At the start of a new year I always take some time to look back at the previous 12 months of Track of Words in numbers, and this year is no different (I’ve already published my 2023 in Numbers post), except that I’m also marking the anniversary of 10 years running Track of Words! I published my first post (this one, if you want to check it out) on the 27th January 2014, if you can believe it. So with that milestone now passed, and especially as I’m drawing a bit of a line in the sand now after which I’m going to be slowing down on the site (see my Track of Words in 2024 post), I thought it would be fun to do a separate numbers post looking back over a decade of Track of Words.
I’ll take the same approach as ever, looking at all the usual numbers, but I’ll talk about things from the viewpoint of a 10-year project coming to some sort of fruition! In most respects that means including stats up to just before I publish this post (i.e. the 27th January 2014 to the 27th January 2024), but in some cases I might just go by calendar year. Whether you’ve been following ToW from the beginning or this is your first time visiting the site (or anything in between), thanks so much for visiting and reading – the last decade has been an experience!
A decade in numbers
As with my 2023 in Numbers post, let’s start off by looking at the biggest numbers! The largest relevant number is in fact the total number of words I’ve written (or at least published, given that a proportion of those words come from author interviews, guest posts etc.) over the last decade, which is…well, quite a lot!
- Total number of articles: 1,978
- Total number of words: 1,979,065
That works out at nearly 200 posts per year on average, with an average word count of 1,000! No wonder I’m feeling tired – although nothing quite compares to 2018, and the 348 posts/310k words that year…I still don’t know how I managed that, and I definitely couldn’t do it again. It would have been nice to have managed an even 2,000 posts (says the ordered, organised part of my brain), but I shouldn’t be picky!
Those stats for 2018 still hurt my head! Never again…
Next up, the other big numbers to look at are around page views and site visitors. I’ve always seen Track of Words as a niche site, and it’s certainly never had the numbers of bigger review sites run by multiple people, but I really can’t overstate how happy I am to know that it’s had over a million and a half views in the last 10 years!
- Total page views: 1,537,788
- Total site visitors: 776,393
Those numbers still hurt my head a bit, if I’m honest. I can still remember getting to the end of 2014 and thinking “wow, my reviews have been read 13 thousand times!” It seemed like such a big number, but then each year the stats just kept on growing. I probably (by which I mean definitely) got a bit too fixated on stats for a while, but these days I don’t pay too much attention most of the time, I’m just always grateful for everyone who visits the site!
From 13k in 2014 to 333k in 2024 – and over 1.5 million in total
10 year post breakdown
It took a little bit of digging through WordPress (thank goodness for Categories and Tags), but I’ve pulled together some stats that break down the different types of posts I’ve published over the years. Without spending a lot more time I’m not able to drill down any further, but I think this gives a decent overview of how those 1,978 posts are made up:
- 1,224 reviews (62% of the total), of which:
- 581 book reviews
- 529 short story reviews
- 101 audio drama reviews
- 13 Short and Sweet review roundups
- 471 articles (24%), including:
- 123 Black Library Weekly blogs (which I did between 2016 and 2018)
- 64 Monthly Roundups
- 53 guest posts
- 283 interviews (14%)
It’s no surprise that reviews account for 62% of my total posts over the last 10 years, but I have to say I didn’t realise how many short story reviews I’d written! 529 is way more than I’d have imagined, and that figure accounts for 27% of the total alone, which is a real surprise. 101 audio drama reviews is pretty mind-blowing too, especially as the last one of those was in August 2020 (which is basically when Black Library stopped publishing them)!
Dredge Runners by Alec Worley – the last BL audio drama I reviewed
I’m pretty happy with this breakdown overall – it would be nice to see a larger proportion of interviews, but that’s something to look ahead to I think. The plan is to focus on interviews and guest posts from now on, so hopefully there will be lots more of both of those to come!
As I was compiling this number it was interesting to see how many Black Library Weekly posts I’d done – it’s been over 5 years since I stopped doing those, but that number is a reminder of just how much time and effort I used to put into BL coverage. So with that in mind, let’s look at one final stat in this section:
- 1,395 BL-related posts in total
Yep, that’s right – Black Library-related posts accounted for 71% of the total posts over the last 10 years! Obviously that proportion has changed over time, and I imagine the figure will have been closer to 100% in 2018, while in 2023 I only published 19 BL-related posts, which equates to 17%. I probably could figure out the exact proportion for each year, but that would involve a lot of boring trawling through WordPress, but it’s safe to say my engagement with BL has ebbed and flowed over the years.
Numbers notwithstanding though, I’m glad I was able to cover a lot of BL stuff in the early years of the site. It gave me something to focus on, and helped me find a niche for Track of Words, but it’s definitely felt right to broaden my horizons a bit as time has gone on.
Most popular posts
It’s always fun to look at which posts are consistently popular and being read on a regular basis, so I thought I’d do that here and pick out the most popular posts over the last decade. I suppose it’s no surprise really, but I should point out right away that all of the most popular posts on Track of Words – of any type: reviews, interviews and articles – are Black Library-related! That’s cool, and just goes to show that there’s a (perhaps deceptively) large audience for BL-related content, but I appreciate that not everyone is into Warhammer. Don’t worry though, I’ve also included a rundown of the top 10 non-BL reviews for a bit of variety!
A quick note on page views, first. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether to include these numbers or not. I don’t have any context for how they compare to other websites, or whether they match up with what you’d expect, but in the end I figured I’d go with transparency and just say it as it is. You’ll note that the most popular posts have way, way higher numbers than everything else, and that for all the time I put into them, reviews tend to have far lower numbers than articles and interviews. Interesting, that!
Anyway, let’s get to the top 10s.
Top 10 articles:
- ‘New 40k’ Reading List (202,841)
- A Guide to Dan Abnett’s Inquisition Series (86,830)
- Black Library Pre-Order Tracker (69,055)
- Getting Started With Black Library: Age of Sigmar (27,084)
- A Traveller’s Guide to Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil (22,374)
- Where to Start With Black Library: Sisters of Battle (14,837)
- 40k Reading Order: Ultramarines and Iron Warriors – Graham McNeill (12,774)
- Getting Started With Black Library: Warhammer 40,000 (12,591)
- A Guide to John French’s Ahriman Series (10,762)
- Warhammer Horror – The Range So Far (8,040)
I want to talk a bit here about my ‘New 40k’ Reading List, which comfortably outperforms any other post I’ve ever written with almost 203,000 page views at the time I’m writing this. Bearing in mind that I only published it at the start of 2021, those sorts of numbers are bonkers! Again, this suggests that there’s a pretty big audience for Black Library fiction, but it also tells me that BL is simply not doing a good job of giving readers the information they need to understand how 40k books fit together, timeline-wise. Ah well…good job I put that guide together!
As you can see, ‘getting started’ guides and series reading order guides are pretty popular in general, so I think that only reinforces my point about BL readers needing additional information about how stories fit together.
Top 10 author interviews:
- Dan Abnett Talks Anarch (10,604)
- Interview with Dan Abnett April 2017 (8,691 counting parts 1 and 2 together)
- There and Back Again…with Laurie Goulding (7,575 counting parts 1 and 2 together)
- Dan Abnett Talks The Magos (5,682)
- Nounslayer: Gotrek Through the Ages with William King, Nathan Long, David Guymer and Darius Hinks (3,958 – counting parts 1 and 2 together)
- Peter Fehervari Talks Requiem Infernal and the Dark Coil (3,604)
- Aaron Dembski-Bowden Talks Spear of the Emperor (3,051)
- Dan Abnett Talks Penitent (2,934)
- Peter Fehervari Talks 40k and the Dark Coil (2,612)
- Mike Brooks Talks Alpharius: The Head of the Hydra (2,371)
What I’m really thrilled with in terms of interviews is the popularity of my longer-form interviews. I appreciate that a lot of BL readers are really interested in finding out more about specific books, but I put a lot of work into longer interviews really digging into things like the Gotrek Gurnisson saga or Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil, and I’m delighted that people enjoy reading them!
Top 10 reviews:
- The Magos by Dan Abnett (4,788)
- Space Marine by Ian Watson (3,258)
- Scions of the Emperor – Anthology (2,713)
- Spear of the Emperor by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (2,640)
- Requiem Infernal by Peter Fehervari (2.437)
- Ancient History by Andy Chambers (2,415)
- Meduson – Black Library Anthology (2,210)
- Shroud of Night – Andy Clark (2,207)
- Anarch – Dan Abnett (2,008)
- The Walker In Fire – Peter Fehervari (1,981)
In some cases this is pretty much what I’d expect, not least with lots of Dan Abnett reviews being in the top 10. On the other hand though, I’m absolutely thrilled to see not just a couple of my ‘Forgotten Texts’ reviews in the top 10 (Space Marine and Ancient History), but a couple of short story reviews in there too! In the end, I think this is quite an interesting mix.
Top 10 non-BL reviews:
- The Eye of the World – Robert Jordan (1,686)
- The Murderbot Diaries 1 to 4 – Martha Wells (1,658)
- Leech – Hiron Ennes (1,571)
- XX – Rian Hughes (1,352)
- Piranesi – Susanna Clarke (1,262)
- Immersion – Aliette de Bodard (1,228)
- The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex – Tamsyn Muir (1,128)
- Delhi – Vandana Singh (1,103)
- Gideon the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir (1,047)
- Tales from the Loop – Simon Stålenhag (688)
Speaking of interesting mixes, what about this top 10? Book 1 of the Wheel of Time at the top, which I suppose isn’t that surprising, but then we’ve got Murderbot, a few of the weirdest and most unconventional books I’ve ever read, three fascinating short stories, and a narrative art book! These reviews might not have been read as often as my BL coverage, but I couldn’t really be any happier with this top 10. I think that mixture pretty well sums up my reading tastes in the SFF sphere!
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So there you have it. I could probably keep drilling down further and further into stats and numbers, but to be honest I think this is as good a place to stop as any. I thought about including reading stats, but maybe that’s something for a separate post entirely (especially as there’s some interesting numbers around BL books).
Anyway, that’s 10 years of Track of Words – who’d have thought it, when I started this site way back in January 2014?! I’ve put a lot of work into this site over the last decade, and it’s been great to see the positive responses over the years. Great, and humbling, to be honest! I certainly never imagined the site would be viewed over a million and a half times, or that I would publish almost two thousand posts. We’ll see what happens next (more on that in my Track of Words in 2024 post, if you haven’t already read it), but whatever happens…thank you to anyone and everyone who’s visited the site!
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