Can someone knowledgeable in AO3 give me some advice?

[Tsuru]

So:
Gen means basically no romance for the MC and romance among secondary character isn't a big part of the plot. It's useful if you wanna find non-romance stuff.
Other means that there is romance, but m/m m/f f/f etc don't apply. Like, if one of the characters is non-binary, or an ungendered sexless robot from space.
May not be as directly useful to you, but useful to other people, much like your 3d vs 2d tag would be for you, and it also usefully sorts out stuff you don't want to read-- people might be "well, I guess the ungendered sexless robot from space is more feminine than masculine?" and tag F/F if they didn't have other options.



...so you're saying a tag wasn't present to warn you, and you were upset about it?

Duh of course
but
In fact the biggest upsetting thing isnt that there isnt a warning

Its more like...........hmmmm
Analogy : You go supermarket, you go to cake section, but you see every 5s, cheese, beef, COCA COLA in the section
The products being missplaced dont bother you, what is infuriating the people that clearly don't do the job correctly !!!!!
AND the fact you can't report them (edit tag)
AND HOW MANY MISPLACEMENTS THAT HAPPEN

Another analogy fake example :
Its like trying to watch anime
go to wholesome / relaxing section
but there you click on Mahou Shoujo Madoka (i like it btw its just example) or Mahou shoujo of the end

I just noticed that you don't like BL. You are missing out, you know? I don't go out of my way to read Hetero or Gl, but when the story is good enough, it doesn't bother me at all. Love is love.

Sigh

In fact not really hating it
Preferences are preferences so i can accept others like things

What i hate more, is the ratio of YAOI popping up compared to yuri (or futa)
It lessened as yuri won more supporters recently, but nonetheless, what i say next is a joke but it truly feel like that : "For 1 yuri done created, 20 yaoi were done at the time"

Edit : WELP now i think about
Us girls are quite prone to emotional or being KRAZY, especially fangirling, so it make sense that YAOI FUJOSHI are so crazy to translate or creating YAOI.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

I posted a book on Wattpad and got no views either. On AO3 at least I have some readers.

That's why I said: If you must.
Out of the three I mentioned, this was the worst one. It just has a reasonably functioning German version and usership. But when you upload, your region filters you out. Yiu will be less likely to be shown in German recommendation list and such. Same goes for english stories on German wattpad.
The other two sites are German or have at least completely German versions, where you will be in the German community when choosing the German site.

 

[Succubiome]

As a reader on AO3, if you think something with tags should have an additional tag, the most effective thing you can do is leave a very polite comment... which is also the most you'd be able to do in a grocery store, really. Sometimes people just forget to include some tags, too. I know I have.

And while grocery categories can be a bit arbitrary, fiction categories are way moreso-- one person on AO3 thought pretty strongly I should put the M/F tag in a work that was planned to have one(1) M/F scene at that point, even after I custom tagged "may include any and all sex and gender pairings in sex/kink". (I ended up adding the M/F tag in the end, because as it went on, I figured out there's probably going to be more than one M/F scene-- but it could easily have been one scene in a 200 chapter thing, and they still would've thought the entire thing should be tagged the general M/F tag, which would mislead readers interested in M/F what it's about.) Or, there's been a recent discussion on here on what people think the smut tag means-- some people thinks it means pure porn, some people think it means porn with plot. So I literally can't avoid mistagging it for someone, despite it being a very "categorical" tag.

AO3 isn't very centralized or reader-focused in it's power, and big on author freedom, which can be a weakness as well as a strength-- which is also why the unrated tag is a thing, by the way, it's going "I choose not to rate this". People don't even have to tag at all on AO3 if they don't want to. But I do really like that as an author on AO3, you can tag anything that you feel you need to.

Whereas with NovelUpdates and Scribblehub on the author side, you have to slot in as best you can with whatever tags exist, and for Scribblehub you probably basically have to convince Tony if you want a new tag because your story doesn't fit well in existing ones, I assume it's similar on NovelUpdates, but maybe there's more than one moderator there, as there are four times the tags.

On the reader side, it sounds like there's a bit more power on NovelUpdates? But this also means on the author side, people can decide to mess with your tags because they think they know better or they wanna vandalize. I'm not sure how it works, precisely, never logged into NovelUpdates... but if moderators need to verify tag changes on NovelUpdates, AO3 is over 690 times larger, which is a pretty big difference of scope, too, in addition to the difference in mission.

Valid if you like NovelUpdates better, though!

 

[avaseofpeonies]

I recently posted ADBB to Ao3, and it got readers while I was posting, but its traffic died down once I got to the end. It's still getting a reader now and then, but not many.

It was the opposite experience on Wattpad - crickets while posting, but once it finished it was like a floodgate opened and it's been doing very well. I'm still not getting reads on my ongoing story, though, so I think finished stories do best on Wattpad.

It sounds to me like you have two goals - 1) to get readers for your stories and 2) you're writing in German to practice the language and hope readers can help you with that?

I think you should give WP another try. You can write in any language there, and you have a lot of finished stories. Are you writing new stories in German, or translating your catalog? I've seen authors there post stories in their native languages and then also post an English translation, so you might consider that. But get some of your finished stories up, even if in English, then post your German ones too.

Put in your bio field that you're looking for readers to help with your German, if that is your goal.

Interacting with other German authors there might be helpful. Following the German WP ambassador profiles might also be helpful. Here's the list that came up in a search:
https://www.wattpad.com/search/deutsche/people

If you give it a try, come find me over there and I'll follow you. I can't read German, but I can give you more advice on tagging your stories, etc. and having a few friends to chat with over there seems to help with overall visibility.

 

[doravg]

I recently posted ADBB to Ao3, and it got readers while I was posting, but its traffic died down once I got to the end. It's still getting a reader now and then, but not many.

It was the opposite experience on Wattpad - crickets while posting, but once it finished it was like a floodgate opened and it's been doing very well. I'm still not getting reads on my ongoing story, though, so I think finished stories do best on Wattpad.

It sounds to me like you have two goals - 1) to get readers for your stories and 2) you're writing in German to practice the language and hope readers can help you with that?

I think you should give WP another try. You can write in any language there, and you have a lot of finished stories. Are you writing new stories in German, or translating your catalog? I've seen authors there post stories in their native languages and then also post an English translation, so you might consider that. But get some of your finished stories up, even if in English, then post your German ones too.

Put in your bio field that you're looking for readers to help with your German, if that is your goal.

Interacting with other German authors there might be helpful. Following the German WP ambassador profiles might also be helpful. Here's the list that came up in a search:
https://www.wattpad.com/search/deutsche/people

If you give it a try, come find me over there and I'll follow you. I can't read German, but I can give you more advice on tagging your stories, etc. and having a few friends to chat with over there seems to help with overall visibility.

I write new stories, I don't translate. Translating will take me too long, and it is more fun when I pantse my way to a new story, rather than to translate an old one.