The Off-Topic/On-Topic Question About Fic Promotion

[worksofstone]

So, I recently made an unpleasant discovery over at LJ. I posted a link to The Days That Lie Ahead at seven HP fanfiction, character-centric or ship-centric communities, explicitly as a 'Happy Halloween' fic. All the communities were moderated. A few were high-traffic, the rest were not.

Out of the seven communities, only two posted it practically immediately. Which, while slightly disappointing, was fine. What surprised me was when I saw posts which had definitely been submitted after mine going up at the two high-traffic communities.

Long story short, I contacted the mods and asked if I'd done something wrong, and found two very surprised and tired mods. Apparently, LJ is now auto-moderating posts to communities that contain off-site links. Which would of course include AO3. I checked the other posts at dracoxhermione, and posts dated back to October 17th included links to Dreamwidth, Hawthorne & Vine, and Archive of Our Own. The mod at dracoxhermione had no idea that this was happening, because the community was not supposed to have moderated posting, and she had not changed the settings herself. That community is now off moderated posting, apparently reversing a change that LJ made without informing the mod.

At hp_fanfiction, the exact same thing had happened. It has now posted fics that date back to October 8th, and include links to FF.net, AO3, and an image hosting service. It is now off moderated posting, which the mod implied was not set by the mod, but by LJ.

I have now contacted mods at all the other communities where my fic has not posted, because I strongly suspect that similar things have happened there as well, since nothing has been posted to those communities since early or mid-October.

My Dramione-relevant question is this: where should one go these days to promote fic for our ship?

It appears that LJ is becoming less and less useful for contacting other people interested in the ship (due to a combo of fandom demographics changing, moving to other sites, and changes that are hostile to off-site links due to a war with spammers). The exception is dramione, which remains the center of LJ Draco/Hermione fandom. The other active/well-moderated communities on LJ are usually for a specific event, exchange or fest. DW is like cake to post to, so I'll never stop promoing over here, but other sites are more confusing to me. Do people find tumblr useful for fic promo? I know that it's pretty image-based. Twitter?

I post at H+V and AO3, and while FF.net has the numbers, I remain on the fence/slightly adverse in regards to posting there for reasons I won't go into. So, that's my Draco/Hermione question. Where's the fandom, and what does one do with fic after one's written it? :P

Comments

[musyc]

LJ instituted that policy at some point either last year or early this year. I don't recall precisely when, but there was a lot of grumbling about it from community moderators. It's possible they made some additional changes when they pushed out the last couple of code releases, but I didn't see anything about it in the news comms.

I keep dramione on moderated posting because it's a large enough and active enough comm that it is a target for spambots, like the gore/sex pics attacks of a couple years ago (and for completely off-topic posting apparently, I will not get into that I will not I will not), but if a post sits in the queue for more than a few hours, it's because I'm asleep. XD I try to post everything within a few minutes. If mods aren't paying attention to various LJ news comms and suchlike, I'm not surprised that's happened. LJ's being very closed-mouth about which links and domains are whitelisted, as well. Their efforts to manage spam are making them very difficult to use as a site.

As for Tumblr, it's really not the place to post fic. I tend to get quite a few hits when I post links and such, but honestly my most successful efforts come from someone else making a graphic and linking to me. (It does help that I've been in the fandom and ship for years, so people recognize my name. Takes a while, but you can get there!)

If you don't know about Granger Enchanted or Quiet Ones, you could try getting an account there as well. I've never posted to QO, so I don't know about them, and I don't recommend GE due to personal disagreements, but plenty of people like it. I'm also on the fence about FF.net, due to their "official" policy on NC17 works, as - let's face it - that's 90% of my writing. XD I know that policy is rampantly ignored, but I'm not especially keen on the site itself in any case.

I think H&V is the best place for strictly Dramione posting, personally, and I love AO3 as a general archive. Those are the two I'm sticking with. I can't remember to post to more than three places ever, and H&V, AO3, and DW are IT. XD

[worksofstone]

It's possible they made some additional changes when they pushed out the last couple of code releases, but I didn't see anything about it in the news comms.

I actually suspect this is what happened, because I posted fic that had AO3 and H+V links at those communities back in mid-September, and it went through as open posting, but on October 31st it got stuck in moderation. Since I bet the mods would have remembered if they'd made a moderation/open change less than two months ago, I think this is a LJ thing. D:

it is a target for spambots, like the gore/sex pics attacks of a couple years ago

That is horrible. Yeah, for a community of Dramione's size, roughly 3,000 members, I can totally understand. I think some of my surprise came from hitting moderation queues for comms with 100-200 members, but it became more clear when those mods said that the comms were supposed to be open posting, no moderation, for members. Ick, gore/sex pictures. Ew.

As for Tumblr, it's really not the place to post fic. I tend to get quite a few hits when I post links and such, but honestly my most successful efforts come from someone else making a graphic and linking to me.

I am definitely in the phase where even 10 hits per link/promo effort counts as 'worth it' in my book! Would you be able to give me the rough numerical definition of 'quite a few hits' for just links? I presume my numbers would be a lot smaller, but it seems that something traveling along on the #dramione tag, even without rebloggs, gets a lot of eyeballs either way.

Granger Enchanted or Quiet Ones

Those are really good suggestions! I totally should have mentioned that I was familiar with those two, and had decided against them. QO because the last site news post is from 2009, so I don't think anyone's really 'captaining the ship', so to speak. GE because I personally dislike sites that require registration to read, and because a lot of that hard-core Draco/Hermione crowd also seems to be at H+V, so H+V fits me better for Dramione despite the registration requirement and AO3 fits me better for everything else, should I write other things. If there was no H+V, I'd definitely be putting work up at GE (even though the site layout/organization makes me go D: ), as it's the most active archive that's close to 'ship centric'. :)

I'm also on the fence about FF.net, due to their "official" policy on NC17 works, as - let's face it - that's 90% of my writing. XD I know that policy is rampantly ignored, but I'm not especially keen on the site itself in any case.

Mmhm, yup. I'd definitely rather not archive at a place that could delete everything with no warning and leave readers hanging, since AO3 allows profiles and multi pseuds, so I could at least re-direct people to a new place/explain what happened. Plus, their layout is just gorgeous compared to FF.net, and AO3 has so many other little perks like ebooks, kudos and that share button. Fewer readers, but from my point of view, AO3 is much easier/less stressful to use.

I can't remember to post to more than three places ever, and H&V, AO3, and DW are IT. XD

Haha, yeah, my LJ profile is empty. It just has a bunch of communities I'm a member of/subscribe to, not to follow, but as a way of 'bookmarking' places to promo! Ditto with my DW profile. I could not remember all of those communities off the top of my head.

[musyc]

Well, "quite a few" is going to depend on various things. My personal Tumblr has about a hundred followers; my Dramione Tumblr has around 500. I can usually pick up thirty, forty hits from posting to both. (By contrast, one of the graphics made that I showed off in one of my recent posts here? That user has several thousand followers, and my hits on that piece jumped over 1000 in 48 hours.) Tagging posts with as many variations on Dramione, Draco and Hermione, fanfic, etc. as you can think of will help for people who have certain tags tracked.

[worksofstone]

Thank you for the numbers! That's really interesting to know! :D

Since I don't have any followers (or posts) at worksofstone, I'll take your suggestion of "tagging posts with as many variations on Dramione, Draco and Hermione, fanfic, etc. as you can think of will help for people who have certain tags tracked."

I'll have to poke around tumblr a bit more, and then perhaps I'll use it as an analog to my DW: posting completed fic, and the odd bit of info that I need to keep track of/story idea.

Oh, just an FYI, this got linked on daily_snitch, unexpectedly. :)

[desds]

Where's the fandom, and what does one do with fic after one's written it? :P

I ask myself this everyday. Hope you find some answers.

[worksofstone]

I think Musyc just posted a bunch of good answers, actually! :D

I do definitely strongly suggest getting an account at Hawthorne & Vine (http://dramione.org/) for your Draco/Hermione fic, if you don't have one already, because that is totally where a ton of the hard-core readers, writers and fans lurk. :)

I also like AO3, because it makes it easy for anyone from anywhere in the internet to read your fic, because it's an open-access archive. :D

As for promo, I'm going to go read Musyc's comment closely. XD