I’ve been an avid reader of this site and its many amazing authors for years now, and it’s been inordinately enjoyable to have a community in this kind of writing. A while back, I decided that it might be fun to throw my hat into the ring and write a couple of stories on my own. It was genuinely fun to write and post on the site because it made me feel like I was a little closer to the authors that I look up to on here. The view count I got on these stories weren’t particularly large, and I didn’t expect them to be, but it did hedge me a little in writing more (who among us doesn’t want our stories to be well-received?).
My boyfriend recently asked if many people had read my story, and I wanted to give him an accurate count, so I logged in and that’s when I saw that there was a new-ish metric that gave a difference between how many people read my story versus how many people just saw it, and the difference between those numbers was huge. It immediately put me off writing more and learning/developing more as a hobbyist writer because a couple of those stories had single digit read counts. I’m not afraid to suck at something, but I am averse to sucking at something and being told statistically how much I suck.
Can someone please help me to understand the utility of including read counts, instead of just listing the view counts? There must be a good reason to have them, but right now it just feels like a punch in the gut.
First of all, you have to understand, that the statistics only started to count when it was implemented. Before that time, only hits were counted, but the read count started at zero. Depending on when your story was published, this can mean that the read value is way off.
And then, detecting whether a story has been read, cannot be accurate. Basically the site tries to detect whether a person has spent a given amount of time on the story (determined by the size of it) and whether they have scrolled all the way down.
The moment when the pop-up reminding the reader to rate a story shows up, the story is also flagged by being read by that person.
I agree that this number can be discouraging, as a lot of people obviously don’t finish reading a story or just skim through it so quickly, that it’s not counted as a read.
What do the other authors think, should I remove that statistic again? If it’s discouraging, it doesn’t really help…
The fact the read count started at zero when implemented is a big deal, because it means the older the story is, the more inaccurate the stat is (and will remain) for the rest of all time for that story.
I was also very sharply humbled by my “read” count, but dealt with it in a kind of “facts are facts” sort of way; My worry is there may be lots of authors who have done the same and now think they’re just… not as popular as they previously imagined (because the read count is so massively under representing their true read count).
I believe we should keep the stat, but that it’s very important that authors, globally, are aware that when the read count was introduced, it begun at zero on that day.
I’m an author and admin and I was not aware of it, (but also, I’m a spacer who very often misses memos on stuff).
Could you add a simple text message for stories published before the “go live” date that reads “note: this stat was implemented after the publishing of your story and will not be a true reflection of readership”, or something similar?
Hey Martin, I usually read on my iPad, and do so in “reader mode” that fills the screen and puts it in white text on black background. I just find it easier to view. But when I get to the end and switch back to rate or click on the next chapter (if any) I rarely see the prompt to rate the story. Maybe reading in that mode bypasses your detection logic?
I imagine that there’s probably any number of similar accidental workarounds that bypasses the detection. I admit that I never quite understood the two different numbers myself until this thread, and it has definitely impacted my ability to convince other writers to start posting here. While it was a great idea to track as a statistic, I’m not sure that it’s worth the headache of its implementation.
Maybe it could become an optional feature that is turned off by default—but people could turn it on via their Settings screen if they wanted to?
I never minded it myself, and I found the data pretty interesting. (Though I guess being an admin has taught me that apparently I am a data nerd. ) But there may be plenty of authors who like the read-count feature, too, who just haven’t seen this thread. I know I’ve seen at least a few authors talk about it with interest.
I guess it seems a shame to get rid of the feature completely, since some authors might like it, and it took so much work to implement…
)
) But there may be plenty of authors who like the read-count feature, too, who just haven’t seen this thread. I know I’ve seen at least a few authors talk about it with interest.
