Quicksand Fans

I started the For Your Pleasure series earlier this year, originally as a single story idea about an indoor quicksand facility that also included sex fantasies and drowning fantasies. Sort of a quicksand amusement park, as per at least one recommendation I read in the Stories (or was it "Requests"?) forum. Each of the For Your Pleasure stories, now through a 5th one, has been viewed hundreds of times. The first one is up to more than 1500 views.

Because each one is, basically, a novella with lots of other erotic stuff besides just quicksand sinks, and the length of each is anywhere from about 27 pages (For Your Pleasure I) to 58 pages (For Your Pleasure V), I upload each as a PDF attachment. The one exception I made so far was to put Part One (chapter one) of For Your Pleasure V as text in the forum, followed by the PDF. But one thing I noticed is that compared to the number of views for each story, the number of downloads of the PDF for each story is very small. For example, For Your Pleasure I has been viewed more than 1500 times but only downloaded 223, which means that less than 15% of the readers are actually reading the story. It finally dawned on me as to why.

PDFs don't work very well on a phone. They work fine on a PC, but I'm guessing that most visitors to Quicksand Fans are using phones or tablets. It's possible to download and view PDFs on a phone but it's a much bigger hassle. This leads to my question:

I have written For Your Pleasure VI and am within a couple of pages of completing For Your Pleasure VII. Should I:
1. Upload the PDFs for these stories just as I've done before, or
2. Upload the stories as text files, perhaps breaking them up into smaller chunks?

As a secondary question, should I go back to the posts for the already posted stories and do likewise, if you want plain text? You can reply in this forum. Thanks in advance!

Gordon Taggert

PDFs work fine for me, but I don't live on my phone.

I've always used PDF's for my stories as I feel it gives me a more control over the format, and in turn, gives the story more of a "book like" appearance. My stories also tend to run long, and I'm not sure, but there might be a character or word limit for posts, though I have no idea what exactly the threshold for that would be.

I've also noticed the same thing you mentioned on my stories: far fewer downloads than views. I've always attributed this to three possible factors, based largely on my own browsing habits.

1. People may tend to take a quick look, then come back and download/read later when they have more time.

2. I use a brief synopsis in the post to introduce the story, rather then descriptors like F, peril, grim etc., as I like prefer to maintain some level of suspense (to me, it's not always fun to know the outcome before you read the story lol), so I think maybe some might read the synopsis and decide it's not up their alley.

3. People posting/reading comments. I don't think the site knows why you're looking at a post, it just counts every time someone does. I've noticed when I first post a new topic, I'll go back a check a time or two in the first few minutes after, and what do you know, I then have one or two more views.