Favorites - anyway to see who has favorite'd+ subscrpitions ?

Is there anyway for an author to see who has marked a story as a "favorite" ? I suspect there may be some privacy issues there, but it would be interesting to know.

A second question: is there anyway to subscribe to an author so you can see when your favorite author publishes new material ?

I would be happy, as a reader, to have things set up so that anyone could see which stories I've favorited. On the other hand, many people would probably prefer to keep their favorites list private (which they have always been).

I don't think there's a way to subscribe to a new author. You just need to keep obsessively watching the "Latest" story list for one to show up!

As an author, sometimes I notice that the total "favorite" count on my stories has gone up by 1, and it would be nice to know which story of mine has obtained a new fan. Sometimes it's hard to tell, since I have not actually memorized the favorite counts for all my stories.

No, it isn't possible for you to identify who has marked any of your stories as favourites and there are no plans to do so as it would be too intrusive. As you mentioned, there are privacy issues, plus favourites aren't always used for the purposes for which they were intended ...

Re your second question, you could just check out your favourite authors author pages to see what their latest offerings are. We also highlight new stuff on our blog as well as the latest loaded list.

I don't need to know "who" marked something a favorite, but it would be nice to know "what" was marked as a fav. I see the counter advance and I wonder what story was just marked. But I don't suppose there is any way to know that---or is there?

You could make a screen shot once a week of your author page.

Not feasible. My author page is actually multiple pages that list over 250 items and even then I'd have to go over them one by one to see which ones are different week to week. But, I'm lazy. I want quick and dirty and---I'm not THAT curious.

I imagine that it would benefit authors to know which stories have been marked as favourites, if only to give them a guide to the themes and genres that appeal to the readers. They would possibly wish to tailor writing styles so they are confident they will appeal to a broad spectrum.

I respect that some readers would rather that the information on an individual's favourites is concealed
(as is their right), but I imagine that identifying which story type is attracting the favourite tags would be of enormous help to authors and would be unlikely to offend readers sensitivities if they were confident that individual identities are concealed.

Of course this is dependant on the technical possibilities of setting this up in a way that only the Author of that story would be able to identify which of his works has been tagged as a favourite (Via the Author's Pages) (I defer to "Fab Febs" Supreme Expertise here!!!!)
But if it could be done I feel most readers would be happy to give even anonymous help to the generous Authors who work so hard to provide entertainment for all of us.

We do know that. Cumulative numbers are visible for each story on our author page. I know exactly which stories have a heavy concentration of favorites and it does guide me in my choice of themes/orientations.

hmmmm...actually John, I write for myself, in a set of genre's and styles that I know will have a limited readership. I have no inclination to write for the tabloid set.