Kontax reader trend

Kontax is published in two places: as a mobisite and also on MXit. As we begin to see the statistics for the viewings per chapter, a clear trend is emerging: high volumes in the beginning, then a sharp drop-off and stabilisation of the die-hard fans who read all 21 chapters.

(Source: Shuttleworth Foundation, CC-BY-3.0)

For the mobisite, chapter 1 has received 1,683 visits, and about 250 readers have finished the story. For MXit, chapter 1 has received 35,149 visits, and about 4,000 readers have finished the story.

Over the next few weeks we’ll keep watching the usage stats and try to make sense of the difference between the mobisite and MXit. For one, there was marketing within MXit around Kontax: splash screens were shown to the 11-14 and 15-18 age group users and a Tradepost message alerted all users to the story. We hope that it was teens (14-17 year olds ideally) that read the story, but of course you can never know for sure in the virtual world.

A question I have on the drop-off trend is whether it applies to printed books too, where, say, 10% of books that are sold aren’t read to the end? In print you can’t track this, but in digital it is very easy to do.