Tips for Getting Comments
Summary:
5 tips for getting more comments from your readers.
Note:
Thanks to Tex Beethoven for editing.
Tips for Getting Comments
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about posting stories on Literotica is the lack of effort put in by the readers.
Now before I get into my main topic, I need to mention that I'm not criticizing the readers. Mostly they come here to read erotica and to get away from the overly judgemental real world. They might come to find a piece of work, or an author they feel understands their emotional state, or they come to get turned on and hopefully reach an orgasm (or more than one... right, my multi-orgasmic ladies?) from someone else's ability to create a stimulating and believable (sometimes) erotic story.
Speaking as an author to other authors, our first problem is that often the reader might come before they finish reading your story (so the story really did its job, didn't it?)... but once their orgasm has subsided, most of them don't finish reading the story... never mind voting, or leaving a comment.
Other times they might skim through a story until they get to a sex scene. I find this particularly true for illustrated stories and longer stories, since many readers won't read all the way through a ten-page plus story... they only want to read a two- or three-page one.
Many times they don't even consider leaving a comment. I mean in all truth, far less than 1% of the people who read a story leave a vote in the first place, which can be disappointing for writers who spend a fair amount of time writing a story, getting it edited, and having the courage to post it in today's very critical world. You have to have thick skin to be an erotic writer. I've received comments from a variety of people saying what bad a person I am, or how I should go to jail, or even die, because of words I've posted to the cloud.
With that said, some readers will email the author instead of posting a comment, which all authors do indeed appreciate. Yet, we would also love you to leave a comment for other readers to see... especially kind words if you liked the story, or helpful words if you're criticizing the story.
So, that's enough of a pre-ramble, this essay isn't actually about the readers, but the writers.
With all that said, here's a final note to the readers, if you're reading this: PLEASE VOTE AND LEAVE COMMENTS ABOUT THE STORIES YOU READ THAT IMPACT YOU IN A POSITIVE WAY (Mentally or physically... likely both).
GREAT TITLE
If you've read my
Tips to Write Erotica & Get Readers
, you'll know this is critical. If they don't click on your story and read it, they certainly can't vote on it.
The title and description might draw the reader to your story. Then your story might keep them there.
USE ALL THE RELEVANT TAGS YOU CAN THINK OF
If it's an incest story, use every incest tag word that fits. For example, if it's a son seducing his mom, use the tags: mom, mommy, mother, son, incest (even though that's obvious, since it's in the incest category), mom-son, and so forth.
I always add stockings and pantyhose tags, because that's my thing (and it should be yours too, lol). I'm kidding (kind of), but including tags that draw attention to your fetish can help. People who like nylons will often read a couple of my nylon-fetish stories, then they'll often end up perusing my entire catalog, thus becoming fans who bookmark me as a favourite author.
Remember: tags are your friends, and many readers use the search engine to find stories that fit their particular niches.
UNDERSTANDING DATA AND CATEGORIES
While the above items 1 and 2 are important, I do that for every story I write, and I still have stories drawing very few comments.
Let's take a look at my Summer Contest releases as of Sept 26
th
, 2023, when I wrote this.
The four stories and when they were released are:
Family Anal Play With BBC
(Incest, but I wanted it to go in Interracial, since the mother and daughter don't interact sexually... technically) released on Sept 8, 2023
Summer Teen Seduction
(Lesbian) released on August 30
th
, 2023.
Backseat Step-Family
(Incest... barely) on August 24, 2023.
Daughter Gets What She Wants
... (Illustrated) on August 18, 2023.
Family Anal Play with BBC
has 37,460 reads, 638 votes, and 31 comments.
Summer Teen Seduction
has 46,025 reads, 724 votes, and 30 comments.
...so Family Anal got one comment for every 1,208 reads, and Summer didn't do as well, with one for every 1,534 reads... and oddly the other way around... Family Anal scored 4.58, and Summer did better, with 4.80.
... so Lesson One is that the score of a story doesn't necessarily translate into more comments (please note this may not be the case for all authors, and these are all my own hindsights, based on my experience).
Backseat Step-Family
and
Daughter Gets a What She Wants
show a more extreme version of how comments can work.
Backseat Step-Family
has garnered 115 comments from 115,487 reads, with 1,076 votes.
Daughter Gets What She Wants
has 17 comments from 190,163 reads, with 485 votes.
These two stories have each gotten over a hundred thousand reads in less than a month. Which is common for these two story categories (Incest and Illustrated).
For reasons I don't know and can't remotely understand, readers love Backseat stories. They always get more reads than other stories... a
lot
more reads. My most read story of all time is Backseat Mommy, which has 7,713,117 reads, 332 comments, and 31,148 votes. The sequels also did very well, although each one had diminishing returns (the cold, hard, frustrating reality of writing sequels).
For the record, in case you're a new writer, incest stories generally attract more reads than any other category, and by a large margin, except for one...
Illustrated stories get the most reads (although you must understand that in this category, many people don't actually read the story, but just peruse the pictures, and maybe skim through the story). So Illustrated stories are known for two extremes: lots of reads, very few comments).
As I compare these two stories, both of them long, the Illustrations make a story use more pages with all the pictures, the final results tell a clear story about how to get and not to get comments.
Daughter Gets What She Wants
has 55,000 more reads, yet less than half as many votes.
Backseat Step-Family
on the other hand, has 268 favourites, compared to only 49 for
Daughter Gets What She Wants.
Now while there isn't a reliable correlation between different themes... it definitely does help.
With that said, regardless of the category, your best-written stories will get more comments.
LONGEVITY
Other than writing a story that wows everyone or offends everyone, longevity is the only way I have found to successfully get comments.
My top 12 comment stories:
Family Affair: Backseat Sister..............373 comments.......... with 3,066,183 reads.
Becoming a Lesbian Slave Ch. 03............333 comments.......... with 49, 987 reads.
Backseat Mommy: A Long Hard Ride.....332 comments.......... with 7,713, 162 reads.
Big Fat Cock: A Hot Mommy Seduced....328 comments.......... with 1,943,452 reads.
A Sister Surprise..............................309 comments......... with 2,080, 317 reads.
Catching Mommy: Housewife Lesbians...291 comments......... with 294,905 reads.
Best Present Ever: Bitch Sister...............264 comments......... with 2,225, 970 reads.
"Stocking Submission": Office Submission.263 comments.........with 2,170, 466 reads.
"Mom-Son": A Love Story....................237 comments..........with 1,857,069 reads
Hynosissy 03: Big Nerd Cock.................226 comments..........with 197,350 reads.
