Time until story is first noticed

[Thousand_Faces]

I was curious how quickly a newly released story from a new author would be picked up by readers. Since i plan to use the prologue as my scale of interest into producing more chapters.

 

[ArcanePunkster]

Define what you mean, because no matter what you release there will always be someone that will read it.

Are you perhaps meaning how long it'll take for your story to get some traction on this site?

 

[DubstheDuke]

Took me 250 chapters before I reached trending

 

[minacia]

It depends! If you just posted your story just now, sometimes it takes a little time before Tony approves the cover and it shows up on the main page!

 

[CupcakeNinja]

I was curious how quickly a newly released story from a new author would be picked up by readers. Since i plan to use the prologue as my scale of interest into producing more chapters.

Listen man you dont decide whether you continue a story based on how many people read ONE chapter. Most readers dont even read stories with so few chapters.

 

[Thousand_Faces]

Listen man if you dont decide whether you continue a story based on how man people read ONE chapter. Most readers dont even read stories with so few chapters.

A very good viewpoint I did not take into account. Much appreciated. I am more interested in even a single reader. Just to know someone is reading the words, good or bad, i am putting out.

 

[Leti]

A very good viewpoint I did not take into account. Much appreciated. I am more interested in even a single reader. Just to know someone is reading the words, good or bad, i am putting out.

There will always be someone who read your story. Most of them are silent reader, though.They don't show up in the reader list because they're not logged in. The valid reads stats on every chapters show their numbers.

 

[Jemini]

A very good viewpoint I did not take into account. Much appreciated. I am more interested in even a single reader. Just to know someone is reading the words, good or bad, i am putting out.

I find that the "story is too short to even consider starting" crowd normally breaks and starts reading around 30 to 50 chapters in. However, story length is not the only tipping point. You also need to have a star rating above 4 and a number of votes on that poll that is at least similar to your number of chapters. Finally, you also need to already have a certain number of "readers," usually around 300-ish, before you start getting over that tipping point where the band-wagon effect will start up and people will start appreciating your story for it's actual worth.

(I chose my words carefully there, "appreciating your story for it's actual worth." If you've managed to hit all the band-wagon triggering conditions and realize your star rating starts to drop at almost that exact time, well... that's a prime indication that they didn't think much of your story. If you're getting low star ratings before that point though, it doesn't necessarily mean as much. It could just be some of those malicious trolls who like to give people low star ratings just to be mean.)

 

[Wohendum-Bluu]

I find that the "story is too short to even consider starting" crowd normally breaks and starts reading around 30 to 50 chapters in. However, story length is not the only tipping point. You also need to have a star rating above 4 and a number of votes on that poll that is at least similar to your number of chapters. Finally, you also need to already have a certain number of "readers," usually around 300-ish, before you start getting over that tipping point where the band-wagon effect will start up and people will start appreciating your story for it's actual worth.

(I chose my words carefully there, "appreciating your story for it's actual worth." If you've managed to hit all the band-wagon triggering conditions and realize your star rating starts to drop at almost that exact time, well... that's a prime indication that they didn't think much of your story. If you're getting low star ratings before that point though, it doesn't necessarily mean as much. It could just be some of those malicious trolls who like to give people low star ratings just to be mean.)

I normally don't read anything short, but my tipping point is more to do with word count then chapter count since some people write extremely short chapters. Having a lot of chapters can often still lead to disappointingly small word counts.

I normally hold back until someone is approaching 50k words. The earliest I've caved is 30k though this was only because it was an author I was already familiar with.

 

[BenJepheneT]

It's a potshot. Sometimes you'd see people get into trending with nothing but 4 chapters and a sexy cover while others barely reach top 9 with 100 chapters and a regular cover.

Almost as if there's a pattern emerging here...

 

[K5Rakitan]

Focus on quality, and the rest will fall into place.

You also need to have a star rating above 4

I don't