Postby Alelou » Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:36 pm
Transwarp, I like fanfiction.net for several reasons:
1) Their author stats are VERY cool -- you can see how many people are reading your fic each day/each month and what countries they are from (and for some reason that last one totally tickles me). And since all of us have many more readers than we have reviewers, it's nice to see that your audience is much larger than you might otherwise conclude.
2) There are some authors and readers over there that just don't hang out here (at least not publicly), including some authors I generally enjoy, such as BlueDana and Lieuten Keen and Volley and so forth. The Malcolm crowd hangs out there, and I do occasionally read Malcolm fic, and I'll also read Archer fic, at least if BlueDana writes it. I'll even read the occasional A/T piece if it respects the T/T canon. And I'm also usually on the look-out for new TnT'ers who might need an invitation to join the fun over here.
3) Over there, you have total control of what you put up and when you put it up. If there's a problem it shows up when you preview it.
4) I've never had an issue with reviews, though I have seen weird stuff crop up on responses to other's stories -- including bizarre incoherent vulgarities. But I've noticed that when I or someone else complains to the moderators this stuff gets removed, usually within 24 hours. The most savagery I ever see is when someone posts a tiny little paragraph or something. It seems to bring out the absolute worst in reviewers. I don't think you need to worry, though.
5) When you find an author you really like, you can mine that person's profile page for all their other work plus THEIR favorite stories or authors, if they've picked them. You can even do this with people who leave reviews. I've occasionally found good stuff this way.
6) It doesn't apply to me, but if you write in more than one fandom, it's a good place to make cross-connections.
I do think fanfiction.net is the kind of place where you need to post regularly to build a readership -- if you're only popping up occasionally, people who rely on author alerts and so forth might not even notice you're there.
I don't bother to publish my NC-17 fic there. One, technically it's against the rules, and I'm a person who tends to follow the rules even though a lot of the stuff that does go there in the M rating is VERY explicit. Two, not many people see stuff rated M because they have to go in and manually reset the ratings if they want to get it. So personally I use fanfic.net for my "nice" versions of stories and save the version with the smut or extreme violence in it for decon here.