[Fandom] Thoughts on AO3
So, having an AO3 account now (gotten for the specific purpose of participating in the Aurors Fest that's happening over there), and having put some of my fic there, I have noticed a few things.
1) AO3 is an excellent place to get your fic seen... if it's Inception fic. This could just be a quirk of my particular fic or whatever, but damn, my Inception fic has gotten some hits. "Promises to Keep" has flown above all the rest, even "All Innocence," and has almost hit 1,000 hits so far. Much of that is probably return hits. Even my HP fic can't compete. The HP fic with the most hits so far is "These Walls Stand Silent" with 46. "Sleep of the Earth," which has been there for a week now, has 0 hits... dare I say AO3 is not a place for fans of Snape-centric fic? XD
2) It is not an excellent place to receive feedback. Which is probably in keeping with AO3's main mission, which, from my understanding, is more to archive than to provide a community. People are more likely to leave kudos--which do not require wordage, only hitting a button--than they are to leave actual comments. Even "Promises to Keep," which has been given 34 kudos (compared to 880 hits), only has 2 comments, and one of those comments is me responding to the only actual comment.
3) It is extremely easy to use. Like, baby easy. Especially babies these days. I had dinner with a couple of friends a couple of weeks ago, and one of them has a little girl who isn't quite two years old yet, and she was playing a game on her mother's phone.
Point being, putting fic on AO3 is a hell of a lot easier than putting it many places, including and especially ff.net's fucked up file management system that abhors any type of formatting. It's not entirely easier than posting on DW/LJ, which is usually just "copy and paste from Word document," (as long as you included the HTML while you were writing, which I always do) but there's not much that's going to be. Really, the only reason it isn't is because the only thing you C&P is the actual text of your fic. The rest is drop-down menus and ticky boxes as you choose fandom, rating, genre, characters, warnings and such. Which is not hard, but it does require a bit more energy than just C&Ping a single file with header included.
Which way do I like better? I like them both fine, even the drop-down menus and the ticky boxes, because, again, it's still much, much better than ff.net or pretty much the ten billion other fic archive sites on the web that no one knows about.
I will continue to always write fic with a header at the top, though, because it feels wrong not to after so many years, and I need one on DW/LJ anyway. I just don't C&P that part on AO3.
So. There you have it. Observations and statistics from a new AO3 member.
1) AO3 is an excellent place to get your fic seen... if it's Inception fic. This could just be a quirk of my particular fic or whatever, but damn, my Inception fic has gotten some hits. "Promises to Keep" has flown above all the rest, even "All Innocence," and has almost hit 1,000 hits so far. Much of that is probably return hits. Even my HP fic can't compete. The HP fic with the most hits so far is "These Walls Stand Silent" with 46. "Sleep of the Earth," which has been there for a week now, has 0 hits... dare I say AO3 is not a place for fans of Snape-centric fic? XD
2) It is not an excellent place to receive feedback. Which is probably in keeping with AO3's main mission, which, from my understanding, is more to archive than to provide a community. People are more likely to leave kudos--which do not require wordage, only hitting a button--than they are to leave actual comments. Even "Promises to Keep," which has been given 34 kudos (compared to 880 hits), only has 2 comments, and one of those comments is me responding to the only actual comment.
3) It is extremely easy to use. Like, baby easy. Especially babies these days. I had dinner with a couple of friends a couple of weeks ago, and one of them has a little girl who isn't quite two years old yet, and she was playing a game on her mother's phone.
Point being, putting fic on AO3 is a hell of a lot easier than putting it many places, including and especially ff.net's fucked up file management system that abhors any type of formatting. It's not entirely easier than posting on DW/LJ, which is usually just "copy and paste from Word document," (as long as you included the HTML while you were writing, which I always do) but there's not much that's going to be. Really, the only reason it isn't is because the only thing you C&P is the actual text of your fic. The rest is drop-down menus and ticky boxes as you choose fandom, rating, genre, characters, warnings and such. Which is not hard, but it does require a bit more energy than just C&Ping a single file with header included.
Which way do I like better? I like them both fine, even the drop-down menus and the ticky boxes, because, again, it's still much, much better than ff.net or pretty much the ten billion other fic archive sites on the web that no one knows about.
I will continue to always write fic with a header at the top, though, because it feels wrong not to after so many years, and I need one on DW/LJ anyway. I just don't C&P that part on AO3.
So. There you have it. Observations and statistics from a new AO3 member.