Looking at the sales and readership numbers this morning, I became curious. What are the Top 10 stories we’ve published in SHOWCASE so far in 2024, and what if anything do they have in common? Ideally this list should be weighted in some way to account for older stories having had longer to rack up readership numbers, but going strictly by the total readership counts, our TOP 10 Most-read Stories so far this year are:
1. “gastronomic,” by Richard J. Dowling
2. “Broken,” by Karin Terebessy
3. “The Six Stages of Grief,” by Christopher Degni
4. “They Tire of Waiting,” by Roni Stinger
Narrowly missing landing on the Top 10 list, in many cases by fewer than ten readers, were the following stories. Stories 15, 16, and 17 were tied, so I ranked them by publication date, as the more-recently published stories have had less time to hit the same readership number. Likewise, stories 19 and 20 were also tied and ranked the same way.
18. “Feedback,” by Guy Stewart
20. “Getting Sponsored,” by Eric Fomley
Just missing landing in the Top 20 by one reader was—
Which seems odd, as going by the X/Twitter chatter about the story, it was one of the most popular stories we’ve published so far this year, but going by the number of people who actually read the story…
Well, I’m sure this all reveals something very profound about the stories we publish and the people who read them, but what that something is remains to be determined. In the meantime, I suppose we’d better start thinking about some kind of award to give the writers whose stories landed in the Top 10.
~brb
4 comments:
Did you do a Top 10 for 2023?
No. Do you think that is something a lot of people would like to see?
So many wonderful stories on this list - thank you for giving a platform to writers who have a different kind of story to tell.
I want to stress that this was a snapshot, taken because I continue to monitor SHOWCASE, to try to figure out what appeals to readers and which features should be dropped. This was not intended to be a competition.
Nonetheless, people do seem to be viewing this as a competition, so...
Do we need to establish some official rules?
FWIW, as of this morning "The Big Bad" continue to move up in the rankings, "Familial Fragments" has bumped "Arrivals at Hope Station..." out of the Top 10, and "Chapter 7" is drafting "Familial Fragments" into the turn and looking to move up. Meanwhile Eric Fomley, Brandon Case, Elis Montgomery, and Guy Stewart are all neck-and-neck for the last three slots in the Top 20...
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