realistic 1st story stats / experience
Howdy, all! I ate this kind of post up when I first started on Inkitt. I have two main motives for making my own:
- Most people who share their stats are (understandably!) celebrating their massive achievements. It can be discouraging to see that, then look at your own numbers and feel like you’re flopping. I hope throwing my own very average experience on the pile gives perspective to anyone who finds themselves doomscrolling the way I used to.
- I see a lot of discussions on this sub about the algorithm & visibility/reach. I do feel like I drew some conclusions from my own experience, and I’m interested to get them in front of the other data nerds.
My story, walk on water (or drown) had two pretty significant things going against on my quest for Inkitt fame:
- Very little romance and no “spice.” No werewolves or mafia bosses to speak of 😔
- Long (120k words) and fairly slow-paced due to being character driven.
From January - August 2026 I posted 2 chapters a week, on Friday evenings and Sunday mornings. Looking at my Total Reads By Day graph, you can see I went through four distinct phases of readership:
- For the first month I was posting, I averaged ~10 clicks a week. I was under 10k words for about half of that time, so it makes sense; I wasn’t even showing up on the wheels.
- Then, for the next month, my reads grew like crazy! I was averaging ~55 clicks a week. At the time, I really thought I’d made it and become ~popular.~ But, looking back, this is when I was participating in the New Year contest. Being in a contest puts you on an extra wheel, which increases viewership. As soon as the contest ended…
- Things dropped off significantly. For the rest of the time I was actively updating, I was back to averaging ~10 clicks a week. I did get a spike from one person bingeing all my posted chapters. But other than that, I very much felt like I was throwing chapters into the void 🥲
- Then, on the day I hit “complete,” I saw a HUGE spike! 100 clicks in one day!!!... then literally nothing the next day. And every day since that, lol. Again, this tracks: that was my 24 hours on the “Recently Completed” wheel. Now that it’s over and I’m not updating, any clicks I get have to come from from reading lists or searches.
Now let’s look at the Chapter Reads by Chapter chart.
You’ll notice that the total number of reads here does not add up to the Total Reads number. I see a lot of people use this as evidence that stats are broken. That’s a misunderstanding. Total Reads measures any time somebody clicks any part of your story. If somebody reads ten chapters, that’s ten reads… but if ten people click in to read your summary then immediately bounce without opening chapter 1, that’s also ten “reads.”
So, of my 621 “reads,” I had 12 people actually open chapter 1. 3 stuck around to chapter 15, then it was down to onesie-twosies (or zeroies) through the rest.
Next, let’s talk about engagement (reacts, likes, comments, reviews & reading list adds).
Not a lot to say because I didn’t get many, lol. I never got any reviews. All but ~1 each of my likes, reacts, and comments were from spammers. And while reading list adds can generally be counted on to be from real people, in my experience they didn’t translate to reads. I can’t really put a funny spin on this point--it’s genuinely a bummer. I crossposted on AO3 and Wattpad and got better engagement on each despite getting far fewer reads. (Might make a post comparing the three in more detail later, stay tuned.)
Last thing I wanted to discuss: I did several “Experiements,” aka A/B tests, while I was posting. I genuinely do think these are broken and unreliable because they never made any sort of internal mathematical sense. BUT, they do give you access to a new stat to be insane about: “Views.” As far as I can tell (don’t get me started on Inkitt’s lack of documentation), this is the number of people who are served your story as an option. Ex., if you open the app and see my story on the Recently Updated wheel, that’s one “view.”
The periods where I was getting more clicks/reading list adds directly correlated with the periods when I was getting the mostt views. During period #2 when I thought I was famous, I was averaging 170 views a day!! …Meanwhile, during slow period #3, it dropped to 1-5. I was still posting consistently, the only thing that changed was that the contest ended. I find this both reassuring and frustrating: If you’re not getting reads, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong with your story. It’s possible literally nobody is seeing it to even know it exists. But there’s not really anything you can do to expand your reach beyond joining contests, and there won’t always be an open contest that you’re eligible for.
So, that’s pretty much it! (I say, as if this post isn't ungodly long). I hope some of y’all found that interesting. If anyone has questions, or would like to share their own observations, please sound off in the comments! I genuinely find this kind of stuff so interesting, and I think it’s good info to have for new authors who are considering getting started on Inkitt.
tl;dr, what did we learn?
- We can’t all be Mated To The Billionaire Bad Boy Alpha Mafia CEO (1 million reads, 300k comments, Galatea deal, and feature film coming 2027).
- The algorithm is a fickle mistress; join contests if you want anyone to see your story
- Support your favorite authors with comments and reactions so they don’t lose the plot and start making spreadsheets
- Read my story if you want to contribute to the cause of Making Line Go Up on my total reads graph