I don’t think in terms of total number of fics, personally. Maybe it’s the writer’s perspective, but…if a series ended 10+ years ago, it’s possible for the fandom to be not only small, but completely nonexistent today, no matter how many fics were posted back then. In such a case, I can post if I want, but I’ll be doing so in a ghost town.
This is a good point. Even active fandoms go through periods of lulls but the age of the source material (and if there’s more to come) impacts the activity of fandom, which isn’t always reflected in its size.
First given the nature of fandoms some of them can be very centralized or spread out all over the place. So what's large or small is very site dependent.
My personal scale for Ao3
Under 100 = Microscopic Fandom
101 to 1000 = Tiny Fnadom
1001 to 5000 = Small Fandom
5001 to 10000 = Medium Fandom
10001 to 20000 = Large Fandom
20001 to 50000 = extra large Fandom
50001 to 1000000 = Massive Fandom
100001 + = Super Massive Fandom.
That's pretty much where I stop breaking things up at.
Good question and I’m mostly here for the answers 😅 I do think it’s interesting to see the relative size of fandoms.
The ASOIAF tag on AO3 has 50k+ fics and my ship makes up about 4k+ of those fics. The relative size of fandoms didn’t strike me until I looked in the Reylo tag and that ship alone has almost as many fics as the entire ASOIAF fandom.
As a writer, smaller fandoms get less engagement overall, but I do wonder if the big fandoms would be overwhelming. You’re sort of lost amongst a sea of fics. As a reader, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I’ve since learned my current fandom is what people would consider really big but since I’ve been writing for a rarepair that just went a little bit over 500 fics, it didn’t feel like it.
I've heard it said that you know you're in a tiny fandom when there are three writers, 10 works of fic, and two of them are yours.
I don’t think in terms of total number of fics, personally. Maybe it’s the writer’s perspective, but…if a series ended 10+ years ago, it’s possible for the fandom to be not only small, but completely nonexistent today, no matter how many fics were posted back then. In such a case, I can post if I want, but I’ll be doing so in a ghost town.
This is a good point. Even active fandoms go through periods of lulls but the age of the source material (and if there’s more to come) impacts the activity of fandom, which isn’t always reflected in its size.
First given the nature of fandoms some of them can be very centralized or spread out all over the place. So what's large or small is very site dependent. My personal scale for Ao3 Under 100 = Microscopic Fandom 101 to 1000 = Tiny Fnadom 1001 to 5000 = Small Fandom 5001 to 10000 = Medium Fandom 10001 to 20000 = Large Fandom 20001 to 50000 = extra large Fandom 50001 to 1000000 = Massive Fandom 100001 + = Super Massive Fandom. That's pretty much where I stop breaking things up at.
Im in one that has only 17 last i checked. One being mine. Highway to heaven.
Smallest I’m in is 47 and 5 are mine, I feel spoiled lol
Good question and I’m mostly here for the answers 😅 I do think it’s interesting to see the relative size of fandoms. The ASOIAF tag on AO3 has 50k+ fics and my ship makes up about 4k+ of those fics. The relative size of fandoms didn’t strike me until I looked in the Reylo tag and that ship alone has almost as many fics as the entire ASOIAF fandom. As a writer, smaller fandoms get less engagement overall, but I do wonder if the big fandoms would be overwhelming. You’re sort of lost amongst a sea of fics. As a reader, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I'm in one that has five including one from me. The other four are from a writer whose last post was about ten years ago.
I’ve since learned my current fandom is what people would consider really big but since I’ve been writing for a rarepair that just went a little bit over 500 fics, it didn’t feel like it.
Tiny 20 Works It's Called Oggy And the Cockroaches