A poll about YOU!! : comments [rivers

I do often wonder how I would feel about comments if I got a significant number more than I do. I think I average about 40-50 unique comments per fic (for SPN), which I do not find at all overwhelming to respond to, because on the whole it takes 2+ days (and often 2+weeks) for that number to come in. And I don't work, so it's rare that I am away from my computer for more than 6 hours or so at a time. I usually try to post in the morning, because, living on the West Coast of the US, that is the time that most people in the world are awake. You folks are getting up soon, the Europeans are having a before-bed read, and these time zones are checking their flists at work. that also means that I can start answering comments within a reasonably short time of posting in most instances, so I rarely have to answer more than 8 or so comments at once. I have about four sets of wording appropriate for responding to a generic "I like this!" comment, so I don't feel like I'm repeating myself, and if the person says anything more than that, I try to comment on it in some way, just to make myself feel like I have something different to say. Sometimes I will use a comment on their icon for the same purpose.

I do sometimes find it exhausting if for some reason or another I have been away from my computer and there are 20 comments to answer at once. So i can totally see how, for the people who get four pages of comments on every fic within a few hours of posting, it seems unimaginably daunting. Especially with a job, or kids, or a partner, or all of the above.

I cannot bear the thought of not answering all my comments. I cannot bear the thought of turning off comments. So I really do not know what I would do if I suddenly became a must-read author.

...Or the kind of author that more people left feedback for. I do often wonder about things like reader:commenter ratios versus straight-up numbers of readers.

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For the record: this is the kind of stuff I love discussing, but rarely get to because there is so much potential for wank. Which is so not the goal, here. Anyway.

Until quite recently I had no idea people had, like, strategies for when to post a fic. I generally tend to post before I go to bed, mostly because that's when I most often have a finished/tweaked fic ready to post. Plus it's nice to wake up to feedback. I don't get to check LJ at work unless I have my netbook and a lunch break, so generally I have a window of 2-3 hours a day to respond (before and after work). It's a little daunting sometimes. Then too, sometimes people leave such awesome feedback I kind of flail around trying to respond appropriately, and that takes time as well. Basically, I want to thank everyone individually for reading without sounding like a robot or an idiot, and that isn't always easy.

Reader:commenter ratios are intriguing. I am very very guilty of being a non-commenter, which is yet another reason I don't worry about comment counts--I figure for every one person commenting, there are at least three who don't. Occasionally, delicious bookmarks and PDF download stats are useful for the curious too, since hit counters are apparently bad taste these days.

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I love discussing it, too! It's super interesting to me. I've always loved sociology, and all this stuff is fascinating. But yes. people do sometimes choose to wank about it.

Based on some of the fics I've read that do have hit counters, I think for a lot of people, for every one person commenting there are 100 who don't. Or more. for others I think the ratio is a lot lower. And that is something that really fascinates me. But there is no way to study that at all without creating wank and bad feelings.

When I first came to LJ I got involved with a beta who was OBSESSIVE to a truly terrifying degree with marketing her (and as an extension my) fanfic. strict rules about days and times of posting, where/how to crosspost, and re-pimping in her own journal. A lot of it I didn't agree with, because there is a big difference between marketing and pushing yourself on people. But the result is that while I have a straightforward confidence about my skills as a writer (and I think a pretty good idea of where my strengths and weaknesses lie in that regard), I have no confidence at all in my skills as a poster. To the point that if I do not get an "expected" number of comments on a fic, my thought is never that it is not well-written, but that I should have posted a different day, time of day, to different comms. It's kind of insane. (or a lot insane)

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Re: feedback issues, I has them

Re: feedback issues, I has them

Re: feedback issues, I has them

January