Feedback on my stories

[curious_guy (imported)]

I am a little disappointed that I did not receive any feedback on my last two stories. I thought they were fairly good, especially "Making Porn". I usually get a few feedback emails or messages in this Forum.

Has the quality of my stories gone down to the point that no one likes them anymore?

[Slammr (imported)]

I am a little disappointed that I did not receive any feedback on my last two stories. I thought they were fairly good, especially "Making Porn". I usually get a few feedback emails or messages in this Forum.

Has the quality of my stories gone down to the point that no one likes them anymore?

Unfortunately, feedback for stories on this site is lacking - big time. There seems to be about three or four people - you are one - that bother to review stories. No telling how many authors, fed up with lack of response, have stopped posting stories to the archive. No amount of complaining about the lack of feedback seems to do any good.

[bella (imported)]

sorry curious_guy

I normally comment, but not been feel too well last couple of weeks

I read them and enjoyed them, but didn't get around to make a post

[gandalf (imported)]

I knew there was a story I had read I needed to comment on. I really enjoyed Making Porn. Of course, stories like that always make me wish the action (cuttings) that they enjoy were more readily available. Castration and or penectomy...whether whole or stubbing should be more readily available. And be available for the asking.

[StefanIsMe (imported)]

I'm not surprised much at all at how hard it is to get feedback on a story... not that it doesn't happen; some stories get LOADS of feedback, but yes; there are many stories that get none.

However, I think it just comes down to subject matter.

I'm a member of a great many story boards ranging in subject from castration to poetry to TG, and I see many varying amounts of feedback, but a couple of points stand out.

First, the more 'weird', or risque, or considered-abhorent-by-the-average-joe, the less amount of feedback you will get, but that which you DO get will pobably be very pro or very against.

Second, when one gets towards the stuff society really balks at, i.e. minor stories and castration, the responses drop to near zero.... while at the same time, the HITS go up. Which tells me there are many readers for those stories, and they read them multiple times, but are far more shy to leave any trace behind (forum feedback or even email).

Over at BigCloset, a very large forum with great members and fine management and thousands of stories, the one with the most hits (by a wide margin) but fewest replies is one of the most 'scary', dirty, evil-minded stories there.

Here at the E.A., it's the same, pretty much. I've posted three stories and I think one or two got a comment on the board, but the best feedback came via email from non-members (too shy to post, I assume, which is fine).

Instead, I look at the numbers. Between those three stories, my little deposits in the archive have been read, or at least skimmed, TWENTY TWO THOUSAND TIMES.... !!!! AAAHH!!! I dunno about anybody else, but that damn near makes me feel famous! I figure if I'm really conservative and say just 10% of those 'reads' represent readers that enjoyed the stories, thats still over TWO THOUSAND happy fans. My gosh... almost makes me nervous!

So, I feel great even without much real feedback on the boards or in email.

But, that's just me.

[Slammr (imported)]

You can look at hits two ways: 5000 hits and not one damn response; or Wow! 5000 hits.

Anymore, you're probably better off taking the second option, because, in this thread, you've already seen most of those that respond on the boards. Some of it may be that many don't want to be seen endorsing minor stories, which wasn't the case several years ago.

I don't mean to start another discussion about whether minor stories are appropriate. We've been there and done that. When I first started posting stories - 2002 - we had quite a bit of discussion about stories on the boards, much of it by other authors. Most of them - for one reason or the other - no longer post stories or any longer post to the message board.

I know what you mean about looking at the total hits to the stories. When I totaled up the total hits to my stories - before the big crash a few years ago - I had better than 750,000 hits to my stories. With the old software, an author could check the hit count on all his stories. It was displayed on an author page accessible to him. Now, the count is displayed along with the story, and stories before that software change don't display them.

The old software had a security flaw, though. Even I figured out how I could hack into any author's account. I didn't do anything but look, but I could have posted in another author's name had I wished. Instead, I told Bboy about the flaw.

It's too bad we don't have different story software that allows posting of comments to the author's page, but that would probably require dumping all the stories now on the archive and starting over.