I loaded up a few stories on
Wattpad a while ago and just recently they have updated their story statistics.
In case you haven’t used Wattpad, it is designed to be read on phones and
mobile devices. So, each chapter loads in a number of smaller parts and the
stats record if readers read all the parts of each chapter, or if they skip
ahead.
It looks like this for “I’ll be
home for Christmas’.
It looks pretty good. Most readers
read all of each part. The story kept their attention.
I will admit to scratching my head
at the huge dip for chapter/part 1 but then I understood; if people start a new
story and they don’t like it for whatever reason, they stop reading. I was
trying to work out if they had read it before somewhere else. So I guess that
is a record of how many people gave up.
At part 9 you can see 20% of
readers didn’t finish that section.
This is kind of neat for writers. I
can go to that section and try to work out why I lost readers. I have to guess;
they aren’t telling me. For nearly 3,000 reads the story has 127 stars and 8
comments (4 of which are me replying). Wattpad stars are the equivalent of Ao3
kudos or Facebook likes.
Now I can’t see what they don’t
like about ch9; it is Bella meeting up with the pack after her absence of five years.
And there are some later chapters that they didn’t read all of as well, but if
one really dips then perhaps it is
worth rewriting it?
The stats also tell me which parts
got stars and on what dates they were given, and it also reveals the demographics
of my readers.
Oddly, the numbers don’t show
unless you hover over it but the lavender half is age range 13-18, the green
quarter 18-25 and the brown private.
In gender, half is female and half
private.
I do love stats and I think this is
all useful. It will even tell me when I got new readers as it knows when people
reread. So if I do a promotion, I can tell if it worked. I only have 14
followers here and I have been very lax at posting anything, (I’m not writing
fanfic at the moment) but I also haven’t been reading and commenting on other
people’s stories either. And that is
the way to be a real participating member of a community.
So if you are reading, take the
time to review; writers need to know what you liked and what you didn’t.
