It’s that time again. The stockings are hung, the whisky is poured, the NBA games are scheduled… yep, that’s right: it’s the night before Christmas! I wasn’t planning a Christmas blog post this year, but then Cox decided to kill my internet access for two days, and Tuesday’s post was, by necessity, rescheduled to today. Don’t worry though: it’s a short one!
As I did last year, I thought it would be fun to take a quick look back on the year that was. For those looking for substantive thought, analysis, and pontification on the year that was 2020… you’ve once again come to the wrong site. But next week’s goodbye letter may at least superficially scratch that itch.
This week, we’re taking the Buzzfeed approach to journalism instead; here are my top 5 posts of 2020.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
#5: Red Right Hand: Cover Reveal
Because a picture is worth a thousand words, even when that picture is intended to sell you on a 130,000 word book.
#4: Red Right Hand: Release Day, Advance Review Round-up, and Content Warnings
I’m starting to see a pattern here. Clearly, site visitors gravitate to blog post titles that start with a color!
#3: June: Release Retrospective
Hmm. Or not. The mystery may never be solved. Also a mystery? Why the post looking back on IMV’s release had more views than any of the posts leading up to that same release.
#2: Stories From a Post-Break World
Naturally, the release post for my novelettes (by far the worst selling of all my books) would be the #2 post of the year. 2020 makes no sense.
#1: 2020 Mid-Year Review
I have no idea why the mid-year review would be more popular than the original goals post, the end-of-year review, or indeed, every one of the other ~33 blog posts I wrote this year. Let’s just call it a Christmas miracle?
As we’ve successfully gleaned almost nothing of value from this exercise, I wanted to end with a few more stats for the blog.
This year, we had 1200+ visitors from 66 countries (at least some of whom presumably weren’t bots or web scrapers), with the top 5 countries being the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and France1. The main referrer, by far, was Facebook, followed by Amazon, Twitter, and Goodreads. Despite the individual post stats above, my best overall month for traffic was October 2020, when I spammed the world with Red Right Hand countdown posts. And the most searched term that brought someone to the site? “murder of crows book 2 chris tullbane”
Hopefully, that will change to “book 3” in 2021. I guess we’ll see!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and warm and happy!
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