How do I get people to keep reading my story?

[JoshRaid]

Because it's been a few days and nobody has read past the first part yet. On day one, 8 people read the first part. On day 2, 5 people read the first part. That means nobody who read part one read part 2, even my one subscriber. They're both about 2 minutes of reading each. What can I do to make sure people keep coming back instead of abandoning the story.

[delladz]

Well for one you can't really force people to come back to the story? If someone reads part 1 and decides it isn't for them, that's ok. It may not necessarily be a reflection of your product.

Also, if you only published your story quite recently then chances are that people haven't discovered your story yet is all. I'm sure you'll find people who are interested enough to keep reading eventually.

Another thing you might want to look at is how you're making the story. If you want feedback on the content itself, I would probably start another thread to ask how to make it more effective/more clear for readers. But people abandon stories based on arbitrary things all the time like the formatting is weird or they don't like the POV the story is in or if it's a comic they don't like the art style.

More or less, keep honing your craft and the people who find your content interesting will make the time to look at it.
Hope this helped, and also I'm by no means a professional, just a person on the internet so take my words with a large grain of salt lol

[jensrichard77]

Came to say what @delladz just said

[TheLemmaLlama]

I'm the kind of reader that doesn't immediately read new updates as they come out; I like to wait for them to accumulate a little and binge. In that sense, your short reading time might work 'against' you (I use quotation marks because for readers like me, it doesn't mean we abandoned your series; we definitely intend to come back to it later, especially if we're subscribed!)

If you want to get readers coming back after every update, I suggest either making it a gag-a-day kind of thing that doesn't rely too much on continuity, or making longer chapters ;]

[Shady_Kuronachi]

I experienced the same thing. It was not easy, but after updating my series more, people started to read. But then something happened, and my uploads were/are more random. What I had to learn is that the people who love your series will stay subscribed, and when people leave, that makes room for new people. So don't get down. You have a new friend who can sympathize and empathize.

Shady 2c∞l Kuronachi

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

When you find out how, let us all know! That's something that many writers are dealing with.

I almost hate to do this right now but... Tapas doesn't know if anyone read your story parts, they only know if someone took a look at them. Click counts, basically. I proved that to myself a while back. It's hellaciously hard to get noticed. I (naively) had not expected that.

[Shomin]

1. Become friends with the person who you want them to read.
2. Write about their story. This method works magic!

[Lensing]

I can´t speak for other readers but I will tell you how it works for me with stories

Like most people I decide by genre..
When the title of the story is boring then the chance gets smaller that I continue reading,
I just read 9 short stories of one writer in a row, the titles were all great.
The first 2 sentences have to grab my attention like a slap in the face followed by a
description of the surroundings.

A good way to get better is to compare to popular stories, what do they do differently,
self critique, and then get critique from an expert or someone you think can give you
good advice

[system]

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