Views - Another question from a newbie

[Tim Hobson]

As I am posting my first Story, I am very interested in the response. I have been getting a lot of Reactions, plus Comments on every chapter, but I am a bit alarmed at the number of Views.

There were more than 2,000 views of Chapter 1, but the number has been decreasing steadily with each additional chapter, and most recently added up to only 351.

Is that to be expected? I theorize that readers might be curious and therefore take a look at Chapter 1, but not want to read further -- I confess that I've done that myself -- or, much worse, losing interest in the story. So,

(1) Is this normal, and I shouldn't pay much attention to it?

(2) Is there anything I should be doing to hold on to readers once they've started reading?

I also don't know what to make of Followers (34 of them). I get the definition, but should I be reaching out to them and encouraging them in some way? When I have published books for sale, of course, I never knew any of this about readers, so the flood of information here is interesting but also concerning.

Which stats should I care about, if any???

Edited April 13, 2022 by Tim Hobson
fixed a typo

[Myr]

Yes. This is normal.  You have fall off from each chapter and you have some people that will re-read previous chapters when you post new ones.  So you will always have more views on earlier chapters.

[Valkyrie]

5 hours ago, Tim Hobson said:

As I am posting my first Story, I am very interested in the response. I have been getting a lot of Reactions, plus Comments on every chapter, but I am a bit alarmed at the number of Views.

There were more than 2,000 views of Chapter 1, but the number has been decreasing steadily with each additional chapter, and most recently added up to only 351.

Is that to be expected? I theorize that readers might be curious and therefore take a look at Chapter 1, but not want to read further -- I confess that I've done that myself -- or, much worse, losing interest in the story. So,

(1) Is this normal, and I shouldn't pay much attention to it?

(2) Is there anything I should be doing to hold on to readers once they've started reading?

I also don't know what to make of Followers (34 of them). I get the definition, but should I be reaching out to them and encouraging them in some way? When I have published books for sale, of course, I never knew any of this about readers, so the flood of information here is interesting but also concerning.

Which stats should I care about, if any???

As Myr stated, yes the view count falling off is perfectly normal.  As far as followers, the number means the number of people following the story.  People follow stories to get notifications of when new chapters are posted and when people make comments.  The best way to engage your readers is to post content regularly, respond and react to comments left on your stories, and participate in the forums, all of which you seem to be doing