Q3 kudos summary
So after doing an AO3 meme in April and realizing that real trends and statistics are obscured by the yearly view and the sheer weight of a few monster stories, I decided to save all my kudos emails for the third quarter and see what information I could tease out of that mass of data. I made a huge spreadsheet, with a sheet for each month, and daily columns for signed and unsigned kudos, and you know, looking at it I feel vaguely ridiculous. Most of these details are probably interesting only to me, so I'm not going to give a lot of numbers, but I would like to natter on a little bit about Things I Noticed.
First, a sort of disclaimer: Please don't take this post as intent to either brag or whine. I have 254 works on AO3 right now, in an enormously wide variety of fandoms ranging from megafandoms to "mine is the only story in this fandom", so I have a fairly wide readership, I think, and therefore a lot of readers. Obviously my conclusions won't apply specifically to anyone else, but some general conclusions might be useful for others.
Over the three months July-August-September 2018 (92 days), I received a total of 701 641 [ETA: correction because I had a typo on my working document] kudos, or 7.6 7.0 kudos/day on average. Going by a handwaved ratio of 1 kudos per 10 hits (which is probably generous), this means that ~70 people read a story of mine every day. That's...pretty amazing!
A total of 152 works were kudosed at least once during the quarter, which is about 60% of my works (at the end of the quarter). In an interesting coincidence, on August 15th (so, halfway through the quarter) when I had 249 works posted, a kudos on a previously un-kudosed work (this quarter) brought my kudosed works to 125, or half my currently posted works!
I got at least one kudos every day. (On three days I got exactly one kudos.) My biggest kudos haul was 29 on July 19th, due to one person reading through and giving 9 of my stories kudos, plus I'd just reposted eleven ficlets from
remixthedrabble the day before, most of which were in my older fandoms for which I have subscribers who doubtless thought I’d stopped writing things they cared about, and so they were pleased to see them! In general my big kudos days came from exchange collections opening. But I always love to see when a new reader discovers my stories and goes through reading and kudosing - it's very noticeable (and delightful).
Most kudos on a story in a single day was 7, on an exchange fic (Going Viral, a gen drabble about anthromorphic octopuses) the day after go-live. This, by the way, was July 16th. On July 17th that story got 5 more kudos, over the next two days it got 3 more; it got 2 kudos (on different days) during the entire month of August, and zero during September. I think this is a pretty good illustration of how exchange stories in non-mainstream fandoms fare. (I should point out that this fest had no anon period, so there is no secondary bump after author reveals.)
By comparison, the three remixes I wrote that did pretty well (out of five), all in more standard fandoms (by which I mean, they are actual fandoms that people often browse, as opposed to original works/anthropomorphic fandoms) had lower peaks and longer tails. Also, the remix fest had an anon period and then author reveals, and so there's a double peak, once at posting and once at reveals. Remix was in mid-September, so I don't have quite as much of a timeline yet, but these stories show the same pattern of most kudos the day after the collection opens (I get kudos emails around 4am right now, and count them as the day I receive them, though really they're mostly from the previous day) with a sharp drop, then a second peak at author reveals (when I post links here). But there are interesting differences among these stories.
Title | day17181920212223 24
252627282930totalCorsets and Con Games3202000220110013After the End of the Story3201001410010114A Small and Fluffy Apprentice 201000042020112
The days marked in maroon are the first day of kudos after collection opening, and the days marked in blue are the first day of kudos after author reveal. (The third fic was for Madness, which opened and revealed one day after the main collection.) "Corsets and Con Games" is M/M fic for the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, a Yuletide-sized fandom with mostly an exchange-participant following. "After the End of the Story" is F/F fic for Fairy Tales (Snow White and Beauty and the Beast crossover), which is a medium-sized fandom, and judging from my comments a lot of people who don't do exchanges regularly browse or subscribe to the tag. I posted a pointer here to my Dreamwidth journal on author reveal, and at least 2 of the 4 just-post-reveal kudos on "After the End", and 2 of the 4 on "Apprentice", were from people who read here. (The "at least" is because the numbers include both signed and guest kudos, and it's possible that some guest kudos are from Dreamwidth subscribers without AO3 accounts.)
I didn't bother redating "Corsets" because small fandom, and "After the End" was a late pinch hit and so dated close to collection opening, but "Apprentice" is a Dragon Age gen fic, and that's a huge fandom, so I redated just before the Madness collection opened, but to my surprise I got very few hits or kudos. A discussion on Discord brought up the point that in wanky fandoms (which apparently DA is; I'm not really in the fandom and not on Tumblr, so I don't see this) many people refuse to read or kudos fics with anonymous authors, just in case they turn out to be by someone they don't like, so I redated again at author reveals, and sure enough I got a lot more hits and kudos once my name was on it. (By contrast, half or more of my kudos for the other two fics were given while they were anonymous!)
My most-kudosed fics during this period that weren't posted (or reposted) during this period were "In Your Dreams" (Raven Cycle M/M) with 29, "The Queen and the Empress" (Witcher F/F) with 27, "The Pirate and the Mermaid" (original F/F) with 17 (tied with September's "Going Viral"), "An Eye for an Eye" (Harry Potter M/M) with 16, and "The Mark of the Year" (Witcher F/F) with 14 (tied with September's "After the End").
"In Your Dreams" is also my all-time most-kudosed fic. I just checked the AO3 stats meme I posted in April against my current stats, and my top five by hits and by kudos are still the same as they were then. I was curious how those fics stacked up now, considering that their positions are partly due to longevity.
Titleby kudosby hitsq3 kudosIn Your Dreams1129A Strange, WIld Kingdom256An Eye for an Eye3216In Borcovicus497Bearing Gifts5226Closing the Triangle11310Be Careful What You Wish For1446
I find it interesting that the order of recent kudos tracks the order of hit quantity better than it does the order of kudos quantity, and also that most of these "top fics", which were written long ago (the most recent is "Bearing Gifts", which was posted almost four years ago, and actually the two Harry Potter fics, "An Eye" and "Be Careful", were reposted to AO3 about then as well) aren't actually getting a lot of kudos now. I mean, 6 kudos in 3 months is still above the average of 4.2 kudos this quarter for a kudosed fic, (641 total kudos / 152 works)! But counting the works posted during this quarter, 13 of my stories got double-digit kudos (for older works only, the number is 7 works). So (as I suspected back in April, which is why I decided to track kudos) my popular stories as measured by AO3's overall statistics don't really match my currently popular stories.
(Though another thing that jumps out at me from the above chart is that those three most popular stories which are also getting a lot of kudos now are all explicit! Two are M/M and one is F/M/M. My current popular stories, i.e. not high on my overall stats list, but currently getting the most kudos, are all T or M-rated F/F. Hmmm....)
Anyway, that was an interesting (to me) exercise. If anyone has questions or other ideas for slicing and dicing this data, let me know!
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
First, a sort of disclaimer: Please don't take this post as intent to either brag or whine. I have 254 works on AO3 right now, in an enormously wide variety of fandoms ranging from megafandoms to "mine is the only story in this fandom", so I have a fairly wide readership, I think, and therefore a lot of readers. Obviously my conclusions won't apply specifically to anyone else, but some general conclusions might be useful for others.
Over the three months July-August-September 2018 (92 days), I received a total of 701 641 [ETA: correction because I had a typo on my working document] kudos, or 7.6 7.0 kudos/day on average. Going by a handwaved ratio of 1 kudos per 10 hits (which is probably generous), this means that ~70 people read a story of mine every day. That's...pretty amazing!
A total of 152 works were kudosed at least once during the quarter, which is about 60% of my works (at the end of the quarter). In an interesting coincidence, on August 15th (so, halfway through the quarter) when I had 249 works posted, a kudos on a previously un-kudosed work (this quarter) brought my kudosed works to 125, or half my currently posted works!
I got at least one kudos every day. (On three days I got exactly one kudos.) My biggest kudos haul was 29 on July 19th, due to one person reading through and giving 9 of my stories kudos, plus I'd just reposted eleven ficlets from
remixthedrabble the day before, most of which were in my older fandoms for which I have subscribers who doubtless thought I’d stopped writing things they cared about, and so they were pleased to see them! In general my big kudos days came from exchange collections opening. But I always love to see when a new reader discovers my stories and goes through reading and kudosing - it's very noticeable (and delightful).
Most kudos on a story in a single day was 7, on an exchange fic (Going Viral, a gen drabble about anthromorphic octopuses) the day after go-live. This, by the way, was July 16th. On July 17th that story got 5 more kudos, over the next two days it got 3 more; it got 2 kudos (on different days) during the entire month of August, and zero during September. I think this is a pretty good illustration of how exchange stories in non-mainstream fandoms fare. (I should point out that this fest had no anon period, so there is no secondary bump after author reveals.)
By comparison, the three remixes I wrote that did pretty well (out of five), all in more standard fandoms (by which I mean, they are actual fandoms that people often browse, as opposed to original works/anthropomorphic fandoms) had lower peaks and longer tails. Also, the remix fest had an anon period and then author reveals, and so there's a double peak, once at posting and once at reveals. Remix was in mid-September, so I don't have quite as much of a timeline yet, but these stories show the same pattern of most kudos the day after the collection opens (I get kudos emails around 4am right now, and count them as the day I receive them, though really they're mostly from the previous day) with a sharp drop, then a second peak at author reveals (when I post links here). But there are interesting differences among these stories.
Title | day17181920212223 24
252627282930totalCorsets and Con Games3202000220110013After the End of the Story3201001410010114A Small and Fluffy Apprentice 201000042020112
The days marked in maroon are the first day of kudos after collection opening, and the days marked in blue are the first day of kudos after author reveal. (The third fic was for Madness, which opened and revealed one day after the main collection.) "Corsets and Con Games" is M/M fic for the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, a Yuletide-sized fandom with mostly an exchange-participant following. "After the End of the Story" is F/F fic for Fairy Tales (Snow White and Beauty and the Beast crossover), which is a medium-sized fandom, and judging from my comments a lot of people who don't do exchanges regularly browse or subscribe to the tag. I posted a pointer here to my Dreamwidth journal on author reveal, and at least 2 of the 4 just-post-reveal kudos on "After the End", and 2 of the 4 on "Apprentice", were from people who read here. (The "at least" is because the numbers include both signed and guest kudos, and it's possible that some guest kudos are from Dreamwidth subscribers without AO3 accounts.)
I didn't bother redating "Corsets" because small fandom, and "After the End" was a late pinch hit and so dated close to collection opening, but "Apprentice" is a Dragon Age gen fic, and that's a huge fandom, so I redated just before the Madness collection opened, but to my surprise I got very few hits or kudos. A discussion on Discord brought up the point that in wanky fandoms (which apparently DA is; I'm not really in the fandom and not on Tumblr, so I don't see this) many people refuse to read or kudos fics with anonymous authors, just in case they turn out to be by someone they don't like, so I redated again at author reveals, and sure enough I got a lot more hits and kudos once my name was on it. (By contrast, half or more of my kudos for the other two fics were given while they were anonymous!)
My most-kudosed fics during this period that weren't posted (or reposted) during this period were "In Your Dreams" (Raven Cycle M/M) with 29, "The Queen and the Empress" (Witcher F/F) with 27, "The Pirate and the Mermaid" (original F/F) with 17 (tied with September's "Going Viral"), "An Eye for an Eye" (Harry Potter M/M) with 16, and "The Mark of the Year" (Witcher F/F) with 14 (tied with September's "After the End").
"In Your Dreams" is also my all-time most-kudosed fic. I just checked the AO3 stats meme I posted in April against my current stats, and my top five by hits and by kudos are still the same as they were then. I was curious how those fics stacked up now, considering that their positions are partly due to longevity.
Titleby kudosby hitsq3 kudosIn Your Dreams1129A Strange, WIld Kingdom256An Eye for an Eye3216In Borcovicus497Bearing Gifts5226Closing the Triangle11310Be Careful What You Wish For1446
I find it interesting that the order of recent kudos tracks the order of hit quantity better than it does the order of kudos quantity, and also that most of these "top fics", which were written long ago (the most recent is "Bearing Gifts", which was posted almost four years ago, and actually the two Harry Potter fics, "An Eye" and "Be Careful", were reposted to AO3 about then as well) aren't actually getting a lot of kudos now. I mean, 6 kudos in 3 months is still above the average of 4.2 kudos this quarter for a kudosed fic, (641 total kudos / 152 works)! But counting the works posted during this quarter, 13 of my stories got double-digit kudos (for older works only, the number is 7 works). So (as I suspected back in April, which is why I decided to track kudos) my popular stories as measured by AO3's overall statistics don't really match my currently popular stories.
(Though another thing that jumps out at me from the above chart is that those three most popular stories which are also getting a lot of kudos now are all explicit! Two are M/M and one is F/M/M. My current popular stories, i.e. not high on my overall stats list, but currently getting the most kudos, are all T or M-rated F/F. Hmmm....)
Anyway, that was an interesting (to me) exercise. If anyone has questions or other ideas for slicing and dicing this data, let me know!
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth