Hey, Iāve seen your exchange about fanfiction and readership and response, and I wasnāt sure if this post had crossed your dash. Might be relevant to your interests?
Thank you for the heads up, and I have indeed seen that post going around, but I think I only reblogged the start of it a while back, since the statistics and logic within a lot of the counter arguments are flawed or missing the point.
For one, I totally agree that hits to kudos or hits to comments is always going to be a skewed ratio because sites donāt count hits the way people visit stories. Sites count when you hit a story whether or not you read it. Sites count when you hit a story from your phone, from your computer, from your tablet, from a strange computer. Sites count when you hit a story a second time after clearing cookies. Sites count when you hit a new chapter as itās posted. AO3 only lets you click kudos once.
So no matter what, that ratio is always gonna be fucked up. And thatās another reason the kudos system sucksĀ and sucks for both sides. Not only do authors see this huge disparity without always remembering what it means, which can be hugely disheartening, I hear a lot of readers sayĀ āI wish I could kudos this or that more than once!ā which means theyāre hitting things multiple times and not getting to kudos them more than once. (To that last, my normal response isĀ āyou CAN kudos things more than onceā¦ itās called commentingā and literally I have watched that light bulb come on for some people who justā¦ i guess didnāt realize that was a thing that could be doneā¦ and further convinced me that the kudos system sucks because some folks have fallen so deeply into it that they donāt even remember commenting is a thing to express themselves with).
A more accurate ratio to look at is kudos to comments. Iāll speak for my own writing here, since I canāt see stats for others the same way. Iāve got one-shot works posted in 4 fandoms on AO3. Iām looking at the highest one shots only so the comment threads cannot be doubled. Fandom A- very small fandom, 43 kudos, 7 comment threads, 16% engagement. Fandom B- large crossover fandom,Ā 2225 kudos, 30 comment threads, 1% engagement. Fandom C- large fandom, 4247 kudos, 53 comment threads, 1% engagement. Fandom D- Large fandom, 121 kudos, 2 comment threads, 1% engagement. As you can see, percentages of engagement are not terribly useful in determiningā¦ much of anything except to show that the number of people reading and enjoying the story is not even close to equivalent with the number of people engaging with the creator, and kudos has made that way more evident than hits to comments ratios ever could have done.
The other major point that several of the counter arguments are making discuss engagement ratios for paid products or services. Sure, Harry Styles gets a 1:30 engagement ratio on his social media but Harry Styles is also getting a LOT of money for what he does. Another person argued that Fortune 100 companies are only expecting a 1-3% engagement with millions of peopleĀ using advertising/purchasing rates which againĀ deals with paid products or services and millions of people.Ā That is a conversion dealing with way more people and real actual money.
Fanfiction is free. Fanfiction writers do it for free, post it for free, readers enjoy reading it for free. Literally the only thing fanfiction writers want in returnā¦ is 10-15 more seconds of your time to say literally anything about the thing they just did specifically for the readers to enjoy. To hear that yes, they did enjoy it. That is literally the ONLY return fanfiction writers get. No one else is paying us. We are not receiving any other benefit from posting. No argument can be made to compare it to folks who get literally paid actual real money to do things because itās not the same thing. At all.
A more comparable example? Imagine if a TV show didnāt pay any of its crew (actors, writers, directors, camera crews, post production, network etcā¦) and released the show with the expectation that the people who watched and enjoyed it would pay them. Letās pretend 3m people watched (which is a generous number of viewers on average). Even if 1-3% of people pay, and Iām talking average joe-smhoe here, the chances of that 1-3% return being enough to keep going is terrible. If 3% (comments) of people, and Iām talking joe-schmoe here, donated $10, thatās $900k. Not even 1 million, in an era where most good TV shows cost over 2m per episode. Letās say another 10% (kudos) donated $1. Now youāre at 1.2m which means you still havenāt even covered one episode of a good show. Letās even be really generous and assume that an additional number of those joe-schmoes donating give bigger donations by purchasing merch (long comments) at the 1% rate the response talked about. Most merch is gonna be in the $5-50 range depending on what it is but since weāre going generous, letās say $35. Now youāre at 2.25m, which means youāve covered one episode for a fairly low budget television show. Even if all 3m viewers donate their $1 (kudos) and the rest donated as above, they havenāt come close to covering costs.
The point is, you wouldnāt be surprised if that TV show stopped if it was run this way. No one would say well maybe you should just make TV for yourselves then, or tell them well even though people watched your show, no one owes you anything. Telling them well 3% is normal and should be enough for you doesnāt make it actually enough. SayingĀ āyouāre doing just fine!ā isnāt going to pay their bills. Telling them other companies or folks gets X % engagement and do just fine when other companies are getting paid via other revenues isnāt helpful. And like, of courseĀ some people canāt donate for one reason or another, and no one wants to make folks who donated at all feel bad, but if the show isnāt making enough to continue, then they have three options- produce at a loss, stop producing, or ask for more of what they need.
So like. yeah. of courseĀ writers will always want more engagement. Of courseĀ readers will always want more material. And yeah, fandom as a whole isnāt going anywhere and yes, individual fandoms swell and fade with time, but thereās a huge difference betweenĀ āIām leaving because Iām no longer interested in the thingā andĀ āIām leaving because no one else is interested in the thingā and the latter feeling largely crops up in fandoms where there is little to no engagement between the creators (of all kinds of fanworks, not just writing) and consumers. I have, and I know others who have, dropped out of fandoms I am still very interested in because I could not find a way to get the fandom that was present to engage in a worthwhile manner. I can for sure say that thereās a difference.
So sure, no one is gonna kill fandom by not commenting or by leaving only kudos or doing a hit and run read through or whatever.
But itās certainly not helping anything thrive, either.
