Passively devouring content is killing fandom.
| Meta | |
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| Title: | |
| Creator: | SaucyWench |
| Date(s): | Jan 13th, 2017 |
| Medium: | Tumblr post |
| Fandom: | Panfandom |
| Topic: | Fanfiction feedback/engagement |
| External Links: | https://saucywenchwritingblog.tumblr.com/post/155832658523/ive-seen-five-different-authors-take-down-or |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Passively devouring content is killing fandom. is the TLDR summary of an untitled Tumblr post by SaucyWench made in January 2017. SaucyWench argues that lack of reader feedback leads to less fanfic for them to read. As of late 2019, the post has accumulated over 54,000 notes including many responses. A recurring theme in responses is that authors should not be discouraged by a seemingly "low" amount of reader engagement.
Original post
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.
Excerpts from responses
[genufa]
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.
[avoresmith]
[...]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.
[calpatine]
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.
[plaidadder]
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.
[manaika-chan]
All of this and I also believe that expecting the hit:kudo:comment ratio to be 1:1:1 is illogical. It doesn’t tell you how many people re-read your fic a second, or a third time. It doesn’t consider the people who finish your fic and click to go back either to get to an earlier chapter or scene because they liked it, or simply because they’ve found it on page 37 under the employment of 3 different filters and it’s easier to hit the back button than to redo all of that. It can’t distinguish the author who’s quickly checking in from a different computer during lunchbreak at work whether there are any new comments (or to simply check how it reads from the reader’s point of view) from the reader. It doesn’t even consider that some people might have to refresh the page because an image didn’t load or whatever. You can have 300 hits and 3 comments, and those 3 people who commented just really love your fic enough to read it 100 times each.HITS AREN’T UNIQUE VIEWS.
Not to mention that some people just don’t leave kudos regardless of whether liked it or not, simply because it’s not something they do. Not everyone can articulate a comment. Someone can be shy, anxious or have panic attacks about messaging someone they admire. But you know what I figure? That whether those 100 hits were one hundred different people, or a single devoted fan - If they read it and enjoyed it, it was worth it. The funny thing is I’ll never know that. I can only hope for the best and go on.