How many people read this stuff, anyway?
Jan. 5th, 2005 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmagrant01I've often wondered how many people read my fic. I assume there's a proportional relationship between the general readership and the number of comments left for fics posted on LJ, but what's the proportion? Without a way of measuring the number of "hits" on an LJ post, it's hard to tell.
In addition to LJ and my web page, I also post selected fics on Skyehawke, which does measure hits, so I thought I'd look there for a point of reference. Now, I don't get a lot of reviews on Skyehawke, and I thought perhaps it was just me. I calculated the proportion of reviews left to the number of hits (on fics that were actually reviewed; I didn't count the ones that weren't reviewed by anyone), and found that the review rate was a fairly dismal 0.5%! Yes, less than 1% of people who read my fics on Skyehawke leave a review! I'm sure a certain percentage start to read and then get bored, but I'd like to think that a fairly large number of those who read actually finish.
I wondered if it was just me, so I looked at the Skyehawke pages of a few other HP writers (selected at random from the author directory from the names I was familiar with). Here's what I found:
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geoviki, whose fic A Thousand Beautiful Things seems to be one of the most widely read on Skyehawke, has a review rate of 0.4%.
dorrie6 has a review rate of 0.8%.
abbycadabra has a review rate of 0.5%.
amanuensis1 has a review rate of 0.6%.
ivyblossom has a review rate of 0.6%.
At this point, I had to stop looking up authors, because I'm doing this on my lunch break and it's taking up lots of time. But all of those numbers are pretty consistent, at around 0.6%. I was also surprised at the sheer number of fics on these authors' pages with no reviews left, yet with lots of hits. (I didn't count those in the review rate, btw.) Many of these authors post on LJ, on their own pages, and in multiple archives, so maybe their reader base tends to review elsewhere. At any rate, I feel a little better, as I seem to be close to the (non-statistically sound) average.
But my question is this: Is this review rate of 0.6% fairly representative of Skyehawke, and is it representative of review rates in general? So if there are 30 comments left on an LJ story, would it make sense for me to use that rate -- or, to make the arithmetic easier, round it to 1% -- to get an estimate of 3000 as the number of people who actually read my fic? That seems really high, but it's possible that readers really are that uninclined to review.
Thoughts? Other review rates to add to the list?
Disclaimer: I know that what I've done here is very, very far from being statistically sound, and I have no interest in designing an experiment that would be. Sorry! :-P
Damn slow LJ!!!
In addition to LJ and my web page, I also post selected fics on Skyehawke, which does measure hits, so I thought I'd look there for a point of reference. Now, I don't get a lot of reviews on Skyehawke, and I thought perhaps it was just me. I calculated the proportion of reviews left to the number of hits (on fics that were actually reviewed; I didn't count the ones that weren't reviewed by anyone), and found that the review rate was a fairly dismal 0.5%! Yes, less than 1% of people who read my fics on Skyehawke leave a review! I'm sure a certain percentage start to read and then get bored, but I'd like to think that a fairly large number of those who read actually finish.
I wondered if it was just me, so I looked at the Skyehawke pages of a few other HP writers (selected at random from the author directory from the names I was familiar with). Here's what I found:
geoviki, whose fic A Thousand Beautiful Things seems to be one of the most widely read on Skyehawke, has a review rate of 0.4%.dorrie6 has a review rate of 0.8%.abbycadabra has a review rate of 0.5%.amanuensis1 has a review rate of 0.6%.ivyblossom has a review rate of 0.6%.At this point, I had to stop looking up authors, because I'm doing this on my lunch break and it's taking up lots of time. But all of those numbers are pretty consistent, at around 0.6%. I was also surprised at the sheer number of fics on these authors' pages with no reviews left, yet with lots of hits. (I didn't count those in the review rate, btw.) Many of these authors post on LJ, on their own pages, and in multiple archives, so maybe their reader base tends to review elsewhere. At any rate, I feel a little better, as I seem to be close to the (non-statistically sound) average.
But my question is this: Is this review rate of 0.6% fairly representative of Skyehawke, and is it representative of review rates in general? So if there are 30 comments left on an LJ story, would it make sense for me to use that rate -- or, to make the arithmetic easier, round it to 1% -- to get an estimate of 3000 as the number of people who actually read my fic? That seems really high, but it's possible that readers really are that uninclined to review.
Thoughts? Other review rates to add to the list?
Disclaimer: I know that what I've done here is very, very far from being statistically sound, and I have no interest in designing an experiment that would be. Sorry! :-P
Damn slow LJ!!!
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 05:47 am (UTC)I read an essay on this a while ago that said that the probably rule of thumb was one comment per ever five readers. Which means if you get five comments, you've actually had ten readers and so on.
I don't have the essay bookmarked or I'd link it, but I definitely think that the ratio of readers versus comments is probably high. I know I've ranted about this as probably every writer in the world has about the fact that stuff I've written got few or no comments.
I recently got a skyehawke account (my friends are joking that I broke it, hah) and I know when I had read things there, I was at a bit of a loss how to leave reviews as well.
Conversely, I posted a single story at the restricted section and received two very nice emailed comments with a few days of posting.
Also, it's my understanding that Skyehawke has no mechanism for filtering out revisits. In other words, someone has read the fic already ans is returning to read it again. Therefore some proportion of those hits are by returning readers. I know since the first time I read
Generally, a returning reader isn't going to review a story they've already reviewed.
I personally try to make a point of leaving a review if only to say, some fangirly "omg so hot" type thing because I know how much those comments mean to me. I also make a point of responding to each comment, thanking those who've taken the time to review because I also know how I have felt like there was no point in reviewing if I wasn't going to be acknowledged.
I realize that writers of fanfiction have lives that have nothing to do with fandom, mostly, but I still personally find it rude of artists and writers not to respond to their comments, if only with a simple Thank you!.