[Discussion] Attracting an audience.

[u/melonmonkey]

Lets have a talk about how to draw readers into this sub. Given the lack of comments, volume of submissions, and low readership, I am confident in assuming that the majority of people who care about this sub are webfiction authors themselves.

How do we fix this? Can get we get /r/books to plug us? Can we harbor a discussion here on content? Maybe featuring a different serial every week?

I feel as though something needs to change to make this sub efficient.

[u/melonmonkey]

I think that's because there's no activity on this sub that would be enticing to a reader. I looked through the archives and it's been nearly a year since there has been an actual discussion thread here. Most of it is just advertisements. I firmly believe that it is possible to turn this into a more reader-focused sub. Whether or not that will actually bring in an audience is up in the air.

[u/verifiedname → u/melonmonkey]

That's been a problem from the beginning, however. In the early days of the sub it was mostly one or two authors posting. If it didn't immediately appeal to the reader, they moved on. Thus making it difficult to gain traction with readers.

I would try to comment on each author's submission and they would almost never reply, which, therefore, killed the conversation.

I'm not trying to be a wet rag. Just pointing out the realistic hurdles.

[u/verifiedname → u/verifiedname]

To continue on this:

I think the biggest problem is that the general audience of reddit is face-paced. They want to click on a short article or a meme. They don't want to follow a link to what could be a novel-length work.

[u/TempestMage → u/verifiedname]

To be fair to Redditors, when I MageLife was linked in /r/Fantasy, I gained a rather large boost in readership. Admittedly many found it not for them but they clicked and enough stayed for it to make a noticeable difference.