I have long lost the need or desire to see whom reads, admires, or just peruses my works of literature. There was a time when the financial implications of any success of failure made me attend such statistics more eagerly, a payment towards the cost of the next day’s meals do tend to have that effect.
In that period most of my publishing happened on line, through private members sites dealing in particularly specialized genres. I wrote using several different pseudonyms, each name designed to appeal to a specific reader type amongst the multitudes of subscribers.
My first thousand readers caused me considerable excitement, the first hundred thousand great amount of satisfaction. To be honest I paid too much attention to the numbers. Perusing positive statistics is a well very easily fallen into, but in reality a very foolish practice, unnecessarily stroking the ego, and focusing the mind on past success rather than possible future triumph.
I believe I last checked my readership when the total just had exceeded a million, deciding rather belatedly that perhaps my time would be better spent chasing actual lingual improvement rather than abstract popularity.
I will admit that all the pennies of commission do add up quite nicely, but to be frank I now realize I much prefer to write utterly for my own satisfaction than for any other reason, financial or consequential.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 