# How should we increase our visibility on FA?



## Toonces (Apr 13, 2010)

It's no secret that for the most part furry lit is restricted to a small portion of the FA userbase. I find that not only do my stories get few comments, but they tend to come from the same pool of people each time. I would attribute this to three main causes:

1] The front page features only four slots for furry literature which limits the exposure each story has to front-page viewers, as well as sending a tacit message that literature is not as important as pictures.

2] The lack of a "Favorite Authors" section in the profile. Although many have historically used the "Favorite Artists" section to includes authors, most do not. 

3] The tendency for people not to +fav stories at as high a rate as they do for images, as even those who click the story are less liable to want to feature it in their favorites folder. Since many people search for new art by sifting through others favorites galleries, this limits writers' from getting as much attention once their stories are off the front page and out of their watchers' inboxes.

I think there are three things writers can do immediately to attempt to increase the visibility of authors on FA:

A] Demand that the mods expand the number of slots for stories on the front page to eight.

B] Request that the mods include a section in the profile for favorite authors.

C] Make it a point to +fav each other's works, and encourage our fans and friends to do the same as well.


Any other suggestions?


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## kitreshawn (Apr 13, 2010)

1) This is actually a gripe I have as well, however I think it is quite simply ballanced out by the fact that even with fewer spots a story will stay on the front page for longer just because fewer are submitted.  By contrast pictures tend to get bumped VERY quickly.

2) This is a simple enough change to make I suppose.

3) This is something I have given some thought.  I expect it is just a reflection of how stories get fewer views in general, and thus fewer favs.  But beyond that there is still a disparity (writers seem to get 1 fav per 50 views or so, artists tend to get them at a rate of 1 to 7 or 1 to 25 depending on skill)



Honestly the real problem is that FA is an Picture site at its core and as such the community reflects that.  This is a larger reflection of the fandom as a whole and to be expected.


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## Atrak (Apr 13, 2010)

The fact is that there are a lot more artists of the visual variety.

It's usually faster for people to draw a picture than write a story.

So, really, if you want to go for fairness, then the number of slots for images should actually be increased, as opposed to increasing the number of slots for stories.

As for favorite artists, I consider writing an art form.

You can make people see/smell/hear/taste/feel/etc. things using only black letters on a page.

People don't favorite stories as often because of 'replay' value.

They can spend three seconds to glance at an image in their favorites to remember all of the awesome things about it, while they would have to spend a lot more time rereading a story to get the same effect.

There's also the fact that most visual artists submit things a lot faster than writers do.

This means that they don't have to waste their favorites space on stories, when they can just +watch them for almost the same effect.

It's easier to find a favorite story out of a dozen stories than it is to find a favorite image out of dozens, or even hundreds.

Stories will almost always take a backseat to images.

Some people try to merge the two by making webcomics.

They are images, yet have all the elements of a story, except for the sheer number of words.

Maybe you learn to adapt to meet the wants and desires of other people, instead of expecting them to change to meet your wants.

They are the consumer.

Sell your story.



Or you could just write how you want and not care about views/favorites/+watches.

*shrug*


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## TakeWalker (Apr 13, 2010)

I'm being very serious when I suggest that you lower your standards. :|


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 13, 2010)

atrakaj said:
			
		

> It's usually faster for people to draw a picture than write a story.


I just wanted to point out that that's not true.  Maybe you meant 'look at a picture' and 'read a story'.


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## CatalinaTamiko (Apr 13, 2010)

atrakaj said:


> The fact is that there are a lot more artists of the visual variety.
> 
> It's usually faster for people to draw a picture than write a story.
> 
> ...




he has a point. Even from my stance as a writer, i still see that images are the best way to attract new watchers. Having said that. I noticed that some, Jeeves in particular, can attract as many as Maxblackrabbit. Its a simple fact that he uses PICTURES in his thumbnails. an image gets more attention that the simple story icon that is standard for stories.


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## Toonces (Apr 13, 2010)

atrakaj said:


> Maybe you learn to adapt to meet the wants and desires of other people, instead of expecting them to change to meet your wants.
> 
> They are the consumer.
> 
> Sell your story.



ack, ack, ack, am i gagging or am i being choked by an invisible hand?!


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## Browder (Apr 13, 2010)

Just because people may not comment, doesn't mean that they don't know who you are. Before I joined FA I read a lot of your stories and I'm sure other people did the same.


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## Poetigress (Apr 13, 2010)

CatalinaTamiko said:


> Its a simple fact that he uses PICTURES in his thumbnails. an image gets more attention that the simple story icon that is standard for stories.



Red borders don't hurt either.

Cynicism aside, though, yes, I do think having real thumbnails instead of the story default helps get some eyes turned your way.

In general, I also think it's worth remembering that most (not all, but most) readers on FA are also writers. I still think the best way to get more attention for your own work, therefore, is to read and comment on what others are doing. Like it or not, FA is very much a social network in addition to a gallery of work, and you can't just put something up and wait for the throngs to arrive. (Not saying that the original OP is doing that, of course, but that's the attitude I see sometimes.)

I'm not against adding more slots for fiction to the front page, but I also don't think it's going to make a huge difference (and I can also see the argument that visual art needs more slots because of overall volume -- images only stay on the front page for seconds at most, whereas a story might linger for a few hours). Personally, I wonder whether more readers are using the search keywords to find things to read, more so than happening upon stuff on the front page. For myself, I rarely read anything through discovering it on the front page -- I wind up finding works to read based more on networking via the Thursday Prompts than anything (though, to be honest, I haven't been reading all that much on FA lately, even from writers I know).

We're always going to take a backseat to visual art in the fandom. I don't see that changing anytime soon. That said, it doesn't mean we should give up and not do anything. The biggest advice I would give for more visibility, though, besides reading and commenting on others' work as much as possible, would be 1) write better, 2) write more, and 3) publish in other venues in the fandom and link back to FA. 

There's also the matter of diversifying, or not. The arguments go two ways: first, that you should 'brand' yourself and become known for writing one particular type of story (a tactic that I think tends to work better in traditional publishing than in something like the fandom), or, that you should mix things up as much as possible to attract the largest possible audience overall. It's a question of going wide or deep, and I don't think there's one answer for everyone. But to give an example from my perspective, if every story in someone's gallery has a red border, I'm probably not going to be interested, because I'm not that into reading furry erotica these days. But if they occasionally had general-audience stories of good quality, I'd consider watching them for those. (Interestingly, this doesn't seem to cut both ways -- although I've heard this criticism leveled at artists, I've never seen anyone complain to a writer that they don't write erotic work.)


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## Toonces (Apr 13, 2010)

i've written the same story like five dozen times and i have hundreds of watchers.


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## Poetigress (Apr 14, 2010)

Well, if you have hundreds of watchers and get very few comments on your stories, then maybe your watchers are just lazy.


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## Atrak (Apr 14, 2010)

M. Le Renard said:


> I just wanted to point out that that's not true.  Maybe you meant 'look at a picture' and 'read a story'.



Actually, I didn't mean that.

I probably just meant by my standards.

I tend to write rather long stories.

I couldn't even write one with few enough words for that short story contest.

I got close, though.



TooncesFA said:


> ack, ack, ack, am i gagging or am i being choked by an invisible hand?!



Heh.

Nice economics reference.


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