Patterns is readership

I spent most of most working life pondering the vagueries and patterns of readership figures of national newspapers and magazines. The figures shown on the postings here are even more mysterious. As far as I can see a story or poem gathers readersip from the minute it is posted. After that it seems to gather new readers each day at roughly the same speed for about a week. The first, second and third weeks are when the figure builds steadily. One of my stories has been on site for five weeks and has gathered 85 readers they were not gathered at the same ratio per day or per week but still is attracting new readers. It seems to me that readers who visit the site, come across an author they like the style or content of, and then trace other postings from the same source. That could explain the level figure of each entry for weeks that have past. Otherwise how else will a story or poem entered months ago gain readership? I wrote recently to Mark Brown raising this matter. The important thing for any author is what readers think of what they read and suggested to Mark that the "star" system could somehow be adapted to reflect what readers think of what they write. I shall be very interested to hear his thoughts on this matter in due course.

Best not to write to Mark - as he no longer works for us! Write to me instead. These patterns baffle me too. But the statistics for last year that are reported on the front page go some way to explaining it. We have this army of readers who come in day after day to read. They are not registered and we don't know where they come from - but google analytics don't get things wrong - and it is they who read your stories in such large numbers.

I don't think there's any more to it than a hit counter, which is to say that it does not count who read to the end, only the number of times the page has been viewed. It'll go up faster in the first few days because it is on the 'recently added' list and more people would click on it. Numbers go up much faster if the stories are flagged on the forums or put on SOTW. This is probably the only time that the numbers actually mean anything, and even so they are still counting the people who read the first sentence and though 'that was crap' and went elsewhere. After a few weeks clicks will be mostly garnered through google and links to it elsewhere (either clicked through by people or spiders). Abctales has a very high google ranking so if you use an unnusual phrase or name your story can easily get on the first page of google results (I know of at least one band who found my review of them this way). My most 'read' piece has been linked to in a couple of places by one of the people in it, which probably explains its massive read figures, its probably getting hit once a week by googlebot.

Interesting, It would be interesting for a reader to know how the author valued that particular piece of work. Thought, I find saying anything nice about what I have done difficult. Its nice to see that things have been 'read' or atleast 'viewed'. But comments are like gold dust.