Birthday spreadsheet: Masterlist for birdsofshore

[snowgall]

Happy Birthday birdsofshore!

I wanted to make you the bestest gift ever, but all I really know how to do is make spreadsheets :(

So I made you one of all your fics. I even included non-HD fics. I *think* I got them all (edit: birds found one I missed, and I've now added it!).

I was being super industrious, so I included columns with "timeframe" and "theme" and "top/bottom" with info for nearly all of you fics. It's as accurate as I could get it, without capitu in town to check it over for me! If you spot any (more!) errors, please let me know!

I added your email address as someone who can "edit", and I am also sharing the viewable link here for everyone else:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/173LLChGtl1MPgZuGUCRYgyKJ0DNK0l8fP1AouklBN4A/edit?usp=sharing

I also wanted to tell everyone else that last month birds let me upload one of her early fics to AO3 for her. Go re-read it and give kudos on it if you haven't already!

After Hours at the Ministry of Magic

Love you muchly, and hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Comments

[birdsofshore]

Thank you so much also for uploading some of the missing fics to AO3, and I'm sorry I've been so slow with the latest one. I'll make time to look at it, I promise!

I got some lovely comments on After Hours - more than I usually seem to get when uploading stuff to AO3? Perhaps it helped there was nothing kinky in it and just gentle romance and angst? I give up with trying to work out what goes down well on AO3 and what gets comments...

[snowgall]

I have theories about AO3, but not enough data to thoroughly test them :)

1) Newer fics are more popular. This sounds obvious, but I honestly think that the popularity of AO3 as an archive is growing more and more everyday. A fic posted two years ago would get fewer hits/kudos/comments than the very same fic posted today. So even though "After Hours" is over two years old, being posted to AO3 recently will be a boost.

2) Tagging matters. A lot. I'm not entirely sure yet which tags/sorts of tags matter the most, but a well-tagged fic will get more traffic.

3) Pairing matters. Duh. But really, that's the only thing that can explain why your Draco/Albus fics, in general, haven't gotten as many hits/kudos as your HD fics. Many people look for HD and ignore other pairings, no matter how good the fics or authors.

4) The kudos/hits ratio thing is really fascinating, because I've been tracking the stats for bottom!Draco (I stepped in as a co-mod a few weeks ago). And the top three fics for kudos/hits ratio are fics that otherwise haven't been very popular. They're small, quirky fics that maybe have narrow appeal. But they seem to have found their audience. Not as many people are reading them, but the people who are reading them really like them. Go figure.

5) Length of fic matters. Longer fics get more hits and more kudos and more comments, in general.

6) And sometimes fics are just awesome and get the recognition they deserve. And that is how I account for the high stats for "Draco at Nineteen". :) And because capitu recced it, and I recced it, and gracerene recced it, and basically, it's awesome and everybody loves it :)