It hardly seems fair to hold back on thanking them just because other people have done so--after all, you still got pleasure from the story, yeah?

Sadly I am not mature enough to be able to keep my envy out of my comments, except under certain circumstances - for someone I know and like, for someone who has taken the time and trouble to review my stuff, etc. "I like this story. Out of curiosity, what's the ratio between your hit count and how many reviews you get? Does the begging really help?" ... thinking maybe it is just better to keep silent.

ETA: On the other hand, when I find a good story or a good author who is not getting the reviews/comments deserved - I make an extra effort to comment consistently and rec it.

I never had a hit counter on LJ, and the one on AO3 is fascinating. Not necessarily in a good way, either.

I still get comments and favorited from ff.net, but I sometimes forget I even have anything on AO3. I don't think I have any comments on aO3, and 1 Kudo.

Does the begging really help?

Begging never helps. Or, well, maybe it does, for some people, but it makes you look bad. I'd rather keep my dignity.

I highly recommend reading that post about The Claw that I linked above: Penknife has a good, sensible guide to the whole thing.

I know that because I don't write in the juggernaut slash fandoms, I'm never going to get the epic volumes of praise that some other people do. And mostly I'm okay with that--I know that I write pretty good stories, stories I want to read. And if they're not enormously popular in online fandom, well, that's okay. Most of the time. t grins

I know that because I don't write in the juggernaut slash fandoms, I'm never going to get the epic volumes of praise that some other people do.

That's what surprised me about Yuletide. I thought, like, four people would read my Little Princess story, but I got some decent traffic, which was really lovely.

I think childhood books are usually a pretty good bet in Yuletide.

I get a fair amount of Kudos, but they are never really for the things I'd expect them to be for.

I know that because I don't write in the juggernaut slash fandoms, I'm never going to get the epic volumes of praise that some other people do. And mostly I'm okay with that--I know that I write pretty good stories, stories I want to read. And if they're not enormously popular in online fandom, well, that's okay. Most of the time.

I think one of the forces at work in the fandom I'm writing in now is a certain amount of clique-ishness. One of the communities for it on Proboards is hosting an awards thingy now. I see stuff getting nominated that I think is just ok, but is by authors in a clique, when I can name four much better stories that qualify for the same category, not to mention my own stuff. The only fix for that is to nominate the other stories myself. I doubt my nominees will win, but at least I paid those authors the compliment of putting them up for it. (And I'm doing so regardless of how many reviews they get.)

When someone on your DW Network has five times as many hits as your most popular story ever, it's... kind of disheartening.

So little of my stuff is on AO3, or rather, started on AO3, that I haven't even bothered. Plus, plenty of BNF friends = ahahaha, not going to even pretend to compete.

I mean, my most popular Yuletide story (from 2006, the one where NPH and Harold's car get intimate) only has 83 AO3 hits. I think it got at least that many comments on the old site. But then I have a few hundred hits on my utterly random DCU stuff that was never more than niche.

My most popular story in terms of hit count is from the first Yuletide year on AO3. It's got 859 hits.

What does amaze me is that this year's Yuletide, in a fairly tiny fandom, has 642 hits, 54 kudos, 16 comments, and 9 bookmarks. And it's gen. So I apparently hit a Cabin Pressure sweet spot of "aww!" or something.