Well, there is something weird about nighttime on LJ (defining nighttime as American, east-coastish nighttime). Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed that my flist is utterly dead between the hours of 2 and 6 a.m. EST -- America being largely asleep, the Brits having not yet had their elevensies, and the Australians being in the waning hours of school/work, or just getting home. (My flist, in case you were wondering, is mostly HP people, and a mix of nationalities, although once I put a stat counter in a fic post and most, say 90%ish, of the people who clicked the cut had North American ISPs).
The thing about posting at night is that the post can then get buried in the onslaught of morning/midday posts, making it quite possible that people, especially those with large friendslists, might give up at skip=100something, and thus miss it. Though that doesn't really account for it, because people who really want to read your stuff will read it, one way or another.
I think in the end it's not that they're less likely to read so much as that they're less likely to comment -- if your post is buried like that, and people are coming to it after lots of reading and commenting, maybe they will bookmark yours and save it for later, or they will read it and think "I will comment later" (and I know from personal experience that I almost never remember to "comment later"), &c. And in general, I've heard a lot of people say that they feel weird commenting on older fics, and fandom is a pretty fast-moving place so "old" is relative.
Someone, xylodemon I think, posited once that the life expectancy of a fic on LJ is about 24 hours. Someone else, I forget who, mentioned the possibility of gathering statistics on that, e.g. comments vs time-from-posting, and if they ever did it, I want to see. In any case, I interpret that more as a comment-life than a reading-life, especially after my experience with the stat counter (lots of people still clicking, even a week or two later; comments falling off sharply around the 1 - 2 day mark).
I have noticed that a good fic posted at night will get a respectable number of comments no matter what, whereas a not-so-good fic will do better if timed well (when the people watching your journal are bored at work, say). These might just be impressions (starting from the subjectivity of good and bad, for one), but I do tend to let it all influence my posting habits, depending on how many comments I'm in the mood to receive -- in the beginning I was eager for fandom acclaim, and had a theory that fics should be posted between four and five p.m. EST, and then crossposted to no more than two relevant communities, with the space of a day between each crossposting. Now, however, I tend to be ambivalent on the subject of fandom acclaim and the weird publicness of LJ life, and so I don't crosspost anymore and I post a fic whenever it's finished, leaving feedback up to the fates. And sometimes I get in a funk where I don't want to hear people say nice things to me (but I just have to post a fic so I can stop tinkering with it)and that's when I post at 2 a.m. on the nose. It doesn't always work according to plan, but I like to overthink things, so at least pondering when to post will occupy my mind for a good long while.
Oh, and now I'm rambling :"> Anyway, I had a poll (http://garlandgraves.livejournal.com/50815.html) once about people's posting habits, including the times they tended to post. Very interesting answers :)
no subject
The thing about posting at night is that the post can then get buried in the onslaught of morning/midday posts, making it quite possible that people, especially those with large friendslists, might give up at skip=100something, and thus miss it. Though that doesn't really account for it, because people who really want to read your stuff will read it, one way or another.
I think in the end it's not that they're less likely to read so much as that they're less likely to comment -- if your post is buried like that, and people are coming to it after lots of reading and commenting, maybe they will bookmark yours and save it for later, or they will read it and think "I will comment later" (and I know from personal experience that I almost never remember to "comment later"), &c. And in general, I've heard a lot of people say that they feel weird commenting on older fics, and fandom is a pretty fast-moving place so "old" is relative.
Someone,
I have noticed that a good fic posted at night will get a respectable number of comments no matter what, whereas a not-so-good fic will do better if timed well (when the people watching your journal are bored at work, say). These might just be impressions (starting from the subjectivity of good and bad, for one), but I do tend to let it all influence my posting habits, depending on how many comments I'm in the mood to receive -- in the beginning I was eager for fandom acclaim, and had a theory that fics should be posted between four and five p.m. EST, and then crossposted to no more than two relevant communities, with the space of a day between each crossposting. Now, however, I tend to be ambivalent on the subject of fandom acclaim and the weird publicness of LJ life, and so I don't crosspost anymore and I post a fic whenever it's finished, leaving feedback up to the fates. And sometimes I get in a funk where I don't want to hear people say nice things to me (but I just have to post a fic so I can stop tinkering with it)and that's when I post at 2 a.m. on the nose. It doesn't always work according to plan, but I like to overthink things, so at least pondering when to post will occupy my mind for a good long while.
Oh, and now I'm rambling :"> Anyway, I had a poll (http://garlandgraves.livejournal.com/50815.html) once about people's posting habits, including the times they tended to post. Very interesting answers :)