiction and the propensity for such work to get lost in the veritable hurricane of such works. The problem with 2 is I’d have to write much tamer work if I ever hoped to make money with writing it. 

While there is an absolute shitload of Harry Potter works, there’s also a load of fans, many of whom seem eager to read anything in the setting. I literally have an unfinished one chapter scat fic with near 20K hits and 3 reviews. I did a necro story with a rampaging sex dwarf in one part and got 31K hits and 16 reviews.16! Big numbers for me. These are niche topics. You get into something popular like harems and you’ll be beating off the fans with a broomstick. You might even hear some readers beating themselves off with a broomstick. Swinging back round onto topic, you’re pretty much guaranteed they won’t go unreviewed!

I don’t know much about the Amazon market so cannot comment there – there’s a few users who have followed the road of AFF originals to Amazon or other epublishers and do make a bit of a go on it though, that could be a topic for another thread if it isn’t one already! I know there’s some pretty extreme stuff on there (Black Melt by Indy McDaniel comes to mind) but I dunno how much money it makes tbh compared to the tamer stuff.

Good luck with whichever path you take and if I am around and on here I’ll absolutely take a look!

Edited July 10, 2018 by JayDee

[Desiderius Price]

On 7/10/2018 at 4:03 PM, JayDee said:

I don’t know much about the Amazon market so cannot comment there – there’s a few users who have followed the road of AFF originals to Amazon or other epublishers and do make a bit of a go on it though, that could be a topic for another thread if it isn’t one already! I know there’s some pretty extreme stuff on there (Black Melt by Indy McDaniel comes to mind) but I dunno how much money it makes tbh compared to the tamer stuff.

Good luck with whichever path you take and if I am around and on here I’ll absolutely take a look!

I’ve been waffling on going Amazon myself, though I’d view it like buying a lottery ticket, it’d have a chance, but more likely flop.

[BronxWench]

46 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

I’ve been waffling on going Amazon myself, though I’d view it like buying a lottery ticket, it’d have a chance, but more likely flop.

Just avoid Kindle Unlimited, from what I’ve been told….

[SisterWine]

I have been wondering the same thing. I just posted a few chapters of my newest fic, a Cold Case fic, and have 141 prints but no reviews. Is the button broken or something???What’s going on??? Should I stop posting it??? And there’s no kudos. How do we know they didn’t just click on it and move on?

[BronxWench]

1 hour ago, SisterWine said:

I have been wondering the same thing. I just posted a few chapters of my newest fic, a Cold Case fic, and have 141 prints but no reviews. Is the button broken or something???What’s going on??? Should I stop posting it??? And there’s no kudos. How do we know they didn’t just click on it and move on?

The review button isn’t broken, but for some reason, most readers seem reluctant to review. We’ve never had anything comparable to the kudos you find on other archives, although we do have the dragon prints, which is the hit counter, showing how many times your story was accessed. We did away with the old ratings of 1-5 +’s because we found it was being abused. Readers were targeting stories that didn’t have their OTP, or because the story was getting more hits than a friend’s story, or because the author’s posting of a story or update bumped them off the “front” page. We’re all still pretty wary after that, and I doubt we’ll have anything like kudos or likes or thumbs-up anytime soon in the archive.

As far as whether or not to keep posting, I have some stories with no reviews. I have others that garner reviews. After an unfortunate incident which resulted in all my stories being deleted, I’m slowly editing and reposting, but all the previous reviews are gone. So… I post anyway because I’m not writing just to squirrel it away on my hard drive. Maybe people are reading, and not reviewing. That’s fine. When I read for pleasure (and not as part of my moderator duties), I try to review because I know I like getting a comment, or even some good constructive criticism. (The key word is constructive here… just saying.) But that’s my choice, to post anyway, even if no one drops a line to comment. 

[JayDee]

I wrote more on the first page of this thread than I have in the last 12 months.

[SisterWine]

I don’t read as much as I used to. I try to keep my ideas mine, that way. Every author likes to know how well they’re doing but I understand there are authors out there that can’t take constructive criticism. I always try to reply swiftly and politely, to mine. Cheers!

[Desiderius Price]

1 hour ago, SisterWine said:

I don’t read as much as I used to. I try to keep my ideas mine, that way. Every author likes to know how well they’re doing but I understand there are authors out there that can’t take constructive criticism. I always try to reply swiftly and politely, to mine. Cheers!

Ditto, I’m more of a writer anymore...assuming games/work don’t draw me away.

Some genres get more reviews than others, kinda the way it happens, with some kinks less likely than others.  I mean, I get it, not everybody’s into squishy tentacles invading between the underage fleshy buttocks, but some people are.  All you can really do is to ask (politely), and hope for the best – maybe somebody will read/review, make your week!  Good luck.

 

[Thundercloud]

On 3/30/2021 at 7:33 PM, JayDee said:

I wrote more on the first page of this thread than I have in the last 12 months.

On the other hand you on the first page wrote
Originals > Fucking Halloween Party  Dragon Prints : 1267 Since Reviewed! (That you reviewer!)
Current number of dragon prints is 2463...

[JayDee]

7 hours ago, Thundercloud said:

On the other hand you on the first page wrote
Originals > Fucking Halloween Party  Dragon Prints : 1267 Since Reviewed! (That you reviewer!)
Current number of dragon prints is 2463...

It’s a toss up as to whether it’s 1200 extra people who thought it too fuckawful to review, or one person going back that many times in disbelief at the sheer amount of typos.

[Desiderius Price]

8 hours ago, JayDee said:

It’s a toss up as to whether it’s 1200 extra people who thought it too fuckawful to review, or one person going back that many times in disbelief at the sheer amount of typos.

Better spot to be than… ran some queries on AO3 (better search).  There’s this one 1.15MWord fic with nine hits.

[JayDee]

People read it and wonder why it feels so short, anxiously unaware 1.1m of the recorded words are fnord.