Hiccupx:
There is a weighting for premium stories also which should compensate for lack of likes.
We find that on this site, as with in the wider world, the authors that become the top sellers as those that build up a following. This can take time and effort, but the benefits are worth it, and we have authors that regularly earn several hundred dollars a month.
The key is for people to get to know your work, and the most effective way for this is to upload some short stories for free. If members enjoy your free stories, then it's much less of a risk for them to purchase a premium story, and in our experience once their hooked on an author's work, they'll look out for the notifications whenever you upload something new.
Of course we're always happy to discuss with authors about improvements to the website and how to better promote work. C00kie is currently collecting feedback and ideas on this for future developments.
Letters And Numbers:
Why not change it so non-premium members can like premium stories?
Or allow a writer start off a regular story and convert it to premium?
In the wider world, a book that can make a bookstore money isn’t hidden under a mountain of free pamphlets.
FF Team:
First chapters of premium stories are free to read for all members so readers can sample some of the story before purchasing.
What hiccupx is saying is that to promote premium stories they have a higher score so they appear in listing's even though they are new to the site and don't have many views or likes.
Once your story has been up for a bit, the views and likes will add to the score. But ultimately, when new stories are added... It is only fair to highlight these too.
Giving the options for readers to like a story that they haven't been able to read it in full doesn't seem fair.
We try to balance both free and premium stories on the site so it's fair to every author and reader.
We're not hiding premium stories to be purchased but you have to admit in the real world, authors don't start off being best selling authors... That's all hiccupx is saying is that to make the most of your audience and get a following on the site which will help selling premium content.
Letters And Numbers:
There are lots of things on this website that don’t work the way the staff wants them to work, from the kinda silly (you can’t capitalize words in the titles of stories) to things like chat which are majorly broken. I think the algorithm might not be working exactly the way it was designed. Do you think that’s a possibility?
FF Team:
The capital letters not being used on the site is a design choice. So that does work the way the site wants it too...
The chat does need things fixing, and we are aware of that.but that is separate from the story section.
The stories however have had a revamp this year and last year. We updated the story searches, and the story home page. Algorithms would be checked as part of this update as we have a test system when releases are made. So I don't believe this is the case.
So I’ll drop it after this, but if you search for my premium story (3 weeks old, almost 1000 views, 1 like, 2 comments, thumbnail, descriptions, 50 chapters) on the Magical Realism tab it shows up - on page 16 underneath a non-premium TEN YEAR OLD STORY with one chapter, no picture, no likes, no comments, 6000 views (in 10 years!!).
If you can say that the search algorithm is working as intended there, I’m at a loss for words. We all know this is a lovable Frankenstein of a website that is trying to be 5 different things and mostly doing them well. It’s ok to admit there are bugs sometimes. We all get it.
