Mat Twassel: Blog

A week ago I put two old stories to the top of my author page list to see if that would increase their downloads. It did.

The Orange Dress had 134 downloads in the last six days for 38th place in the weekly download count of my stories.

Jazz did even better with 142 downloads for 36th place. That's the equivalent of 24th place if you don't count the 12 new stories this week.

What I hadn't realized was that elevating a story to the top of the list does not keep it there. Each new story gets ahead of it, with the group of new stories in alphabetical order.

Typically my stories have been getting between three thousand and five thousand downloads the first week. The second week the number of downloads drops to a few hundred. I guess this makes sense. What also makes sense is that of the older stories, the ones with titles at the beginning of the alphabet get more downloads than other older stories. I noticed yesterday that I have some control over the order in which stories are listed on my page, so I decided to bring a couple of my older stories to the top. I picked two of my favorites, which are also stories which were not especially well received by the voting SOLers. Jazz, which is (by a large margin) my least favored story among voters (which surprises me), and The Orange Dress, which has a special place in my heart, perhaps because it is almost autobiographical. I'll report back in a week to let you know what happened.

Looking through my list of stories posted to SOL yesterday, I noticed I hadn't posted any with a title beginning with the letter Q, X, or Z. I'm usually up for a little challenge. The titles (let's say working titles) came easily. Quim. X-Rated, and Zipper. This morning I did Zipper along with two illustrations. I'm scheduling it for March 28th, so you'll have to be patient. (Not that I expect any of you are holding your breath.)

But thanks to you readers, those who make comments and those who just read. I do enjoy getting comments, but naturally I'm a bit disappointed when the comments are unfavorable. I do understand that many of my stories are not traditional. Some edge toward the experimental, perhaps falling off the edge for some. One such story may be The House on the Corner, which I posted yesterday. Several readers expressed displeasure at the ending. I do wish I could please all the readers, but I recognize that I can't. I write mostly to please myself. (Sometimes I do write stories with the idea of pleasing certain other people, and I've posted a few of those here too.)

One reader commented that he thought I might be more interested in quantity than quality. I've been posting two stories a day for the past few months, but keep two things in mind. First of all, most of the stories are quite short-fewer than 1000 words. I feel there are plenty of long stories here to satisfy those who prefer long stories. And I like doing flashes. Second of all, these stories were not all written in the last few months. I've been writing stories steadily for more than twenty years; it's only in the last few months that I've been posting them here. The important thing is this: I care about writing a good story. I always do my best.

It has been three months since I resumed posting stories here after a hiatus of thirteen years. A lot of catching up to do. In these three months I have posted 183 stories. It's been fun. I hope you've been entertained. I plan to continue.

Yesterday I posted two identical stories, except that one was illustrated, the other not.

The illustrated version had many more downloads. 4551 to 1243.

The illustrated version had a higher SOL adjusted score: 6.82 to 6.01 based on 61 votes as opposed to 11 votes.

Approximately 75% of the votes for the illustrated version were 8 or higher.

About 40% of the votes for the story without illustrations were 8 or higher.

So it seems readers are more inclined to download an illustrated story, and of those who vote, the illustrations increased the appeal of the story.

But of those who responded to me directly (four people), two preferred the illustrated story and two preferred the story without pictures.