Fantasy and Science Fiction on Vocal

I love fantasy and science fiction. They are my favorite genres to read and write, although I have been leaning more towards poetry in my writing recently. I even enjoy reading fantasy and science fiction here on Vocal. Two of my favorite Vocal series are fantasy: Matthew Fromm’s Songs of the Silver Wizard and Amanda Starks’s An End of Gods & Dust (links to both below).

I know that there is a readership for fantasy and science fiction out there. However, I seem to be having a hard time getting people on Vocal to read my fantasy and science fiction stories. My most recent fantasy/science fiction stories, “The Interdimensional Report” and “The Stone Circle”, only have three reads (but six hearts?) and nine reads each. That’s about the average range that I have for any of my fantasy and science fiction stories, if not lower.

So, this makes me wonder: is there something wrong with fantasy and science fiction stories on Vocal—or is it something to do my fantasy and science fiction stories?

I can’t take a look at the readership of other fantasy and science fiction stories, but I can take a look at the interaction (hearts and comments) of other fantasy and science fiction stories. I decided to look at the interactions for the two series that I mentioned above to see how they compared to my own.

Amanda’s stories appear to be a bit popular than mine, with a number of hearts ranging from two to sixteen. Matthew’s are even more popular, with hearts ranging from five to twenty-seven. As I saw from my own stats, these hearts hardly match up to the number of reads. However, from the outside looking in, they do give a good look as to how many people are interacting with the stories.

Based on these two series of stories, it would seem that fantasy and science fiction—or at least fantasy—stories would have just as much of a chance of succeeding with readers on Vocal. Perhaps there might be a lower readership than, say, poetry because it takes longer to read fantasy and science fiction stories than poetry, but when compared to other pieces of fiction and non-fiction stories and articles, it seems that the odds of getting readers are just as good.

Why, then, are my fantasy and science fiction stories not doing so well?

Well, there are a few possible answers to that.

The first answer is that most of my fantasy and science fiction pieces were posted back when I was still new to Vocal and had not established a large reader base. I have not published a lot of fantasy and science fiction since I started posting more and building a readership through reading other users’ works, so that could be skewing my numbers a bit. After all, when I first started on here, I knew nobody, and no one had any reason to read my work, and people don’t tend to go back in other users’ profiles to read older works.

The second possibility is that I have caused my readers to expect poetry, realistic fiction, and horror from me instead of fantasy and science fiction. After all, that’s what I have been writing lately. Their tastes might just align more with that, or it might just be what they have come to expect of me.

The third—and, hopefully, least likely—possibility is that I am just not as good at fantasy and science fiction as I would like to be. I do not think that is the case based on the few comments that I have received for my fantasy and science fiction works. However, it is always possible. I won’t give up on writing those genres; I just need to write in them more. After all, practice makes perfect.

What do you think? Are fantasy and science fiction lesser-read genres on Vocal? Or is it on a writer-by-writer basis? Leave your thoughts in the comments!