Very Basic Growth Rate Stats: Stargate Atlantis and other fandoms.

[icarus]

How does Stargate Atlantis rate in online popularity?

We can use fanfiction as a benchmark for how popular the Stargate Atlantis fandom is compared to other fandoms. My statistics are taken from fanfiction.net, the largest fanfiction online archive*, which receives 9,700,000 impressions per day according to Alexa. As of June 25th, 2007, fanfiction.net was the 193rd most popular site on the Internet, drawing more traffic than MSNBC. Actually, a lot more traffic than MSNBC.

Fanfiction is a huge online draw. Therefore it can be used as a general measure of the online popularity of a show.

The number of stories measures the level of activity in the fandom. This reflects the number of readers, rather than writers, believe it or not. As one writer receives a ton of comments, other writers follow the money -- er, reviews -- and the fanfiction dynamo kicks off.

*(Caveat: fanfiction.net does not allow explicit NC-17 stories, so the numbers of actual fanfics out there is much higher, an estimated 30% more. Needless to say, the porn is an even bigger draw. Most of the NC-17 fiction is housed on Livejournal.com, the 63rd most popular site.)

A fandom requires three elements:

1) Active Viewers who are familiar with the show. Fanfiction does not explain or repeat what is known from the show. Fanfic, for example, don't explain what a stargate does or what a "puddlejumper" is.

2) Active Writers (and Artists and Vidders). Usually there is a core of "Big Name Fans" who have written for many shows and popularize the fanfiction for a new show. Working alongside them will be organizers who run (and pay for) archives, story challenge communities, and newsletters that promote the fanfiction, as well as the all-important readers who sift the wheat from the chaff and maintain recommendations lists that anthologize the good stories.

3) Active Readers who send praise and online comments -- called "reviews" -- to the writers. These readers demand more stories which starts up a dynamo. Reviews are the coin of the realm. Getting more reviews for a story is bit like getting paid more for your work. Writers don't like to admit it but they do follow the readers. As the reviews and "pay-off" increases, the top drawer writers are drawn in and the quality of the stories goes up as well.

Comparing the two Stargates:

Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669
Stargate SG-1 (after 10 years, about 1,621 per year): 16,211

SGA's early surge of popularity far outstripped SG-1 fanfiction. While SGA's discovery by fanfiction writers can be contributed to a springboard effect, that doesn't explain why SGA has nearly double the number of fanfiction stories per year.

This is significant. If Stargate Atlantis continues at this clip for seven years, it could pass 20,000 stories and be ranked in the top five mainstream fanfiction communities alongside the Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm writing a synopsis of that first year examining why the wacky SGA fanfiction drew so many writers and readers.

Stargate Atlantis compared to the three hottest new shows:

Supernatural (after 2 years, about 4,954 per year): 9,908
Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669
Dr. Who (after 3 years, about 2,482 per year): 7,448
Battlestar Galactica 2003 (after 4 years, about 580 per year): 2,319

Stargate Atlantis is on a par with the two hottest new fandoms today: the skyrocketing Supernatural, and Dr. Who. Supernatural's growth rate is astounding. It looks like it could be the next X-files. Battlestar Galactica, despite the quality of the show (or perhaps because of it) has not created a large body of fanfiction readers.

Stargate Atlantis compared to the three biggest mainstream fanfiction communities:

Harry Potter (after 10 years, about 30,965 per year): 309,650
Lord of the Rings (after 10 years since fanfiction.net launched, about 4,012 per year): 40,121
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (after 7 years, about 4,480 per year): 31,364

Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669

No fandom is as large as the King Kong of fandoms, Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are a distant second and third, though they have nearly twice the number of fics found in the next largest fandoms.

Less familiar to most people are the powerhouse Anime fandoms, which I distinguish from the "mainstream" fandoms:

Naruto: 90,972
Yu-Gi-Oh: 42,233
Digimon: 28,743
Dragon Ball Z: 28,266
Sailor Moon: 24,693
Fullmetal Alchemist: 19,003
Ruroun Kenshin: 14,704

Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669

The Anime fandoms have a reputation for drawing a younger readership with greater numbers of young male readers. According several surveys, the typical ratio of male to female readers ranges from 85-90% women, 15-10% men.

Stargate Atlantis compared to the mid-range mainstream fandoms:

CSI (after 7 years, about 2428 per year): 17,000
Stargate SG-1 (after 10 years, about 1,621 per year): 16,211
Gilmore Girls (after 6 years, about 2,053 per year): 12,322
House, M.D. (3 years, about 2,280): 6,840
**X-Files (after 9 years, about 726 per year): 6,536

Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669

Stargate SG-1 is a mid-range fandom. Stargate Atlantis, if it keeps its early momentum, will surpass all of these.

**Note: The X-Files is a much larger fandom than these numbers indicate. The figures here are low due to the fact that fanfiction.net did not launch until the late 1990s, years after the X-Files began. Most of the early X-Files fanfiction was shared through other means. Likewise, the early Star Trek fanfiction is not housed on fanfiction.net and was mostly shared through printed Zines. Shows like Stargate SG-1, which started at the same time as fanfiction.net or later, can be sampled via fanfiction.net.

How does Stargate Atlantis compare to small fandoms?

West Wing (after 7 years, about 580 per year): 4,060
Friends (after 7 years, about 452 per year): 3,165
Farscape (after 5 years, about 351 per year): 1,759

Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669

Small fandoms have communities and primary authors, though often the authors "main fandoms" will be elsewhere.

Compare Stargate Atlantis to the micro fandoms:

Law and Order: 738
Jane Austen: 691
Shakespeare: 294
Profiler: 288

Stargate Atlantis (after 3 years, about 2,890 per year): 8,669

At the farthest end of the spectrum are the "micro fandoms." These are too small to have an active community of readers and are not self-sustaining. Writers create stories for them out of love for the work alone and usually have other fandoms that are their "bread and butter." The readership is the random stray reviewer.

Online popularity of course is no measure of quality, or the popularity outside of the online community. No one has figured out the magic formula that draws readers to seek more from their fandom in fanfiction stories. And some shows and books don't invite fanfiction just because they're difficult, or so highbrow they don't have a readership. For example, one of the micro fandoms is based on the works of William Shakespeare. I guess fanfiction writers don't have the gall. :D

Comments

[amalthia]

okay wow, 300k stories in the HP fandom! I knew it was huge but had no idea.

Loved your breakdown here.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It's... there's nothing else like it. Or even looking to come close.

Supernatural, by the way, is on a track to being bigger than Buffy.

Icarus

[amalthia]

it probably helps that SPN has two really REALLY hot guys as the leads. Plus the stories are scarier. Overall that is.

[bramble-rose.livejournal.com]

Atlantis was the new shiny until Supernatural came along :-(

HP on ff.net is a scary scary place. Don't attempt it without multiple filters and a scouring pad to clean your brain.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Emotionally it seems that way. However, the number of stories has not declined this year. So either it's drawing new writers to make up for those who've departed to Supernatural, or people are sticking around to see what happens in season four.

As for HP on ff.net, well, I know but, um... my stories are there, too.

Icarus

[bramble-rose.livejournal.com]

That's one of the ways I filter stories, search for specific authors only. My old tried & true method of lots of reviews = good story doesn't work for the HP fandom.

Thank goodness for new authors! I was really surprised at how many authors in SGA I recognized from other fandoms (Sentinel, TPM, M7)

[http://users.livejournal.com/oceana_/]

Interesting, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. ff.net does not house much slash. SGA, SG-1, and others have a huge slash following, which wouldn't be represented in these numbers. I have no doubt though that there is more SGA slash than SG-1 slash, at least in comparison to the time it has been around.

I also think that the number of NC-17 stories is a lot higher than 30% more than what can be found in ff.net. Not that that would make a difference in the relations.

Very interesting, though. I think I'll have to ponder about why SGA is so much more popular than SG-1 now. Of course, I came to SG-1 rather late and there was almost no good fanfic out there. Now there's are so many great writers, who then all, or almost all, gave SGA a chance. SG-1 is a bit of a late bloomer for some reasons.
*ponders*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think that SGA springboarded off of SG-1, so it had a good kick-off, but it's the total disregard for canon and popularity of crackfics (and reputation for being a lot of fun) that just pumped out an amazing number of stories.

I disagree with you about FF.net. It houses an enormous amount of slash, they're just not marked as such. And all of these fandoms have enormous slash followings, Harry Potter especially.

[http://users.livejournal.com/oceana_/]

Hmm, I admit that the only time I ever use ff.net is when I'm desperate, like when I try to find NCIS fiction. And of all the NCIS fic on ff.net, there are maybe 10 slash stories, so I assumed it would be the same with other fandoms. Seeing that I have almost never found anything good to read on ff.net either, I always assumed that it was a place for younger fans, and I'm fairly certain, though I admit that I have no proof of this, that younger HP fans (or fans of any other fandoms) are more likely to be het fans. And when I say young, I mean 11-14, which judging by the quality of the fic I have read on ff.net, seems to be the average age over there.
But that's my personal experience, which as I said, is mainly an experience in not so popular fandoms (I never even tried HP, SG-1, SGA or SPN on ff.net, because I know enough places where I can be sure to find good fic). And then there were my own beginnings in fandom, BTVS and Angel. For (four) weeks I read every story that was published in the BTVS section of ff.net. Not one of them was slash. And I read everything (and I mean literally everything) in that category. My slash relevation, which was at the same time the revelation of what good fanfic can be like, came a bit later, when I stumbled upon a Angel/Spike site when I was searching for Spike/Buffy fic (this was back in season 4, when Sipke/Buffy was still rare).
So, a limited experiences, but for me it shows a rather clear picture. But maybe there is hope that ff.net is not quite so devastating in other fandoms. Not that I am brave enough to find out.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I started reading ff.net in 2001 when I was getting into the Lord of the Rings fandom. I found a mix of slash and gen, but very little Lord of the Rings het, oddly enough (of course, there aren't many female characters in the book so...). I found the Library of Moria later and abandoned ff.net except for posting my own few stories.

In 2002, I hunted for stories in the Harry Potter fandom and a large portion of what I found on ff.net was slash. At the time slash was easier to find because people put "m/m slash - don't flame!" in the summary (people stopped that when it turned out to be a red flag for trolls). Some people complained about how much slash there was, but in a fandom that size -- even in 2002 there were 165,000 Harry Potter fics -- it's really hard to get a good bead on it. There was certainly no lack. Recently I've heard complaints that the HP fic on ff.net is overwhelmed by Harry/Draco slash.

As for the age of the writers, wow, I found some truly poor quality Merry/Pippin slash stories there. In fact, that's part of what convinced me to write -- it would be hard to be much worse. *laughs* But I've discovered that adults too can be terrible writers with no concept of spelling or capitalization. One writer I pegged as a teenager turned out to be in her 30s -- who knew?

I was able to navigate through the morass of ff.net fics by following the favorites lists of those who left me intelligent, well-worded reviews. I discovered MartianHouseCat (who gave me the code for this LJ), switchknife, mctabby, dien and others with consistently good stories. All slash, including some very interesting pairings like Snape/Dumbledore (don't scream, it was brilliant). A few years later, 2005, I was looking for Percy fics (a much smaller sampling) and a good portion of them were slash.

I outgrew ff.net a long time ago, so I've never tried to find Stargate SG-1 or Stargate Atlantis slash stories there. However, I know they exist because I upload my own. :)

Icarus

[magic-8ball.livejournal.com]

Wow, numbers. Reading this post is almost like thinking. It's crazy. But informative. And it makes me think that I must be missing something by somehow never watching SGA or SG-1.

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

These are very interesting figures. I have noticed that SPN is the new shiny fanfic show. Some wonderful writers are contributing there. I will slightly disagree with your first criteria for a show being popular. I personally became highly invested in 2 fandoms before I ever saw the shows they were based on. The first was Sentinel. I found the fanfiction long after the show was canceled there were no DVD's and no one was showing reruns. I figured out the mythology as I read and was able to fit things together eventually. When SciFi finally started showing reruns, I watched them avidly. I got into SGA after hearing that one of my favorite Sentinel writers was writing SGA fic. Again I knew nothing about the show and had to figure out the underlying structure. After becoming enthralled with the fics, I then joined Netflix and rented the entire season one of SGA (it was on one of it's hiatuses at that time). So fandom can generate its own base, even without active viewership.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Very interesting stats! Wow, HP own ff.net doesn't it?

As the reviews and "pay-off" increases, the top drawer writers are drawn in and the quality of the stories goes up as well.

Actually, I've found some small fandoms that have very high quality writing, so it's not always true. And likewise, some big fandoms are really just full of crap.

Jane Austen: 691

But Jane Austen has a lot of fanfic, doesn't it? I just think that like many other older fandoms it's spread through zines etc. Also, the lack of copyright issues means people don't always call it fanfic - like with Lovecraftian stories.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Here via friendsfriends. That was absolutely fascinating - thank you! I watch Atlantis, but I've never really dipped into the fic, and I had no idea of the comparative sizes of the other fandoms out there apart from Harry Potter dwarfing them all.

[melagan.livejournal.com]

I find this fascinating. Thank you for putting the work into pulling the numbers together.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hey, what better way to avoid writing and taking care of my responsibilities? *sheepish grin*

[rinsbane.livejournal.com]

I always wonder about things like this. Very interesting. I think another thing about SGA's vitality is the level of feedback. You mention readers as one of the three components. I'm not sure, as I haven't "studied" it, but in the two months I've been reading in SGA, I've noticed offhand that the amount of FB left on an SGA fic seems to be fairly even with the amount left on an HP fic, where I've been active for the last few years. But since SGA is such a smaller fandom, the percentage of readers who take the time to leave FB must be that much greater. Since I locked my journal recently, I've had a surprising number of people ask to be let in, and in almost every case, I've never so much as heard a peep from them before, either on my journal or just around on other HP fic. Anyway, that was a tangent. *g* Thanks so much for doing this!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

HP is so massive, I think it dwarfs everything.

As for the quality of writing, often the microfandoms are the best, simply because the author was compelled to write that story regardless of the "saleability" of the fandom. And the biggest fandoms are often full of crap fiction, because once it's popular everyone is writing that fandom. But from what I've noticed, your top drawer fics in a popular fiction will often will be better quality than the top fics in a mid-range fandoms.

Of course "better" is so subjective.

But Jane Austen has a lot of fanfic, doesn't it?

Oh, I didn't know that. I'll have to pick another microfandom.

Icarus

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

here via the newsletter

Shows like Stargate SG-1, which started at the same time as fanfiction.net or later, can be sampled via fanfiction.net.

I don't think you can do that, though. FF.net may have started almost concurrently with both Buffy and SG-1 (1997) but home computer ownership and especially home internet access in the US didn't skyrocket until after 2000. In 97 less than 40% of homes had computers and less than 20% had internet access at the time. Even by 2001 only 50% of homes had net access (although access to the internet through schools and work makes a big difference, still fanfic isn't something everyone would be comfortable reading much less writing at work) You also have to factor in people like, well, me who were fannish as kids but had no idea how many other people out there in the world felt this way and had to poke around the interwebs for a while before they figured it out.

< / end unnecessary stat geeking >

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

I think most other literary fanfic would work, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Dianne Wynne Jones. But Austen, Holmes and Lovecraft are afaik in a league of their own when it comes to older book fandoms.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, ha, I got newslettered? /verb invention

Ah, but I was active in fandom years before I had a computer at home. That's what office computers are for. Oh. And work, too, sometimes.

What challenges using ff.net as a sample more than anything else is the fact that it leaves out online discussion at places like the Gateworld forums almost entirely. I would bet this five bucks that I have left over from yesterday *waves Abe Lincoln* that the demographics of the Gateworld folks vary radically from the fanfiction readers.

All samples are problematic.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I think the other problem is that different fandoms use ffnet in different intensities. For example, when I started, it seemed to me that Buffy was much more represented on ffnet than shows that had central archives and thus did not go to ffnet at all. So, I'm not sure whether ffnet can represent different fandoms proportionally...

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

SGA's early surge of popularity far outstripped SG-1 fanfiction. While SGA's discovery by fanfiction writers can be contributed to a springboard effect, that doesn't explain why SGA has nearly double the number of fanfiction stories per year.

I think part of the reason is that the playing field is nowhere near as level as it might seem at first glance.

First, I should mention that SG-1 premiered a full year before ff.net started up, and the fans did what fans then did, which was create fandom-specific archives and post to mailing lists. A lot of them just stayed there.

As for fanbase, especially US fanbase, SG-1 was seriously hobbled in its first five years because it was only on Showtime. This was before episode downloads were easy or common (the show started in 1997; BitTorrent wasn't developed until 2001, and took a while to make inroads to fannish distribution of shows). I used to supply as many as ten people with the show every season, which involved literally copying my tape of the show ten times every weekend and mailing out the resulting tapes once they were full.

There were no DVDs available anywhere until several seasons in, when a handful of first-season eps were released in England; that was the only place to buy them for a year or two, and they were released one disc at a time, very pricily. (I was paying about US$25-40, depending on exchange rate and shipping deals, for four-five eps every few months during those first years.) You had to be able to play Region 2 PAL discs to watch them. They were also extremely delayed by today's standards; it wasn't until season 5 or 6 that the DVDs caught up to the airings, so you couldn't actually catch up on the show by watching the DVDs until that point.

By the time SG-1 stopped airing on Showtime and moved to SciFi, there was already five years of fairly complex canon, and it wasn't easy for people coming in cold to catch up (although by then the show was in syndication on other stations, and DVDs were available in the US -- but that still meant catching up on 110 episodes, just to know the background on what was going on in the show).

Compounding this, the show had lost a fan-favorite character at the end of season 5, and replaced him with a new character, and a lot of the fans who'd watched the show on Showtime never bothered making the switch to watching it on SciFi for season 6, diluting the fanbase. Some came back for season 7, but not all, while some of the fans who'd grown attached to the new character left when he left and the original character came back.

On top of *that*, SGA was announced during SG-1 season 7 and began at the same time as season 8, with fresh canon to start with, so new fans could just start there, instead of having to catch up on years of canon for SG-1.

SGA had the advantage of having a built-in audience from existing SG-1 fans wanting to see what they did with it; being more widely available from the outset on a basic cable station rather than pay cable, and going to syndication by the second year; existing during a period of relatively easy episode sharing via torrents; and existing during a period when shows regularly go to DVD within months of a season's end. All of those make a huge difference.

Sorry to be all nitpicky, but SG-1 is dear to my heart, and I really think the circumstances around it are different enough to be noted. To me, it's amazing that a show that spent 5 years on pay cable built as deep a fanbase as it did right from the beginning; SG1 was the huge hot fandom back in the day. :)

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

Wow, this post--as well as the comments--is (are) really interesting.

You might want to link to it in fanthropology

This time without typos, how 'bout it?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Usually, the difference in intensity has had to do with fact that a given fandom existed before ff.net, and therefore had other archives.

Smaller fandoms actually use ff.net more (such as Power Rangers) because outside archives didn't have enough traffic to keep them running. Meanwhile, HP lost a huge proportion of its fanfic on ff.net over resentment at Cassandra Claire's Draco Trilogy being pulled. It is under-represented on ff.net.

Looking at Alexa, www.fictionalley.org is one of the few fandom-specific archives that can hold its own with ff.net, and after the publication of DH it surpassed the traffic for MSNBC.

So I agree that fandoms use ff.net with varying intensity, but it really means that there is a bigger gap between the larger and smaller fandom than at first appears.

In a comparison like this it is actually conservative, and generous to smaller fandoms, to use ff.net.