Mar
1st
2016
Chapter 5 will be up within nine hours. · 7:09am Mar 1st, 2016
I was about to publish it when I remembered that there seems to be a huge difference in the popularity of chapters I put out depending on the time of day. The optimal time seems to be about 8:00 a.m. PST. Right now is close to the least optimal time. I know I said it would take me an extra week at most to get it out, but I forgot about this until it was too late, and I'd really, really prefer to stick with what I know works here. So please bear with me.
It's a real shame, too. It isn't often one gets the opportunity to publish something on the elusive February 29th—about once every four years, in fact.
0800PST? Now why would that be?
That's 1100 EST ... hmmm. Lunch. Its gotta be lunch.
Story goes up at 0800PST/1100EST shortly thereafter bronies up and down the east coast go on lunch break and fire up their phones and tablets, have a peak at fimfic and read the chapter. This continues for the next three hours as lunch travels across the country, and because few authors update at midday it puts the story in the Feature Box (possibly, might just kick it up the popular list).
Then at 1300PST/1600EST everybody's gone back to work and the hits die off for a while. But nobody's on during that period so the site statistics don't change much. so at 1400PST/1700EST (5PM-EST) everybody gets off work and goes home to see the story sitting at peak popularity and some new folk have a look-see and the guys who didn't read at lunch see the chapter, thus keeping the story high in the site rankings well into the night.
... Maybe. Of course it should be noted that I've spun this out of nothing at 2AM and it's based on an anecdotal statement by a guy who has only posted 6 chapters total across all of his stories.
Addendum: IIRC 0800PST is also 1700GMT so the bump from being read over lunch in the eastern US would also coincide with being read by people just getting home from work in England and the rest of Western Europe. ... Not sure how big fimfic is there but it might be part of it.
I'm making a blog post out of this so I don't lose it.
3785659 You've really earned your XKCD profile image. I've mused about these counterintuitive trends ever since I first began to notice them after posting a few chapters, but I've never gotten past "lunchtime for the East Coast".
...Ehhh... The wording in your blog post is not helping my inner turmoil about whether I should just stop worrying and take the chance to publish this on the rarest day of the year.
I'd get more data, too.