Hey there! This blog is great. This might be more of a tumblr question than an ao3 question, but how do you think we can get more people to read fanfiction by lesser-known authors? Some of these people write their asses off yet never seem to get the feedback they deserve. I used to write a lot, but I never felt like anyone paid attention to my writing so that was one of the reasons I stopped for a while. How could we remedy this issue so writers don’t get discouraged over time?

This is an excellent question and I don’t really have a very comprehensive answer, but I do have a few ideas that might help:

• encourage new writers to participate in fandom exchanges (some info on them here) or to create their own
  
• participate in the Zero Comment Challenge, or organize a group to do it together.
• as an author, reach out to the fandom in different ways and make yourself known. Participate in events. Reblog posts with tag commentary. Request gif sets from artists. Prompt other writers. The more people you know in the fandom, the better chance people will check out your fic
• related to that, as an author use the same name on both AO3 and on tumblr so that people can make the connection between your blog and your writing
• write drabbles and shorter fic and post them on tumblr so that readers know your work/style/content
• post links to your fics with excerpts below them so that people have an idea what the story is like
• participate in Six Sentence Sunday to get people excited about your upcoming work
• as a reader, create Rec Lists of stories you love, authors you love, tropes you love etc. 
• as a reader, create fanworks based on stories or author metas and post them with a link to the story

People are more invested in supporting people they know. So make yourself known. It takes some work, but you’ll have more fun in the fandom on top of getting yourself some more readers :)

Any other suggestions out there?