How long is too long?

That's OK - my longest single story - 'Painful Recall' - is only 13,200 words (I actually wrote it as a three-or-four-parter, but it was entered into a Spanking Challenge, so it had to be posted as a single story).

Sir Cambornek

Men have gone from a low of 749 words to a high of 10,249 words. The shorter one had fewer readers yet had more comments. Most of mine are 2,000 to 5,000 words. I personally can read a long story, and enjoy it provided it holds my interest, meaning the characters are interesting, the plot is reasonably plausible. The main reason I won't finish a story regardless of length is if the plot isn't something I'm interested in.

Fred, I don't think there is an answer to your question of acceptable story length. If you look at the current submissions to our library, we have a story over 11,000 words and it's getting reasonable views.

Now, some writers feel it's better to break a "long" story into "parts". My observation is there is always a significant "drop off" in viewership between the first and subsequent parts. This is especially true if there is a substantial time delay between the posting of these parts. (Recently, we've seen writers posting a number of parts simultaneously and this seems to mitigate some of this "drop off".)

I would argue that on this library, there is an inherent advantage to the "parts" option. What I'm referring to here is the "preview" function. That is, stories split into parts allow viewers to see what's going on in each part via their previews. This function allows readers to pick and choose which "parts" are of interest to them.

Lately, I've not been writing serial "part" stories that need to be read sequentially. Instead, I'm writing more or less "stand-a-lone" stories loosely coupled via location. That is, all of the stories are located in the same fictional Southern town. This way, readers only have to read a couple of stories to get an idea of what's going on in this town.

From my perspective I tend to gravitate towards writing series or longer stories unless there is a particular event or tale that can be encapsulated in under about 6000 words. This helps to build on characterisation and motion, helping the reader get to know the characters.
I have found from personal experience that one is likely to lose at least 40% of initial readers after the first part; and that on a multi-part series readership can easily drop to a quarter by the end.
I write primarily for personal enjoyment and also to give something back to this wonderful library for all the pleasure that the works of fellow authors here have given me. If I can therefore interest or amuse any of the readership here it is a real pleasure, especially when I receive comments that show that someone has retained interest enough to read through to the end and enjoyed it.
I agree that one might consider splitting a story with over 5000 words but, personally, I would leave it in one part if it is less than about 7000 (as you will probably lose fewer readers on the way).
Whether a longer story is better as a series or as a number of separate linked stories depends on how the pieces fit together. I also agree that if, in a series or in parts, one should try to avoid two or more consecutive parts with no actual spankings.

I find writing series troublesome, I have trouble keeping up with characters, who did what, who spanked who, who got spanked, who enjoyed it, who didn't. But, then I find it tedious to write a series with just a bare handful of characters, I run out of things to do with them, so for me I have to introduce new characters and I can easily get confused as to who did what to or with whom.

Yeah, I'm either old or lazy maybe both for not writing more series, but I find it easier to write single stories. But I also have written a large number of stories about the same characters.

I think the loss ratio discussion is somewhat misguided. If it's a single long story it doesn't mean that everyone who started it reads the story to the end. Splitting it up in parts gives me a hint of what appeals to the readers and not. If the second episode has a 50% read-on ratio, I see it as a success. If I had released it as one single story, I don't have much to go on except for the handful of comments (which actually often don't seem entirely representative for the readers in total, if I compare to the favs given). Most often I find that stories which get a majority of negative comment response are the ones with the most favs. Controversy sells it seems.

Judging from my experience, some 2500 to 3500 words per episode appears to be a suitable length to appeal to a majority of the readers. Both longer and shorter work, but the best reader response appears to be somewhere around that. People are most often short of time and it's easier to take the step to click a 2500 words story than a 10 000 word story, no matter how good it appears to be.

Gloup/glagla