A Brief Guide to Supporting Authors

longlivefeedback:

As a minor change of pace, I’d like to share some information about how to support fanfiction authors. Many readers don’t believe that their comments, kudos, or bookmarks are important to authors, but they are. 

So, great! Now, let’s talk about the various ways to give feedback – including those other than comments and kudos – as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each method. 

(Note: this guide is focused on ao3, but many parts apply to other platforms.) 

Bookmarks

Summary

• Bookmarks let you keep track of a story for reference, re-reading, or just because. 
• Public bookmarks are displayed on the story’s main bookmark count, and private bookmarks are not. 
• Authors can see the total number of bookmarks on a story, both private and public, from their stats page. They cannot see who has left a private bookmark, or when it was made. 
• Works can be sorted/filtered by the number of bookmarks. 
• Bookmarks can be tagged, annotated, etc. 
• The bookmark feature also as a “recommendation” option

Pros and cons

• Pro: a bookmark serves as a more specific form of feedback than kudos, because it also means the reader likely wants to come back to the story later, and/or that they recommend this story to others. 
• Pro: if a bookmark is public, authors will probably see it (we check those!). 
• Pro: because notes/tags/annotations on bookmarks are optional and not intended for the author, readers feel less pressure to have a specific depth or format – anything goes. 

Tips and tricks

• how to use the bookmark tool to create a rec
• how to tag bookmarks

Kudos

Summary

• Kudos are the easiest way to let an author know you like their story. 
• You can only give kudos once per account, or once per IP address if you’re logged out. You cannot remove kudos. 
• If authors have enabled this notification, they will get one email per day that lists who has given kudos on which works. These emails are magic. 
• Kudos serve as a method to sort/filter fics, and readers often use the number of kudos or the kudos/hits ratio to determine whether or not to start a story. 

Pros and cons

• Pro: quick and easy 
• Pro: more kudos make other readers more likely to read the story
• Pro: authors do tend to see kudos, whether via email, their stats page, or the story page itself. 
• Con: kudos are a one-time thing, so if you leave them early in a multi-chapter story, the author has no way of knowing if you’re still reading. If you wait until the fic is complete (since kudos can’t be removed), the author won’t know you’re reading/that you enjoy the story until after it’s complete – and a perceived lack of reader interest is a leading cause for abandoned WIPs. 
• Con: authors tend to interpret kudos less positively than readers. Therefore, if you leave kudos and mean “I love this story so much!!” the author doesn’t know that, because people leave kudos for many different reasons. 
• Con: they’re not specific. The impact of praise tends to increase with specificity. For example, “this fic is great” is nice to hear, but “your dialogue and characterizations in this story are great” is more specific and will generally inspire more emotion in the author. Because kudos are both the lowest effort and lowest specificity form of feedback, they don’t have the same impact as other methods. 

Tips and tricks

• If, for some reason, you don’t want to leave kudos on your username, you can quickly leave guest kudos without logging out by copying the address, opening a private browser session, and leaving kudos as a guest.
• You can also do this if you want to leave multiple kudos 

Subscriptions 

• authors can see how many users are subscribed to a story from their stats page
• authors cannot see who is subscribed to their story 
• authors do not know if a subscriber is still reading, or if they are inactive/not checking updates 
• subscriptions to authors do not show up in the story subscriptions count 
• subscriptions can give an author a general indication of their audience for a multi-chapter story, but it’s almost exclusively a tool for readers rather than a feedback mechanism. 

Comments

This has been covered in depth before – check the links for more info. 

• Your Guide to Reviews
• Appreciation Without Anxiety: Commenting 101
• How to Write A Good Review on FFN (most of this also applies to ao3)
• tips and tricks for commenting on mobile
• Why People Don’t Comment
• “Can I Say This?” Culture, Comments, and Concern

Recommending and Sharing Fics

• Simply posting a link to a fic on tumblr is a great form of feedback, if the author sees it – it’s fine to leave a comment on the fic saying “I recommended this story!” with a link to the post, or to tag them on tumblr if you can find their account. 
• If an author shares their tumblr account, liking and reblogging their story-related posts is a great way to show support, because it means that you enjoy their story enough that you want other people to read it. 
• Authors on tumblr will often check both their notes and the tags people add, and tagging it with something along the lines of “I love this story” or “please read this” will make an author cry happy tears. 
• An easy way to create rec lists is to bookmark fics or use the mark for later feature as you read them, and once per week, make a list via tumblr post. Generally, you’ll want to list the title, author (tag them if you can find them on tumblr!), fandom, pairing(s), and character(s). A brief description is nice but not necessary; if you want to add more but you’re not sure what, simply copy-paste the author’s summary from ao3. Then, if you haven’t tagged the author, leave a comment on the story with a link to your rec list. 
• I don’t actually have words to describe how amazing it is to find that someone has recced my fics, but wow. I have literally cried. 

Misc.

• if you can find an author on tumblr, feel free to tag them in posts (for example, “this photo makes me think of your story, @author!”) or send asks about their fics. 
• If you’ve written or drawn something inspired by their stories, let them know! Don’t worry about whether it’s “good enough,” because I promise they will love and appreciate it (and you!). 
• If you’ve made playlists, moodboards, metas, etc, also let them know! 
• If you see someone else recommending or mentioning their fic, tag the author – they likely haven’t seen it. I’ve only found out about several things like this after a friend saw the post and sent it to me. 
• If you see someone posting negatively about their fic, don’t let the author know – it’s stressful, upsetting, and they can’t do anything about it. 

This guide is not exhaustive, but I hope it’s given readers a bit more information regarding how authors receive and interpret feedback!

– Mod Rose