Encouragement to Favorite/Rate/Comment at the bottom of chapters

ars

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Soooo, while thinking about how to increase reader participation on SH, I remembered the most basic thing.

The easiest way to get feedback is to just remind people to do it.

I know that the youtube "Remember to like/comment/subscribe!" is a meme, but the reason why they do it is because it works! Asking someone to remember to leave feedback will increase the number of people who will do so.

I suggest that we include a small text box at the bottom of each chapter which just says something like, "Comments, favorites, ratings, and reviews are appreciated. Support your authors!" Just something that will make the reader feel nice if they interact with the author.

For personal anecdotes, when I was posting fanfiction on AO3, I was able to rack up huge amounts of feedback just by doing one thing: I left an A/N at the bottom saying "Feedback, comments, and kudos are super appreciated! ♥ ", which tells the reader that oh yeah, if you want the story to keep going, you should let the author know you're reading. I also replied to every comment so my readers knew that I was listening to what they were saying, making them feel a personal connection to the story.

On SH, I left an Author's Note on the bottom of my SSSC3 entry. I encouraged people to favorite the entries they enjoyed (including mine, of course). Some of the readers who didn't read the contest details might not have realized that just favoriting the chapter would have an impact, so it was important to mention that yes, please favorite if you enjoyed the story, it will help. Maybe because of this, my SSSC3 entry also had way more comments than any of my main stories (where I don't leave notes asking for feedback).

These small reminders go a long way, and I think that as long as this suggestion isn't too distracting on the page, it'll help motivate a few more readers to interact.
 

Tony

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Soooo, while thinking about how to increase reader participation on SH, I remembered the most basic thing.

The easiest way to get feedback is to just remind people to do it.

I know that the youtube "Remember to like/comment/subscribe!" is a meme, but the reason why they do it is because it works! Asking someone to remember to leave feedback will increase the number of people who will do so.

I suggest that we include a small text box at the bottom of each chapter which just says something like, "Comments, favorites, ratings, and reviews are appreciated. Support your authors!" Just something that will make the reader feel nice if they interact with the author.

For personal anecdotes, when I was posting fanfiction on AO3, I was able to rack up huge amounts of feedback just by doing one thing: I left an A/N at the bottom saying "Feedback, comments, and kudos are super appreciated! ♥ ", which tells the reader that oh yeah, if you want the story to keep going, you should let the author know you're reading. I also replied to every comment so my readers knew that I was listening to what they were saying, making them feel a personal connection to the story.

On SH, I left an Author's Note on the bottom of my SSSC3 entry. I encouraged people to favorite the entries they enjoyed (including mine, of course). Some of the readers who didn't read the contest details might not have realized that just favoriting the chapter would have an impact, so it was important to mention that yes, please favorite if you enjoyed the story, it will help. Maybe because of this, my SSSC3 entry also had way more comments than any of my main stories (where I don't leave notes asking for feedback).

These small reminders go a long way, and I think that as long as this suggestion isn't too distracting on the page, it'll help motivate a few more readers to interact.

I agree. I was planning on adding a small reminder by default at the end of every chapters.
 

DaoFox

『Silkmaid』『Queen Sylvia Glasscrest of Arya』
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I find those sorts of shout-outs on YouTube rather off-putting :S

Definitely well intentioned and I would hope people would do it anyways, Writers need the feedback so they can tell what their readers enjoyed and which chapters seem like they could use a bit more work. But seeing a persistent reminder does also have a negative effect to a good portion of people.

perhaps an opt-out option buried in user settings?
 
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Although it might be off-putting, and there are reasons readers might not rate stories (I don't rate ongoing stories that are under a certain amount of chapters because it's hard to get a feel for exactly what direction the story is going in until 15 or so chapters for many stories, which is why I also have not made an active call for readers to rate my ongoing stories), there are ways to work it in that aren't intrusive. For example, giving readers the option to rate a story while in the chapter reading it, rather than purely from the story front page. As I said, a lot of times readers don't rate the story straight away as they feel it's too early to accurately give it a fair rating or for other reasons, but then the flipside is they often forget to rate it later. By having the rating option for the story in each chapter, maybe at the bottom of the page right below the chapter, readers can reach the end of the chapter and see they haven't rated the story yet and may decide "now's a good time actually".

The only thing I have trouble with is the fact that author's can already make a call to action from their readers through the use of author's notes or announcements.

Suggestion: Rather than adding a whole new feature, perhaps having saved preset options to their author's notes/announcements would help, so author's could write their own call to action, save it as a preset, and easily add it to their stories. I suggest this because I think it's also more universally helpful in other ways too.

Example: Recently I did a silly little contest, asking readers to guess some games I was referencing in the text of a story and the winner would get a (mysterious) prize. So far, nobody has guessed the third game. Rather than typing out/copy-paste repeatedly in each new chapter "reminder: the third game hasn't been guessed, the contest is still ongoing", having a preset message I can just click to add would make my life easier.
 

ars

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Agreed with both of you! :blob_paint:

I don't know exactly how it should be implemented (that's allllll gonna be on Tony's plate), but in my hopes, it would be something as unobtrusive as the "Write your comments here..." filler text you might find on a comment box. :blobrofl:

No matter which way it happens, though, I just hope it will work!!
 

LotusLily

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I had a random bad idea: What if you got a chapter by chapter rating, then averaged it all for a total rating until the reader manually puts it in?

It's a bad idea because the reader will only rate on especially good or bad chapters, put a default 5-star because they "liked it," and because it doesn't take the whole picture into account.

But still, a random idea...
 
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