Cory Doctorow's Makers Readership Numbers

For whatever reason i have always been curious about how many people are reading certain things.

One thing that i am always curious about is how popular Free things from established writers end up being.

Cory Doctorow has been releasing his novels/stories for free online for a while now and appears to be doing pretty well as a Science Fiction writer. You can check out all his projects at his website craphound.com

Recently he has started to post his next novel Makers to the tor.com blog in a serialized format. A new portion of the book is released every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I think this is a fantastic experiment and have been really curious how many people are reading along. Luckly tor.com does keep track and publicly posts viewering information for it's blog posts.

You can look at the current viewering information with this link

Below i have posted the numbers taken from the tor.com website on 8/1

Cory Doctor's Makers 8/1

Part 1 11503

Part 2 4400

Part 3 3928

Part 4 3302

Part 5 2610

Part 6 2501

Part 7 1560

Part 8 1523

Part 9 1502

Part 10 1128

Part 11 969

Part 12 416

I am really not sure what to make of the numbers. We see that the first post has been read by over 11 thousand people. That sounds to me like pretty good numbers and i would imagine that any author would be happy to know that over 11 thousand people have read the first chapter of your unrealeased book..

The second post only retained around 40% of the audience. I have no idea what we can compare this to but still sounds pretty good.

After that we see a consistent decline in readership. This is not surprising and if you do the math you find that each post retains around 85% of the audience that read the previous post. You do see a bigger drop over the weekends. But it does appear that that the retantion rate is getting better.

Below is a chart of the first month readership for Makers. I will try to update this every week.

To blog or not to blog?

I stopped blogging a while back due to just feeling i had nothing new to say.

Now i am pretty sure i have stuff to say and interesting ideas to discuss. I am just not sure i want to have a record that will be around forever of my random thoughts out in the public.

Why a kindle 2 would improve my life.

The amazing thing i have found with the Kindle is how much faster i am able to read a book.

With normal paper books it takes me forever to get through them. Although i read pretty fast on a per page basis, there is something about real books that makes me get distracted. With the kindle i really get lost into the book.

The Kindle 2 will let be read faster and more since i will always have my full library of books with me.

If you want to get a free kindle check out this Free kindle2 contest and interesting blog.

flocking

I am giving the Flock web browser a try.

So far, i guess i just don't get it.

It says it helps to link you into all your social sites (facebook, blogger, ect...)

But it isn't very elegant.  I just don't see how it is actually useful.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Kindling

I finally decided to buy a Kindle. The ebook reading device that amazon put out about 6 months ago. I have to say i love the things and it is pretty much always by my side now.

Now i will first say that i DO NOT recommend buying a Kindle at retail price. I was lucky and found a used Kindle for 50% off on Craigslist, which is about the right price. Otherwise you end up spening $400 to read books. Honesly you could just spend that $400 on REAL books and quickly build a very respectable library.

Anyways here are the pros and cons i have found

PRO:

The screen is just amazing, sure it is black and white, but it is so crisp and clear it looks like something printed on paper.

Always on internet accsses has already ended many a bar room argument.

I can now twitter from anywhere for free!

CON:

I can now twitter from anywhere for free!

Not sure how comfortable i am with buying so many books from amazon

eBooks are a bit more resitrictive then real books

In the end i do really like it. It is pretty much always with me which has resulted in a nice increase in reading. It also appears that i read significantly faster on it.

If you read a lot, and can find one for a good price then go for it. Otherwise wait for a cheaper one to come out.

Stumbling

I just finished Stumbling on Happiness. The book is either the most depressing thing i have ever read, or the most uplifting. It pretty much says how our brains work to keep us both miserable and happy all at the same time.

you can check out a talk the author gave at TED

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/97

New Firefox beta makes me think about switching

I have been a faithful Safari user since i switched to mac.  For me i found safari to just be more integrated and just a little faster then Firefox on the Mac platform.  That might have just changes.

It is obvious that Mozilla has put a lot of time into the Mac Firefox and i just might switch.

Grab the new beta here