BtVS/AtS fanfic readership numbers
Jul. 24th, 2004 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indriIn a reply to my last post about website visitor numbers, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
azdak wrote:
3000 is a hell of a lot of people, way more than I would have expected
I knew there had to be at least a thousand people reading BtVS/AtS fic because there's more than that subscribed to the BetterBuffyFics mailing list alone (1380 today). Fanfiction.net lists 7076 authors of BtVS fanfiction. The total number of writers must be higher, especially as the site no longer archives NC17 fic, which is a reasonable proportion of BtVS/AtS output, and because many people write coterie fic in LJ these days. So a reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate of the number of authors is maybe 10,000 or so, but I don't know how many of these writers are still in the fandom.
I have no idea of the ratio of writers to readers. One in three? One in ten? One in a hundred? Whatever the ratio, we're still looking at a BtVS/AtS fanfic readership in the tens of thousands and possibly the hundreds of thousands.
drinkthepoisonx of All About Spike posted some site stats a while back. These show that in 2003 (or near enough), the number of visits to the title page per month (as opposed to pageviews) never fell below 50,000. In an eighteen day period in January of this year, there were a total 460,000 pagehits at the site. Of course, I may well have been 46 of them :)
I'm not sure what figures from the publishing industry it would be appropriate to compare these numbers to. Genre magazine circulation maybe? The main sf and fantasy magazines, such as Asimov's, Analog and F&SF have a paid circulation of 20,000-40,000 per issue, although of course the total number of readers will be higher. The UK magazine Interzone has an estimated readership of maybe 10,000. So last year Laura's website was probably about as well-read as some of the major sf magazines. Of course, it's free while the magazines are not, so this may constitute comparing apples with kiwifruit or fish.
Despite the rubbery nature of many of the above figures, one things is clear: there's quite a lot of us out there. More than I'd thought, at least.
azdak wrote:3000 is a hell of a lot of people, way more than I would have expected
I knew there had to be at least a thousand people reading BtVS/AtS fic because there's more than that subscribed to the BetterBuffyFics mailing list alone (1380 today). Fanfiction.net lists 7076 authors of BtVS fanfiction. The total number of writers must be higher, especially as the site no longer archives NC17 fic, which is a reasonable proportion of BtVS/AtS output, and because many people write coterie fic in LJ these days. So a reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate of the number of authors is maybe 10,000 or so, but I don't know how many of these writers are still in the fandom.
I have no idea of the ratio of writers to readers. One in three? One in ten? One in a hundred? Whatever the ratio, we're still looking at a BtVS/AtS fanfic readership in the tens of thousands and possibly the hundreds of thousands.
drinkthepoisonx of All About Spike posted some site stats a while back. These show that in 2003 (or near enough), the number of visits to the title page per month (as opposed to pageviews) never fell below 50,000. In an eighteen day period in January of this year, there were a total 460,000 pagehits at the site. Of course, I may well have been 46 of them :)I'm not sure what figures from the publishing industry it would be appropriate to compare these numbers to. Genre magazine circulation maybe? The main sf and fantasy magazines, such as Asimov's, Analog and F&SF have a paid circulation of 20,000-40,000 per issue, although of course the total number of readers will be higher. The UK magazine Interzone has an estimated readership of maybe 10,000. So last year Laura's website was probably about as well-read as some of the major sf magazines. Of course, it's free while the magazines are not, so this may constitute comparing apples with kiwifruit or fish.
Despite the rubbery nature of many of the above figures, one things is clear: there's quite a lot of us out there. More than I'd thought, at least.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-24 08:25 pm (UTC)Fanfic is an important part of the fandom; it's blood: keeps it going, gets it aroused, feeds its life. Fanfic writers are important, since they keep the fanfic going....
Just think of all the free publicity engendered by thousands of fanfic stories...
My theory? More fans have read Internet fanfiction than authorized fanfiction. My evidence? so far, ~90% of the participants in TFP read fanfic. Less than 10%, so far in the data tabulation, read authorized fanfic.
That's beaucoup de free publicity.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-24 11:04 pm (UTC)I've friended you and am about to send an email volunteering for the survey.
Would you like the survey advertised more widely? I'm also active in literary sf fandom (the Worldcon and fanzine fan crowd). That might net you occassional readers of fanfic as well as hardcore folks.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 12:10 pm (UTC)Yes, please spread the word as much as you want! and, as importantly: thank you.