Apr 28 2009
Lurkers, I need your help!
According to Google Analytics, we have about 10,000 serial lurkers: readers that have come here 25 or more times without leaving any comments. Our population of serial lurkers doubles about every two months.
Before publishing me, a prospective publisher will want to know more about you. Are you interested in my book about how to write superhero stories? Would you prefer information tailored to novelists, comic book writers or both?
I would really appreciate 5 minutes of your help. Thanks!
10,000?!
I was initially skeptical, but research in this field (such as Shedding Light on Lurkers in Online Communities) indicates that lurker:participant ratios can get extremely high.
Oh lol. I can’t help it… B. Mac, what does Google Analytics say about the site’s serial lurker levels?
“It’s over 9,000!!!”
What?! 9,000!
Ten thousand!
xD
If a publisher thinks that we can convert even half of our serial lurkers into paying customers, getting published will be very easy. Now, I just need information to show that.
Using my extremely sketchy information (13 respondents!), I’ve drawn up some really rough projections about how many books I might sell to my existing population of 10,000 lurkers.
A publisher only needs to sell 5000 copies to break even, so I feel that my sales projection of 4000 copies is favorable. (4000 > 5000, obviously, but presumably I’ll pick up sales based on impulse buys in bookstores and promotional events and the like. We’re only talking about advance publicity so far).
If people ask me what I regret in life, I will answer that I failed to tick the ‘punched a polar bear in the face’ option on a survey. Of course, I also regret being unable to do this in real life, but I don’t think the polar bear would be that pleased about it.
Haha, Holliequ. You haven’t lived until you’ve decked a polar bear. Pow!