Staying out of trouble on ff.net

[icarus]

I was just chit-chatting with gmth about ff.net's no author-notes-instead-of-chapters TOU rule and thought this might be a good opportunity to talk about staying out of trouble on ff.net.

My experience with ff.net is that if no one complains, the place too big for the owner to patrol. The big complainers are a) the slash trolls - people who look for slash in order to get rid of it - and b) the very young and squeamish.

There are few things to avoid:

1 - Stories that are not plot-driven, or where the sex comes before the plot. If you're writing slash, you'll want at least a page or two of plausible plot before you get to any boy/boy action. By then the slash-haters will have stopped reading.

2 - Misleading summaries. You don't want to draw in people who will be Shocked and Upset. Describe the plot in the summary.

3 - Too-clear indications of slash in the summary. Those draw anti-slash trolls. You put the indication that it's slash in the A/N inside, after the person is clicked on it via the summary. This may seem like a contradiction to 2, but it isn't. If you have a good story, slash isn't the most important element.

4 - Bizarre squicky pairings. It's a fact that many R and even PG-13 stories with, say, Dumbledore/Snape pairings have been pulled down because some readers couldn't handle it. If you put them up, don't put the pairing in the summary, describe the plot.

I've tested this. A friend put up a Dumbledore/Snape story that was R-rated but doesn't have more than a kiss in it. At the same time I deliberately put up a steamy Harry/Ron anal-sex scene. Hers has been pulled down several times. Mine's never been touched.

5 - If someone accuses your story of violating the TOU, even if they're wrong -- pull it down of your accord. Wait a while. Then you can put it back up. Otherwise you'll probably have all of your stories examined with a fine-toothed comb. I did this with 'Rising Sun' which is a very high R (skimmed the rating very close on FA and had to work with Heidi and CLS to make sure it fit the standards).

Note that 'Rising Sun' violates rule number one: the sex comes first, then the plot develops. The accusation was actually a positive review, someone gloating that I was among the authors who were putting up NC-17 stories and calling them R-rated. They noted it in their livejournal for others. I pulled the story immediately.

Remember. On ff.net, obscurity is your friend.

Comments

[ntamara.livejournal.com]

ah, thanks for the tips *g*

I only put up stuff that's R-rated (I edited CL to fit the rating - however, way too much work, so from now on only the PG stories *g*)

I can't figure out though, what's up with the no a/n in separate chapter rule: I've got four stories up there (all from before this new rule) in that format (and I can't be bothered to change it, although I'll stick to it in any new to post stories there)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The entire site is complaint-driven at this point, so I think that it's a complaint-driven issue. Some people may have been abusing it, but basically it is very disappointing for a reader to get a notification of a new chapter... only to find an A/N instead. So I can see how it might have provoked a few squawks.

I've only put up one NC-17 story once, and that as a test-case to prove my point that squick-pairings are more likely to be pulled down than a genuinely NC-17 fic. I was right.

Icarus

[ntamara.livejournal.com]

ah, if that's the ratio I should be all right: I just use the first chapter for author notes, warnings, disclaimers and everything, and a last chapter that moves as the fic progresses for replying to comments

as for nc-17 stories being pulled down, you're totally right that it's a matter of annoying somebody - the amount of nc-17 snarry I've found on ff.net is amazing - I dare say there isn't any true R-rated fic there ;)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

There are different standards for R-ratings, that's the problem. It's a pretty vague categorisation.

One is content-based. That's the standard conservative groups like the Sugar Quill use. If the story revolves around adult themes as a primary focus, they will consider it R-rated, even if the characters hardly touch each other.

Another standard - the one FA uses - is cinematic, or visual-based. The rating is based on explicitness, what is actually described. You can have a sex-scene, just so long as you're not describing anything from the waist down. It's just like your TV/Movie ratings.

Skyehawke.com uses a new standard designed for writing, but it's not catching on as far as I can see. When people see weird letters for a rating they don't understand, they won't read the story because they don't know what they're getting into.

Icarus

[ntamara.livejournal.com]

complicated. I think I'll just stick to posting my stories at ISF and other places where the ratings doesn't matter :)

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Of course, I'm me, so it won't surprise anyone that I'm asking this, but...

At least in HP, why use ffn as onels primary archive? RS hosts all the R- and NC17 fics and FA and the specialized archives host everything else. Is it the size? Is it that multifandomers want somewhere to list all their fics and have them hosted in one place? Is it the /-stripping? The ignoring of the emails to admins?

[Side note: we do need to finish the new fa search engine...]

[milkthistle.livejournal.com]

Personally, I tend to use both archives equally. As a website, I find FA is much better maintained and has higher standards of grammar, etc (kudos to you, btw), making it the better archive by far. At the same time, the uploading process is much longer, and sometimes you just want to get your story out there ASAP. This is when the self-upload aspect of ffn.net comes in handy. Since it's basically all handled by the author, there is no waiting period, and you have the ability to easily change certain aspects/make corrections after you've posted (ie: change the summary, etc). I usually post my stuff on ffn.net right away, as a sort of testing ground, and submit the same story to FA a short while later.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

For myself, my primary archive is my website. resonant8 bugged me until I got one for her convenience, since my stories were scattered all over.

I put my stories in multiple locations *ahem, to put it mildly.* FA, ff.net, Ink-Stained Fingers, the Restricted Section, Skyehawke.com, Adultfanfiction.net to name just a few.

You see, I worked in advertising, Media department. Part of our job was to place ads in various markets, LA, Chicago, etc. So I think of archives as marketing regions, each serving a different if overlapping group of fans.

- FF.net reaches a very broad but 'thin' group of fans, basically your froth. It's a younger group, sort of your fly-by-night fans. These are the people who might be unfamiliar with Harry Potter fandom: I was an LotR slasher and scanned the Harry Potter stories on ff.net first. It's so huge that your story will be quickly swamped, unless you have an ongoing series updated frequently. On the other hand, the 'new story' feature improves the market penetration for those who've requested to updated on your stories. I used to use ff.net to post pre-beta stories, sort of testing the market. I counted on obscurity. Now I have too much work out there and too many people watching to be able to do that.

You're trying to reach a lot of people at once, but not counting on much market penetration.

- FA is huge, and fandom specific. This is a far more targeted group, and a broader age bracket. Again, because of the size of FA, your story does tend to get swamped, so it's best to come out with two stories in the same update if possible. The fact that the new stories list stays up for a few days helps.

You're reaching the main fandom audience, but you must recognise there's a lot of competing voices with similar work. You've got Coke, they're selling Pepsi -- it's hard to stand out.

- the Restricted Section is definitely a niche market. People don't tend to review porn, but you can count on your stuff being read and if liked, reread. And re-re-read. (It should be called the Re-re-restricted section.) Here the pairing is everything. This is going to sound cynical, but if you want your stuff read you need at least one Harry/Draco story, one Het, and one Harry/Snape. I don't have any of this (I've Harry/Snape that's it) but marketing-wise, people are more likely to try your unusual pairings if they've read something else they liked.

This is a sex-market only, but it has one major drawback: you can't link back to your website/main archive for other non-NC-17 stories. So people know what's up there and that's it.

Anyway, I think I've rattled on enough.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the search engine will be a great benefit. Also, I think more people will use FA as their main archive once all their stories can be listed on one page. My riddikulus and astronomytower fics are read a lot because of two fics of mine - one astronomytower and one riddikulus - were niffled. But the readership didn't carry over to the dark arts page which is relatively untouched.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'll think I'll copy and post this (as disorganised as it is) to Heidi's message, just so I have a complete answer.

So here you go, heidi8:

I was going to mention the Skyehawke review problem in my response to heidi8, but I was feeling a little groggy (too many late nights this weekend).

So I'll add Skyehawke here:

- Skyehawke is a sort of, er, inbred group. The people who read there tend to be the people who post there. So pretty much everyone reading is a writer. This gives you the 'family effect' -- i.e., the way families just assume you know they love you because they putfoodonthetable/readyourstory. I think for the most part they're the same people who haunt LJ, FA, Yahoo groups, Rec sites. So very often they will have read your story elsewhere first, because they're serious fandom players.

If you want to reach the serious writers, post at Skyehawke first, then send it out elsewhere. If you post at Skyehawke last, everyone will have already read your story.

- Livejournal is another place to post stories. This guarantees a certain readership, it's a great place to network, but it's like FF.net: the announcement sweeps by in the flood quickly.

- Adultfanfiction.net is the Porn version of FF.net. The same rules apply, it's multifandom, a young crowd. There they like fluff and sex. There is a heavy hit-count: Skinny Dipping got 1,000 hits in two days. Because of the title for the most part. Reviews are few and far between.

Once again, it's exposure across a broad band.

- InkStained Fingers is a smaller (about 1,750) slash archive. There's a certain crowd that checks religiously, and the archive allows direct linking to NC-17 stories and has a fast upload with no pop-ups. That's why when I link stories it will usually be to the InkStain version. I'm on a dial up and other sites load very slowly.

The crowd there tends to be older, with a predilection for porn, porn, porn. But they do like intelligent porn.

- The Harry Potter Slash Archive I'm just getting some stories up there now (I think) but it's been down for a while. So I'm not sure what that group's like. I suppose we'll find out. They have a very active Yahoo Group.

- Noire Sensus is a multi-fandom archive that seems to have a great deal of success in cross-polinating stories by the same writers in different fandoms. I think because it's smaller than FF.net, but has a listing page that shows all the stories you've written, from any fandom.

- Pairing-specific sites: Walking The Plank (Harry/Snape), The Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest, Perfectly Flawed (Ron/Draco), The Draco!Bottom Emporium, Checkmated (Ron/Hermione), Rareslash, The Werewolf Registry, and other pairing archives are obviously geared towards certain niches.

To my mind, from a marketing standpoint these are the best places to have your stories archived, because there you're really reaching the people who want your specific story.

Now I have this wish for a Percy archive... sigh. Alas, both 'Perfect?' and 'Positively Percy' are inactive.


Icarus

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Like others, I use my own website and lj, and I also post to Inkstain, skyhawke and a couple of others.

I don't post to either FA or RS. I took one look at RS and didn't like the way it was set up right down to hating the colours, and I've always been creeped out by FA's strict-sounding requirements. I probably meet them - I may flatter myself but I think my grammar's pretty good - but somehow...no. I would actually rather put up with the chaos that is ff.net than jump through those kinds of hoops.

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

Good advice, all of it.

Back with my last fandom, I posted exclusively at FF.Net - I had no need to go anywhere else. I got a stready stream of reviews there and I had no problems (this was, of course, ages ago before the purge). I don't archive there at all anymore, it's all just too difficult. I was so confused by their system of pulling down stories seemingly at random that I rated a PG13 fic as R just in case.

I miss the audience (even if some of the audience was none too bright), but I don't miss the flamers, the slash patrol, or the people who ask for a sequel as a way of saying 'I like it'. Or the very very easily squicked. :)

Think I'll stick with Skyehawke for a bit. Sure, no one reviews there (at all! What is with that?!), but I like the hit counter. :D

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention the Skyehawke review problem in my response to heidi8, but I was feeling a little groggy (too many late nights this weekend).

So I'll add Skyehawke here:

- Skyehawke is a sort of, er, inbred group. The people who read there tend to be the people who post there. So pretty much everyone reading is a writer. This gives you the 'family effect' -- i.e., the way families just assume you know they love you because they putfoodonthetable/readyourstory. I think for the most part they're the same people who haunt LJ, FA, Yahoo groups, Rec sites. So very often they will have read your story elsewhere first, because they're serious fandom players.

If you want to reach the serious writers, post at Skyehawke first, then send it out elsewhere. If you post at Skyehawke last, everyone will have already read your story.

- Livejournal is another place to post stories. This guarantees a certain readership, it's a great place to network, but it's like FF.net: the announcement sweeps by in the flood quickly.

- Adultfanfiction.net is the Porn version of FF.net. The same rules apply, it's multifandom, a young crowd. There they like fluff and sex. There is a heavy hit-count: Skinny Dipping got 1,000 hits in two days. Because of the title for the most part. Reviews are few and far between.

Once again, it's exposure across a broad band.

- InkStained Fingers is a smaller (about 1,750) slash archive. There's a certain crowd that checks religiously, and the archive allows direct linking to NC-17 stories and has a fast upload with no pop-ups. That's why when I link stories it will usually be to the InkStain version. I'm on a dial up and other sites load very slowly.

The crowd there tends to be older, with a predilection for porn, porn, porn. But they do like intelligent porn.

- The Harry Potter Slash Archive I'm just getting some stories up there now (I think) but it's been down for a while. So I'm not sure what that group's like. I suppose we'll find out. They have a very active Yahoo Group.

- Noire Sensus is a multi-fandom archive that seems to have a great deal of success in cross-polinating stories by the same writers in different fandoms. I think because it's smaller than FF.net, but has a listing page that shows all the stories you've written, from any fandom.

- Pairing-specific sites: Walking The Plank (Harry/Snape), The Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest, Perfectly Flawed (Ron/Draco), The Draco!Bottom Emporium, Checkmated (Ron/Hermione), Rareslash, The Werewolf Registry, and other pairing archives are obviously geared towards certain niches.

To my mind, from a marketing standpoint these are the best places to have your stories archived, because there you're really reaching the people who want your specific story.

Now I have this wish for a Percy archive... sigh. Alas, both 'Perfect?' and 'Positively Percy' are inactive.

Hmm. I'll think I'll copy and post this (as disorganised as it is) to Heidi's message, just so I have a complete answer.

Icarus

[redblaze.livejournal.com]

Very very interesting. . .

I had some issues with Ff.net myself. . . I have stories that are up there (Very high R) but have not been taken down. Though, they are both multi-chaptered fics with a plot.

A friend of mine wrote an outtake to these stories and put it up on ff.net and it was pulled. I was stunned as the stories the outtake we based on (My stories) were left up and they are steamier.

I do find it unjust that you were able to post a Harry/Ron anal sex fic, while your friend's Dumbledore/Snape fic has been pulled when it doesn't even have more than a kiss. it seems to me that they are judging people's preference.

The thing is, they just pull the stories without giving the author a chance to defend themselves. It seems to me like they get one complaint and pull the story without even reading it, not even taking into consideration the reviews an author would lose. When they originally decided to pull NC-17 fics, they simply locked down any story that was NC-17 instead of giving the authors a chance to edit their stories and tone down the ratings. I know I lost over 600 reviews when I could have easily pulled the sex out and faded to black (hate that, but it would have been better than losing reviews)

Okay, I'll stop ranting. I appreciated reading your observations, thanks!

Kele

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

FF.net to my understanding is owned and run by one person.

FA is owned and run by a large number of volunteers.

So FA is a community, while FF.net is more or less a business - one whose objective is to gather hits rather than make money, but there is that entirely different dynamic. Because FF.net is owned by one person, his/her decisions are final and immediate. FA is a community so there is discussion and policies and the people available to work with you.

Because FF.net is so huge, I can see clearly why he/she (I used to know the name but I've forgotten it) isn't interested in giving authors a fair hearing. There are so many problems in an auto-upload archive, it must get laughable some days. So FF.net really just oils the squeaky wheels and that's that.

If you're a major author like Midnight Blue, you're more likely to have problems with FF.net, because there are more people clicking on your stories and therefore there's a greater chance of someone reading something they don't like and complaining (I'm puzzled why she hasn't posted the rest of her story to FA). I'm of course referring to the fact that her Mirror of Maybe was taken down despite the fact that it is clearly R-rated. We get back to the point of different rating systems: Mirror of Maybe was R-rated by cinematic standards, but NC-17 by subject matter.

That's part of the problem with my friend's story. She's a much more important and well-read author than me. That's put her tougher pairings up to a stronger light. I've been called a BNF in these Deathmatches, but in reality I'm not (you can tell by the fact that there are 100 people in those things). I'm known in the Harry/Snape and Ron/Draco group. Outside of those readers and here, no one's heard of me.

Icarus

[redblaze.livejournal.com]

Gah, I felt soooo bad when MoM got taken down. Midnight Blue lost thousands of reviews, it was very unfair and sad.

To be honest, the only reason I continued to post on ff.net was to pimp Checkmated when we first got started. I had a pretty large following on that site, so I'd post chapters, cut the sex, and say that if they wanted the NC-17 version they were welcome to go to Checkmated and check it out. Bad of me, but oh well.

Now that Checkmated is pretty big, 8000+ members. . .I just post on there out of habit more than anything else. I don't like their politics, but I can understand why they can't micro-manage. I see FF.net as a starting off point in the fandom until eventually, people find their little niches and settle.

And awwww. . . ::Pats Icarus:: I think you are a very BNF, but I understand what you mean about certain groups knowing you. Most people in the Ron/Hermione crowd know who I am, but anyone outside it has never heard of me. Maybe I need to start writing slash instead of just reading it and broaden my fan base ::Ponders::

Kele

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't consider that BNF to be anything personal. It's a marketing goal. :D

BNF means you have a 'brand' and some 'name recognition.'

*Icarus, whose company did the US 'Got Milk?' campaign, points back to marketing background and father with 40+ years in advertising.*

I joke about shamelessly marketing stories, but really there's no shame in using ff.net as a jumping off place for Checkmated. You're providing a service. If people liked your Hermione/Ron story, you've helped them find more. You haven't stolen anything from ff.net.

Marketing just means making it easy for people to find what they need/want. I lived in India for a while and I gotta tell you, without marketing as a signpost just finding soap was a pain in the ass. You had to ask around, "who has soap?" Then you had to track down who had the kind of soap you wanted ("no, no, not scrubbing soap -- hand soap..."). Then had to find out what was available, "you mean you have something other than cheap Oil of Olay-knockoff beauty bars?" It was a nightmare.

Finding good fics in the beginning reminded me of that experience. *Sigh. Though I loved India.*

Icarus

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

I avoid the problem by not reading off ff.net. Honestly, between the ever-changing rules and the ever-annoying pop-ups, it's just too much of a hassle and if someone recs me a story that's only there, I usually won't bother.

Sad, but true.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Now, see, if everyone did that, I would go back to using ff.net as my proving ground. Then I'd post Snape Manor as a WIP and change it around as I saw fit not worrying whether or not it worked or sucked because no one would be reading but a few die-hards.

Then I'd finalise it, get it beta'd, and post it FA. Then I'd broadcast the story on the Yahoo groups.

That's what I did with Primer to the Dark Arts. It worked great.

Icarus

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting way of doing it that I hadn't considered. Hmm.

I think my perceptionon the whole thing is colored by the fact that I'm only 5% writer to 95% reader.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I was 95% reader until I ran out of good Harry/Ron stories. I finally decided I'd have to write my own - *sigh.*

Then I started writing, I couldn't stop.

Icarus

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

Heh. "Now children, today we'll be talking about how writers are born..."

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I mean, it worked really well. One person pointed out "8 chapters and still no sign of a plot...." and they were right! So I fixed that. Then all these people got mad at Ron and I realised his confusion about his relationship with Harry was not coming across well. So I fixed that. It was terrific. And as far as I knew, only about a dozen people were reading.

Until Snape and Harry broke up. Then my email box filled with complaints and I discovered a lot more were reading than I knew.

But it still wasn't, what, 300 people.

Icarus

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

Heh. Never a wake-up call until you do something to piss people off. ;)

I just weigh the balance of annoyance versus ease of access and it usually doesn't go in ff.net's favor, but then again I'm very wary of WIPs as well, so maybe it's part and parcel of how I read.

[al-riddle.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Very true.

*takes the tips*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Thank you, and you're veddy welcome. Where in the Phillipines are you living? wildernessguru has been following the (stalled) military upgrade over there.

Icarus

[al-riddle.livejournal.com]

Oooh, fab. Who's she? Or he? Or-

Manila. It's like New York. Fifty years ago, five years into the future with brown people. >D

Actually, no.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

wildernessguru is the boyfriend, Snape fan and occasional beta-reader extraordinaire (though he will only beta NC-17 Snape slash, thinks Percy needs to be spanked, hates Harry and, all right, he liked Ron in 'Beg Me For It').

Are Fillipino or expatriot living over there?

Icarus

[al-riddle.livejournal.com]

I like him already!

Chinese who's ancestors found their way here.

[wanderingscribe.livejournal.com]

And so, you have listed the top five reasons I detest FFnet and refuse to use it anymore. [gags]

I refuse to cater to anti-slash bigots and teenybopper "omg! liek that is SO sik!" faddies. Probably why I'm not a BNF at all. *g*

Y'know, before the NC-17 ban, I actually had a good chunk of my work up on FFnet. There were loyal fans, there were lots of reviews...and nary a flame at all in my two years there.

Talk about irony. [rolls eyes]