Fanfiction stats
3 July 2019 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeFanfiction stats June 2019 (private link)
It finally happened. Very, very finally. Two years after the last occurrence, I actually got at least one hit on every story on my account, and in fact it happened about ten days before the end of the month.
(I've only written another ten stories in the intervening period, but it's enough to make a big difference to the odds, apparently!)
I suspect the flush of attention was due to my posting in a new fandom and/or my taking part in a forum challenge, as I also had a noticeable bulge in the number of people visiting my author profile this month, presumably in order to see what else I'd written — and possibly due to a high number of visitors to my Rescue Raoul story collection as well. It's actually been getting quite a lot of traffic this year (sadly FFnet doesn't give you any idea which of your recommendations are being read, only the overall number of views), despite the fact that only four people are officially subscribed to receive updates, I haven't been posting anything in the POTO fandoms for months, and it is registered as a 'general' C2 community rather than showing up in the list of Phantom communities... so I'm not sure quite how people are finding it, unless it's people who have been looking at my profile for other reasons!
Oddly enough the one story that didn't get much attention this month was the Erik-centric "Annoyance", which usually does quite well. Of the 'usual suspects', "Lost and Found" managed a whole six visitors in place of its customary zero, amd somebody read all the way through "Paldit". The healthy-looking stats on the other B7 story, "Half a Savage", are misleading, alas; of the four visitors, nobody got beyond chapter 3.
The most successful stories were "All the Rules Rearranged", where eight people read it all the way through, and "Count Philippe", where — despite the usual massive drop-off after the bedroom chapter in this story, whether through outrage or satiation — eight readers likewise made it to the end. I have no idea what happened to the one-shot stories "Shall We Dance?", "An Unfair Advantage" and "Beyond the Abyss", which received a completely disproportionate bulge in page views (106 new views on a story that had been on the site for years? really?); I can't help a certain suspicion that someone left a browser tab open on them over repeated days throughout the month :-(
Other stories received a healthy 2–5 readers who made it to the end. "Water-horse", as usual, got a large number of hits on the first page but only one real reader, and the translation "Please Pretend" likewise had ten visitors to the first chapter but only one who read as far as the final chapters... and skipped most of the middle! "Blue Remembered Hills" got a handful of hits on the first chapter that were just enough to make up the nominal full slate of stories for this month, but that's not unusual; there are months where it gets no hits at all. A sad fate for a story that took so long to write and that was so ambitious in scope (and not a good portent for Arctic Raoul), but I'm afraid being a crossover really doesn't help.
(Looking back at previous postings, I note that "All the Rules Rearranged" appears consistently to have done unusually well across the years. I wonder what it is about that particular story?)
It finally happened. Very, very finally. Two years after the last occurrence, I actually got at least one hit on every story on my account, and in fact it happened about ten days before the end of the month.
(I've only written another ten stories in the intervening period, but it's enough to make a big difference to the odds, apparently!)
I suspect the flush of attention was due to my posting in a new fandom and/or my taking part in a forum challenge, as I also had a noticeable bulge in the number of people visiting my author profile this month, presumably in order to see what else I'd written — and possibly due to a high number of visitors to my Rescue Raoul story collection as well. It's actually been getting quite a lot of traffic this year (sadly FFnet doesn't give you any idea which of your recommendations are being read, only the overall number of views), despite the fact that only four people are officially subscribed to receive updates, I haven't been posting anything in the POTO fandoms for months, and it is registered as a 'general' C2 community rather than showing up in the list of Phantom communities... so I'm not sure quite how people are finding it, unless it's people who have been looking at my profile for other reasons!
Oddly enough the one story that didn't get much attention this month was the Erik-centric "Annoyance", which usually does quite well. Of the 'usual suspects', "Lost and Found" managed a whole six visitors in place of its customary zero, amd somebody read all the way through "Paldit". The healthy-looking stats on the other B7 story, "Half a Savage", are misleading, alas; of the four visitors, nobody got beyond chapter 3.
The most successful stories were "All the Rules Rearranged", where eight people read it all the way through, and "Count Philippe", where — despite the usual massive drop-off after the bedroom chapter in this story, whether through outrage or satiation — eight readers likewise made it to the end. I have no idea what happened to the one-shot stories "Shall We Dance?", "An Unfair Advantage" and "Beyond the Abyss", which received a completely disproportionate bulge in page views (106 new views on a story that had been on the site for years? really?); I can't help a certain suspicion that someone left a browser tab open on them over repeated days throughout the month :-(
Other stories received a healthy 2–5 readers who made it to the end. "Water-horse", as usual, got a large number of hits on the first page but only one real reader, and the translation "Please Pretend" likewise had ten visitors to the first chapter but only one who read as far as the final chapters... and skipped most of the middle! "Blue Remembered Hills" got a handful of hits on the first chapter that were just enough to make up the nominal full slate of stories for this month, but that's not unusual; there are months where it gets no hits at all. A sad fate for a story that took so long to write and that was so ambitious in scope (and not a good portent for Arctic Raoul), but I'm afraid being a crossover really doesn't help.
(Looking back at previous postings, I note that "All the Rules Rearranged" appears consistently to have done unusually well across the years. I wonder what it is about that particular story?)
no subject
Date: 2019-07-03 04:51 am (UTC)The reason why "All the Rules Rearranged" is so popular, I think, is that it's relatively long, has a lot of ideas that people looking for a LND fix-fic would love to see, and, of course, has quite a lot of Erik in it. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-07-04 11:41 pm (UTC)I hadn't considered the possibility of an Erik-tag creating traffic! Although I can't imagine that people are actively searching on one, given that the assumption is that all stories in the fandom will include the Phantom (and that various of my other LND stories are tagged for him as well); more likely to be the fact that he actually appears in person in the opening chapter, and looks at that stage as if he might end up with Christine. You can have as many ideas as you like in your fiction (I usually do :-p), but if no-one reads far enough to encounter them then they might as well not be there...
(As in the confusing case of "Water-horse", which attracts a lot of hits to the first chapter, but where this doesn't translate into 'click-through' to the rest of the story. The only feedback I got on this was that Snape was irresponsibly endangering the school for his own profit (which was sort of the point...), but you wouldn't have any idea of that unless you'd read rather further than most of the rejectionists get. I still suspect that it's the fact that it's not a Snape-ship-fic and contains a warning at the beginning about the lack of romance -- perhaps I should remove that and see if people get beyond the introduction before giving up in disgust :-p)
no subject
Date: 2019-07-05 02:05 am (UTC)So I suspect that may well be the reason why it's still getting extra traffic... and why people who are reading it are predisposed to continue through to an ending where the Phantom doesn't get Christine. Nothing like selling to a captive market!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Un7kg7WUno
no subject
Date: 2019-07-09 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 11:29 pm (UTC)Now that there seems to be a fashion for random pairings of everybody and anybody (even characters who barely meet in canon, such as Christine and the Daroga) there may be less monolithic teenage groupthink -- but certainly in the days of 'the Fop' it would take a very strong-minded teenage girl to stand out against the E/C consensus of her peers :-p
It's not so much that E/C writers are younger and more inexperienced as that the inexperienced writers tend to write E/C, again I think because that's the 'standard' to follow (just as they write fiction featuring 'the masked man', 'the soprano', 'chocolate coloured curls' and 'Nadir', because that's what they've seen everyone else do).
no subject
Date: 2019-07-11 10:43 am (UTC)"Chocolate coloured curls" sounds like something out of a romance novel. :D It would sound corny even in a modern-day story.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-11 10:30 pm (UTC)Erik smiled up at his wife, the dark chocolate curls spilling over her shoulders radiant in the afternoon sun
Geneviève Bernadette Desslar was perfect with her chocolate curls and blue eyes so much like Christine's.
At first glance, one would not recognize her as the former diva of the Palais Garnier.
Her chocolate curls were tangled and matted with blood and all manner of filth
She walked gracefully into the room, her chocolate curls swaying slightly with every move she made
Christina De Changy looked at the floor, letting her dark chocolate curls fall
She approaches him from behind and touches his shoulders with gentleness, her soft rosette lips gently kiss his clothed shoulder. His stature rises in alarm of her sudden, but yet gentle touch. Chocolate curls gently brush against his pale, scarred shoulder (this one is particularly surreal with its malapropisms...)
Erik slowly reached a hand up, stroking her soft, chocolate curls
Christine had chocolate curls that reached to her hips
Pulling her to him, Erik closed his eyes and rested his cheek atop her mass of chocolate curls
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
(it's an infallible marker for badfic)