Feedback stats

[indri]

I've just been sorting out my overfull email account. As a few people have recently posted about feedback, I took special note of any I had received in my two years of fic writing. And then, what with me being confined to bed with the flu and me being a numbers person, I wound up doing a mini study of my own.

Here I'm defining feedback quite broadly to include email, LJ comments, BBF discussion, requests to archive, feedback left at archive sites and award nominations. I have not included recs made by others in their LJs or websites as I have no way to count these. Nor have I made any attempt to distinguish between "You rock" single-line feedback and mini-essay paens of praise that make me go weak at the knees.

If I just add all these kinds of feedback up, then I can say that, before I got an LJ, I'd usually get 17-25 pieces of feedback per fic. Of the fics I've posted since getting an LJ, I received 30 for "Descent" and a record-breaking 39 so far for, God help me, "Shagging Harmony Kendall". I expected good feedback for "Descent", because it's the piece I've worked longest and hardest on, but the strong response to "SHK" has rather taken me by surprise.

Now, either I've got a whole lot better-known in the past year or LJ is skewing the stats, perhaps because LJ friends are much more likely to comment on one's fic. So if we recall peasant_ 's suggestion that each piece of feedback probably represents 100-500 readers but apply it only to my pre-LJ stats, then I'm looking at a readership of 1,700 to 12,500. In all likelihood, a few thousand people may be reading my stories, given that peasant_ may have been defining feedback more narrowly.

I haven't written enough to gauge to what extent feedback depends on pairing, theme or rating. What is clear is that feedback is in no way proportional to effort: I spent a year on "Descent" but only got twice as much feedback as I did for an hour's work on the drabble "Doomed".

Some oddities: my most-archived fics have been "DeNile" and "Foreign Devils" (4 times each) but the only fic nominated more than once for a fic award has been "A Good Man" (3 times). "Foreign Devils" did poorly in terms of total numbers but the feedback I did receive was exceedingly fine and resulted in a few friendships. I received almost twice as many emails about "Shagging Harmony Kendall" than for any other fic, ever.

So there you go, that's my baseline.

Comments

[deepad]

more spammage, since you are online.. what is UP with Voy. I've tried posting in that thread you pointed me to 6 times, and its saying the whole thread was deleted or something. Grrf.

[indri]

It may have been archived. I'll go and look. If so, a quick email to Masq the moderator would bring it back to the board, she's good about that sort of thing I understand.

Yup, it's automatically been moved to Archive 2. Masq's email is masqthephlsphr@yahoo.com. Or you could start a new thread and explain which posts you're responding to.

[deepad]

Meh. I'm not sure my reply's worth the effort involved. Plus, I copied something else forgetting that I had copied my post, so now its lost and I don't feel like typing it again.
::wishes there was a bed at office so she could sleeep::
say, are you on any IM? Yahoo, MSN, AIM?

[indri]

, I copied something else forgetting that I had copied my post, so now its lost

Bugger. That's happened to me before.

say, are you on any IM? Yahoo, MSN, AIM

I think so, I'm just not sure what, the SO set it up. Let me ask him.

[indri]

Answer to your AIM question seems to be yes, but I have to fiddle around with software. Don't hold your breath though, I may not make it.

Isn't it the early morning where you are? What are you doing in the office?!

[deepad]

no, dude, its noontime... you're ahead of us, timewise, remember? Ok, if you get the AIM set up, I'm DeepaD0 on it, so feel free to add me. you already have a yahoo id though, so you should set up yahoo messenger. anyway...
you haven't read the HP books yet? ::boggles::
i am shocked. come to think of it, if you're feverish you shouldn't strain your eyes over a computer screen anyway. go read the books.
or, you know, read the illegal e-text versions of them. We have them at home if you want me to mail them to you.
although anyone who would read a book the size of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on a computer needs to get their head as well as their eyes examined ;)

[indri]

Yahoo Messenger? Oh, duh. I don't know, I've just never tried to use these things.

Noon. That makes more sense. I have an little electronic time-around-the-world thing that's clearly gone nuts then.

I'll go and read the YM FAQ and if you hear from me, you'll know I've succeeded.