Who loves Statistics?!

*crickets chirping in the silence*

Oh. Well. Hmmm... Perhaps it is an acquired taste...

If your silence was that of intent fascination - great! If the word 'statistics' horrified you into silence, then you may wish to sneak away while you still can.

If I do bore you to sleep, please don't snore. My dog has a habit of doing that when I start asking him questions about my story plots. Not exactly the most supportive or encouraging sound.

Personally, I like seeing numbers and trends, especially if I can relate them to real life. And I really like them if they can show me the progress I've made.

I've been manually entering my profile data into an excel sheet on a monthly basis, tracking details like reads, votes, follower count, things I did, etc. This allows me to see how things change when I do something like posting a new story, marking a story as complete, changing my cover, make a shoutout, etc. (A few people from Wattpad helped me recover some of the older data before I started recording the numbers myself, so a huge thank you to them!)

I find it exciting to share data and neat bits of information. So, I will post a bit about Wattpad statistics, as well as some of the trends I'm seeing on my own stories. Buckle up, we are about to start posting numbers...

Before we get going, please note that my numbers are not a common baseline - these trends may vary very widely depending on the genre, tags, posting rate, followers, subject, mature content, etc. In fact, my numbers are actually very unusual, possibly because I dabbled so widely in various subjects and genres.

To give you a baseline, here are some Wattpad-wide Statistics:

Sources are listed below with the timeframe that the data was released.

Basics:

Total number of books on Wattpad: over 565 million [1]

Number of active users on a monthly basis: 70 million [1]

Total minutes spent on Wattpad: 22 billion [1]

Roughly 25% of users write a story draft - but only about 10% of them will publish at least one chapter. (So, only about 10% of users have a book on their profile) [4]

Less than 10% of books on Wattpad are completed [4]

The most-read genres include: fanfic, romance, teen fic, and werewolf. (Yet, Werewolf is one of the genres with the fewest posted stories) [4]

The least-read genres are: spiritual, science fiction, and vampire [4]

Reads:

If a story has over 500 reads, it's in the top 10% of books with the most reads [2]

If a story has over 1,000 reads, it's in the top 5% [2]

If a story has over 10,000 reads, it's in the top 2% [2]

If a story has over 25,000 reads, it's in the top 1% [2]

If a story has over 250,000 reads, it's in the top 0.1% [2]

If a story has over 1,000,000 reads, it's in the top 0.01% [2]

Over 45% of books only have 1-2 reads [2]

90% of the traffic and usage comes from mobile devices [3]

70% of users are female [3]

Readers spent 196 million minutes per month reading Werewolf stories [3] (This was in 2017, so it is likely higher now)

Only 13 million minutes per month are spent on zombie books [3]

Sources:

[1]  https://company.wattpad.com/press (April 2019)

[2] https://www.wattpadwriters.com/t/how-many-reads-to-the-top/1975/28 (July 2018)

[3] https://publishingperspectives.com/2017/12/2017-trends-report-publishers-canadas-wattpad-social-responsibility-speed/ (December 2017)

[4] Nick from Wattpad HQ (Editorial Lead, staff member) (May 2019)

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Now, let's look at what my books have experienced. And some of them behaved rather oddly. (Closer to the bottom, there will be some graphs, explanations, and a more in-depth analysis).

Fun facts about my journey: (Followers, Reads, and Trends)

Followers:

I joined Wattpad in January of 2016. During my first 6 months on Wattpad, I was just a reader with a grand total of zero followers.

I worked on my first book for seven months and completed it before I began posting it in August of 2016.

During that first month (August), I posted several chapters every day and gained my first 5 followers!

By December 2016, I had 39 followers. By April 1st of 2017, 297 followers (And I had 3 completed stories by then).

In April 2017, I began posting The Virus Within, and, for some unknown reason, it was a hit - an almost unbelievable success. By June 1st - just 2 months later - I had 1,830 followers.

From there, the growth dropped to a slow, but steady climb. Possibly because it takes time for any author's particular niche readers to find them (and once it's in reader's reading lists, readers with similar interests find the stories more easily).

Lesson 1: The Follower count tends to be a snowball effect.

*       *       *

Reads: 

(Every time a reader opens up a chapter, it counts as a read. Although full and partial reads can be found in the stats page)

Genre and subject make a difference:

With daily updates, A Different Virus Heartfire (Zombie/sci fi Genre) managed to snag a thousand reads during its first month. Yet, even with the same update schedule, Looking To Belong (Werewolf) skyrocketed to hit 17K reads during its first month (Although the werewolf genre is one of the most-read subjects on Wattpad).

The Virus Within (a zombie/sci fi that appears to be popular if I look at the follower trend) took twice as long (two months) to reach 17K reads. (Considering TVW was posted after LTB, it also proves that having more followers doesn't necessarily mean that you get more reads on a new story)

The Read trends do not line up with the earlier Follower trends - which is a very interesting piece of information.

Lesson 2: Followers and read counts don't necessarily go hand in hand. Especially when it comes to re-readers. This is why we can't rely on just one statistic to draw conclusions.

*          *          *

* * * Here is a 'quickish' summary of some other things I found:

The biggest impact for my books seems to be if one of them manages to get into the top thirty of the Hot List or a popular tag (and particularly in the top ten of the main genre category).

Other activities that had a noticeable impact were:

Cover changes (particularly bright, eye-catching colors that stand out - just don't change it more than once a year).

A new story being posted.

New chapters being posted (chapters being edited also seemed to have a small impact, particularly if numerous chapters were updated within a several day span, such as an editing update).

Shoutouts (particularly about new or upcoming stories). ~This was a very slight impact for me, but we will see how the new shoutouts in the notifications work. So far, fewer people seem to be seeing them, which is why I'm making this update book.

Rewriting a story's summary blurb so the first two sentences grab the reader's attention.

A story being Featured (the results from this varied quite widely for three books of mine that got featured over the years).

The number of reads a story already has will impact read counts (once stories surpassed roughly 500K reads, the reading count trend increased, although this may possibly be attributed to re-readers returning).

The number of books an author has and how long they have been on Wattpad. Building a reader base and becoming known takes time - and lots of it. It takes time for your 'niche readers' to find you and your stories. (There are very noticeable differences between my first few books and my most recent ones. The book genre also made a big difference.)

Marking a story as Complete also led to a noticeable increase in reads and votes (possibly from re-readers who wanted to read it from start to finish, or from followers/readers who don't like reading in-progress stories).

Winning small informal contests on Wattpad sees a small increase in reads and votes. Results vary by contest, popularity, and how it was organized. (Small impact of about 50-200 reads, but for books with little traffic or new writers, it is noticeable enough).

*        *        *

Now, how about some nice charts and numbers as we dig a bit deeper into how I arrived at all of the points above?

Wattpad isn't exactly conducive to excel spreadsheets as big as the ones I made, and I'm only allowed to post so many images, so we will try and make do with this.

Chart A: Reads Over Time (Starting in October due to low activity)

Do you see all of those bumps and jumps? I checked my records to see what I did around that time, and something had always happened to cause them. And that means that it should be possible to duplicate it to an extent. (Which is where that list above came from).

To name a few of the bigger ones:

The jump in Jan/Feb 2017 is when I posted Looking To Belong. (Yellow line)

The surge in August 2017 is when The Virus Within literally went viral. (Light blue line)

Around July 2018, the green line passing the orange line is due to When the Heart Sings hitting #1 in the Sci Fi Hot List (much to my surprise since it was my attempt at dabbling in romance).

Considering I started posting in August 2016, my first six months barely had any reads. It took a full year and five stories before the activity on my profile began to noticeably rise. (So don't be disappointed if your book doesn't get reads right away. Mine didn't either.)

See that slow decline in growth between August 2018 and February 2019? That is solid proof that if an author doesn't post a new story/chapter, the activity on all of their stories will slow down. (Kind of reminds me of when my teacher asked me if I ever planned on handing in the 3 overdue assignments...)  During that timeframe, I had been busy doing a lot of editing and updates of existing chapters, but without a new story/chapter, my profile activity slowed to a crawl.

Any Q's about Graph A?

Chart B1: Reads by Percentage of Total Reads:

Chart B2: Votes by Percentage of Total Votes:

In chart B1, see how the yellow practically overwhelmed the rest of my books? That was when I posted Looking To Belong (a werewolf story). The werewolf genre is known to have voracious readers who read 196 million minutes each month.

Both graphs show an explosive start for LTB. For several months, it even had more reads than any of my other posted stories, despite being my 4th book. I'm curious to see what happens the day I post another werewolf book.

This was also where my other books began to pick up reads and votes, since some of the werewolf readers crept onto my profile to see if I had anything else that interested them.

Yet, if we look at the ratio of reads vs votes - they are almost identical. Which indicates that I don't have too many more re-readers in werewolf as compared to most of my other books. 

If I zoom in on B2, the orange and red (Laura's Story and A Starship Called Starsong) have a higher percentage of votes as compared to B1 reads - indicating that fewer people re-read them. 

My Writing Tips guide, which is nearly invisible on the charts above, appears to have very few re-readers. Surprise, surprise...

Of course, please keep in mind that comparing votes to reads isn't an exact science. Reads are always recorded, while readers actually have to click the vote star (which they can only do once).

Any Q's about Graph B1 or B2?

Graph C: Overall Graph:

This is interesting - the overall read and vote trend is fairly steady after the first six months. This is likely due to how varied my stories are, as well as the fact that it is much harder to get a sudden increase when you have more votes and reads to stabilize things. Going from 1.2K reads to 5.3K reads (a 442% increase, as seen in the first two months of ADVH) is much easier to achieve than if I were to try and get the same increase with over a million reads.

This might also be reflecting the variety of genres I write in. This kind of reminds me of why you should never stick all of your eggs in one basket (or genre, in this case). Just like the stock market.

Any Q's about Graph C?

Here's a peek at what my Excel sheet looks like  - This is more to help people who want to start recording their progress.

I have several tabs at the bottom of my excel sheet for other charts or details, like followers, determining the percentage of growth, charts, etc. Some of them are visible on the last image. 

Once again, please note that the percentages are large because the numbers are low (This is the top of my chart, so back in Aug 2016). Example: going from 10 followers to 27 is a 170% increase - but it's only 17 more followers. Once again, these images are more to provide examples of ideas on how to set up your own spreadsheets.

Any questions about how I set up my excel file?

Any other Statistical Questions? (Please keep in mind that I may not know the answer).

Do you track how many reads and votes your stories have? If so, feel free to share the link to your Wattpad statistics book/chapter here:

Even if you don't want to share them, there is no harm in tracking your monthly read and vote count. It can be really neat to look at it after a year or so. Google Docs has a 'sheets' section which is almost identical to excel. It even allows you to add sheets and limited charts.

We can feel discouraged if we don't think our books are doing anything, but our memories aren't always accurate, so recording the numbers often proves that you are, indeed, making progress.

If you managed to stay awake through all of this, then kudos to you! You did much better than my two cats and dog. Even my Dad's eyes kind of glazed over when I was reading this to him.