Anniversary Report: Two years running
Surveying the landscape
Oh, it’s March already, the anniversary month of this publication. Time flies.
I want to get the most important thing out first, I’ve decided to take advantage of a recently added survey feature. If you’re subscribed you should have also received an email with a quick survey about the Warthog Report, I’d appreciate it if you could take a minute to fill it when you can.
Anniversary Activities
This year I don’t have as much planned for celebrations, second year isn’t as big a deal as the first I feel. I might make a renewed effort at some things that have been on the backburner in the name of good timing though, so there could be an increased frequency of one-off fiction.
Instead of talking about subscriber numbers, I think it’d be more interesting to look at geography and overlap with other publications. For example the Warthog Report is read in 35 states. Can you guess which ones?
I think California’s numbers might be artificially inflated in a way that’d require getting into things too personal for my preference here.
There weren’t any expectations of regional popularity, so the top five states for readership was likely always going to surprise me and feel a little random. I can see reasons for the top three, but Florida and Minnesota would not have been my prediction. It’s curious how that turns out.
Maybe at some point readership will spread to all fifty states. That’d be nice to see. Now let’s take an international look.
I’m not too surprised by the top three countries for readership, but once again number four and five in the rankings were unexpected. Again, not many expectations coming into this for the top five so more things than not would have surprised me.
The overall spread itself feels impressive. Shows how widespread the internet is, even if most countries on the list are there because of one reader. Which now that I think about it could just be VPNs messing with the tracking of region, or it could be genuine. I prefer to think of it as genuine.
What Manner of Man recommends the Warthog Report and has been a major driver of subscriptions to this publication (thanks St John Starling), so it’s a very expected winner for the ‘most reader overlap with me’ accolade.
Simon and Brian (the author of Future Thief) are big voices within the fiction community for substack, while Fictionistas is literally a gathering spot for the community, so those make sense.
Dracula Daily is one of substack’s biggest hits fiction wise, and while I haven’t interacted with his work much myself, I’m aware that George Saunders and his story club also have big numbers.
You know, one impression I’ve gotten from looking at the stats of my posts is that my fiction is the least popular part of the Warthog Report. But the big subscriber overlaps are all fiction. That’s an odd contrast.
Recap of Last Month
The highlight of this past month for me was the full release of Merfight: Curse of the Arctic Prince, a fighting game that I edited. If anyone wants to play a round or two in it feel free to message me.
For the regularly scheduled features I stepped into the realm of weird moves to talk about one that was especially weird, The Dragon Lives Again, where Bruce Lee is in the afterlife and fights James Bond, Dracula, and others.
As part of the post I had a little poll on characters who deserved to be beaten up by Bruce Lee. This is a screenshot of the results.
Clearly this means there should be a 2v1 where Bruce Lee faces Norman Bates and the Wicked Witch of the West at the same time, and naturally overcomes the numbers disadvantage to get a decisive win.
On a more academic note, I decided to try summarizing academic texts I’ve read, leading to the post that came out a few days ago.
This helps spread the key points of info around and is a way to make sure I’m really understanding what I read. In my case I generally approach these looking for writing material, both directly and indirectly since I like writing stories that deal with myth.
Speaking of writing stories, Battles Beneath the Stars also crossed the ‘seven stories done, seven stories to go’ mark. Once the next story begins there will be more that’s done than there is left to do. Not counting many likely overly ambitious plans I have related to it.
Yesterday I opened the story again to letting readers vote on the next main character, and there are actually votes. Most people just haven’t seemed interested in that element of BBtS, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw comments come in. Which means now I need to start preparing Hyperion’s story with all the interest in it.
That’s all for now, thank you for being subscribed to the Warthog Report.
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