Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Feedback, Guns, Health, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Science Fiction
Feeling better, though still not entirely over the gut-bug. But I thought I would share some numbers with you.
In the six or so weeks since the last update, another 1,500 people have downloaded Communion of Dreams, which puts the total number of downloads at 17,000. This makes me happy. And we have a small publisher who is interested in the book. Maybe.
In other number news, BBTI continues to get a lot of hits. July had over 100,000, and that puts the total so far at 1,126,943. This also makes me happy. Feedback generally on the whole project continues to be positive, though we’re always getting comments like this:
ANALYZING UR STATS for 9mm, KEL-TEC (which I own). Dont know when this study was done. looks like maybe mid ‘2008??? which is current enough to be relevant. However…> WRONG AMMO for analysis w/KEL-TEC. ANYTHING with a long barrel should ALWAYS use +P or +P+ to take advantage of – via specific brands at that. FEDERAL & SPEER ARENT right choice because they’re specifically designed for short-barrel. “Fps gain” would expectantly be marginal over short barrel. CORBON might be close to reality – but this is only marginal. Would LOVE to see something like BUFFALO BORE or DOUBLE TAP +P/+P+ 124gr & 147gr put thru these. This is what I shoot all the time with it, and can only base “visual” on what I think… would bet its substantial “fps gains” over pistol barrel, then.Any chance of u updating ur chart to include some +P super-stuff specifically? Would even volunteer to send u a box or 2 of the BUffalo Bore if I could get a “yes” commitment from u!!
*sigh* Proof that, no matter what you do, somebody, somewhere, will bitch about it. It’s just the way people are.
But you can’t let that drive you nuts.
Too much. 😉
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI Blog.)
This is a little weird – evidently, a Japanese site did some kind of mention/review of Communion of Dreams, and in the last couple of days I’ve had thousands of hits and about 200 downloads of the book because of it.
I say “evidently” because the site is in Japanese, and even The Mighty Google fails to give any real translation. Here’s the site:
And here’s the page from whence the traffic has come. Odd thing is, while the “MP3” is clearly in the title, only about a quarter of the downloads have been the audio files, and the rest the .pdf of the book.
Anyway, if anyone can read Japanese and would like to let me know what the site says, I’d appreciate it. Who knows, maybe I can wheedle a trip to Japan as a “famous American author” or something out of this.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Book Conservation, Guns, Marketing, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
By the numbers: this is the 700th post for this blog. We’ve had over 42,000 visitors, and almost 1000 comments. I have no idea how many people get a feed of the thing.
In the last 5 weeks, another 1,300 people have downloaded the novel, bringing the total to 15,500. I really need to figure out a way to sell copies of the damned thing, since interest continues to chug along.
Part of the bump up in downloads last month was no doubt due to the BBTI project. That has now had over 935,000 hits since the initial launch last Thanksgiving, and is up 165,000 since the ‘relaunch’ just three weeks ago. Wow – it seems like it has been longer than that. But then, I’ve been busy.
And I am going to be busier still – got started on the next round of books for a big institutional client yesterday. And I figure I have about 160 billable hours to do in the next three weeks or so. So forgive me if posting a bit sporadic for a little while.
Cheers!
Jim Downey
This past weekend, after we had ‘launched’ version 2.0 of BBTI, I sent out a few emails to places where I thought they might be interested in mentioning the new and expanded site, in addition to announcements on the four gun forums where I post. The Firearm Blog. Dark Roasted Blend (pending). Ammoland . And to several gun organizations and firearms-related magazines. I know that there’s a high level of interest in our work (we’ve had over 800,000 hits since the initial launch last Thanksgiving), and the word would get out, but it doesn’t hurt to do a little promotion.
Anyway, I got back a brief email from the editor of one leading publication. Let’s just call them “Firearms & Ammunition Review”. Here’s the response:
Sorry, but because we discuss ballistics on the “F&AR” web-site, we’re considered competitors.It sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun, though, and I wish you the best of luck.
And that, right there, is why we did this whole project.
Because far too often the data which has been generated has been considered “proprietary.” Secret. Not to be trusted to the average guy who just wants to make an intelligent decision about what caliber and barrel length will suit his purpose.
Now, I understand capitalism. I’ve been a small business owner for almost 20 years. Magazines are under a lot of pressure to try and generate revenue one way or another. But the mindset of “no, we can’t discuss *that* – people might stop paying for access to our data” escapes my understanding. What, they think that people aren’t going to find out about BBTI? That if they just ignore us, the “threat” we pose will go away?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to do an article on our project, to help push their publication/website as having a solid handle on all that is going on in the world of ballistics research? They can still do their other articles. Still have real experts on ballistics comment on our project (none of us involved in BBTI has any illusions about being an expert in this field). Still cover reviews of this or that firearm, discuss how this or that new ammunition performs.
So, this is why we did it. Because the data generated by ammunition manufacturers and firearms makers was locked away in corporate databases somewhere, inaccessible. Because we wanted to know. And because once we knew, we thought that others might like to know, too. And that maybe, just maybe, having an “open source” resource like this would benefit everyone, us included.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, Press, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA
Well, things with the Ballistic by the inch site have slowed down since I wrote this:
OK, this is a little weird.
I’ve created a monster. Well, not just me, but it’s at least largely my writing. Not that even my own sister could tell that.
See, the Ballistics by the inch project has been really successful. Really successful. Like over-a-quarter-million-hits-in-the-two-weeks-since-we-launched-it successful. I won’t know the actual number for a couple of hours, but already yesterday it was past that mark.
That’s more than twice the number of hits I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site in the entire two years since it launched.
But yesterday the number of hits to that site crossed 500,000. In basically three months. And we’ll probably see a new round of interest next month, when the article in Concealed Carry Magazine comes out.
Wild.
So far, this has stayed primarily within the ‘firearms enthusiast’ community, and it may well just remain there. That’d be OK – that was the audience for which we did it. But it could also make the jump into the mainstream fairly easily, and that would be very odd, not unlike (but from a completely different direction) to when my little Paint the Moon project got picked up by the mainstream press.
Hmm, I need to remember to update my Wikipedia entry…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
It’s interesting to look back a year and see where things were, and where we’ve come in the intervening time.
Downloads of the novel itself has been almost exactly the same: 6,288 in 2007, and 6,182 in 2008. That is remarkably consistent and more than a bit surprising to me. I also find it curious that more people have downloaded the novel than actually visited the site last year, by about a thousand. In other words, the link to the download of the book has been shared elsewhere, allowing people to download the thing (in either audio or .pdf form) without having to visit my site. Interesting.
This blog has grown by about double in terms of hits and readership – 10,834 in 2007, and 21,959 in 2008. Last year I wrote 333 posts total – an increase of 86 over how many I posted in 2007. Not as prolific as some, but I like to think that my quality is what brings the huge traffic. *cough*
Well, I have something else to get ready for this morning, but as I said last year: Thanks to everyone who visits, links, comments, or helps to promote this blog or my novel. Stick around and I’ll try and keep things interesting (I already have some new ideas and projects I’m working on).
Cheers for 2009!
Jim Downey
For those following along, here’s a quick update to yesterday’s post about Bbti.
As noted, the increase in traffic on Monday had seemed to be continuing, at least to some extent. The stats for Tuesday are 33,528 hits, for a total of almost 100,000 hits in just two days.
Wow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, NPR, Promotion, Science
I’ve written previously about the ballistics research project I’ve been involved with, and how the launch of the site was going really well. We had some 100,000 hits the first week it was up (11/29 – 12/5), and then this past weekend that pace was keeping up, with the usual variation you expect day to day. As I noted on the 3rd, this was really exciting to see, and more hits than my Communion of Dreams site had gotten all year. The associated blog hadn’t been getting much attention, but those things sometimes take time to ramp up.
Well, late yesterday, I knew something was up with the Bbti site, because suddenly the blog traffic had picked up significantly. As I told my cohorts last night:
Surprisingly, had another jump in hits to the blog today. Be interesting to see in the morning whether this is connected to another growth in overall hits to the Bbti site, or whether it is more just a reflection of the blog getting more coverage through search engines.
But either way, there were also more people going from the blog to the Bbti site.
So this morning I came downstairs, got some coffee, fired up the computer, checked mail, and then pulled up yesterday’s stats for the Bbti site.
Huh.
60,000 hits. Actually, 61,970. In one day.
Now, this isn’t a large number by today’s standards, for sites which are well established or get “slashdotted“. But that’s not what happened. We did get a link posted off of Dark Roasted Blend, but that was literally in the middle of a bunch of links, and only accounted for about 2,000 hits (that I can tell – the actual number is probably larger than that, but still . . . ) Rather, the traffic seems to be coming from a wide variety of sources, not all of them gun-related.
And that pace seems to be continuing, based on traffic on the blog today.
To put this in a little perspective, my great ‘claim to fame’ was my Paint the Moon project some 7 years ago. The internet was a smaller place back then, but even taking that into account, the entire project generated something like one million hits to my website – over the course of about 5 months. It took about a month to cross the 10,000 hits mark. I don’t think it ever got 60,000 hits in one single day, not even after being on the Howard Stern show and then the next day on Weekend Edition.
So, we’ll see where this leads. And I suppose I should update my Wikipedia entry.
Wild.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Book Conservation, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Marketing, Music, NYT, Promotion, Publishing
Here comes the latest round of this generation’s British Invasion:
‘Beedle the Bard,’ on View at the Library
Illustrations by J. K. Rowling accompany one of seven handmade copies of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” the latest book by the best-selling children’s author. The copy is on view at the New York Public Library. The skull above accompanies one of the stories, “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” (Photo: Scholastic)
The wizard book is now available for muggle eyes. A hand-written and hand-illustrated copy of J. K. Rowling’s newest book, “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” was unveiled on Wednesday at the New York Public Library, an event to garner publicity for the commercial release of the book Thursday.
I’ve written about these custom bindings before, as well as the collector’s edition. But still, it is rather exciting that this book is available. And as I am currently listening to Deathly Hallows as I work in the bindery, I’ve been thinking about the (still?) unknown bookbinder who did the custom volumes, and understand the desire of fans of the series to have their own copy of Beedle. But as I said before, if anyone spends the money for a “collector’s edition” for me as a gift, I will kick them. Get a trade edition and donate the balance of what you would have spent to a charity, instead.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, BoingBoing, Emergency, Failure, Feedback, Government, Guns, Kindle, Marketing, NYT, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Society
An update to this post… In the four days since the site went public, we’ve had almost 75,000 hits. That’s more hits than I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site this entire year. I’d say it’s off to a good start. Interesting that it has already started to propagate beyond the usual gun forums and whatnot – we got a lot of hits from a link on SomethingAwful, and we’re seeing some links from people’s Facebook and Myspace pages.
* * *
Did you see this post in the NYT about the future of publishing? I was going to write about it, but have been occupied with other matters. Then I saw this piece by Clay Shirky in response, and figured I’d just tell people to read what he said. An excerpt:
There are book lovers, yes, but there are also readers, a much larger group. By Gleick’s logic, all of us who are just readers, everyone who buys paperbacks or trades books after we’ve read them, everyone who prints PDFs or owns a Kindle, falls out of his imagined future market. Publishers should forsake mere readers, and become purveyors of Commemorative Text Objects. It’s the Franklin Mint business model, now with 1000% more words!
* * *
Got a note from a friend in response to yesterday’s doom & gloom report. He asked what my advice would be for anyone wondering about how to handle some modest investments (and acknowledged that I am not a financial advisor in any professional way). My reply:
Warm clothes and sturdy shoes.
* * *
Well, I have other matters to attend to. Have a longer post working in the back of my mind, perhaps for later.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 