Category: Uncategorized

Traffic report 2018

2018 was an unusually challenging year. It was full of deplatformings and bannings, disruptions and disqualifications. It saw the end of Alpha Game due to a lack of interest on my part and it failed to see the final publication of A Sea of Skulls due to a lack of time and focus on my part. It saw the collapse of the Amazon ebook market and a concomitant step backward for Castalia House. On the plus side, it also saw the publication of nearly 30 new comics from Arkhaven and Dark Legion and forced us to take structural steps that should provide a stronger foundation for future growth.

In 2018, Vox Popoli had 32,260,094 Google pageviews. The blog is now running at an average rate of 88,384 daily pageviews, up from an average 85,524 last year. The running annual pageview totals are as follows:

2008: 3,496,757
2009: 4,414,801
2010: 4,827,183
2011: 5,422,628
2012: 6,098,774
2013: 9,340,663
2014: 11,236,085
2015: 16,211,875
2016: 25,817,343
2017: 31,216,357
2018: 32,260,094

The biggest blog news in 2018 was the unexpected retro-cancellation of the successful Alt★Hero:Q crowdfunding campaign by Indiegogo, which not only led to the creation of our own comics site complete with a store and crowdfunding engine, but a successful replacement campaign that raised 42 percent more net than the original cancelled campaign as well. Thanks very much to all 1,657 backers who made that possible!

Another success was the return of Voxiversity and the development of its ancillary Darkstream, which is now averaging 8k views per stream. Look for further advances on the video front in 2019 thanks to the strategery of the Foundation.

We will have some very big announcements in the first two months of the new year, including the introduction of Infogalactic’s first social component. On a personal note, I expect to publish Corporate Cancer by March and A Sea of Skulls in print before June. And I’m very, very pleased to be able to announce that Jeremy Daw has literally just completed the massive task of narrating A Throne of Bones; the audiobook, which we anticipate will exceed 40 hours in total, should be available on the Arkhaven store before the end of March if everything proceeds according to plan.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read VP and to everyone who supports one or more of the various endeavors that have emanated from it. Thanks especially to the Infogalactic Burn Unit, the Alt★Hero backers, the Castalia volunteers, the Brainstorm crew, and the Arkhaven team, all of whom have come together in a spirit of creative cooperation to make these various projects viable. Your participation in these things is invaluable and very much appreciated.

Of course, it would not be an annual traffic report without that old standby, the comparison of VP’s annual traffic to that of the Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction. Some things never grow old. And the ride never ends.

We could hardly blame him

Bridget Phetasy@BridgetPhetasy
I just read the word “pedophobes” and well, I think we are done here, society.

This is what happens when you run away from being called wizard words. The wizards just create more words to control your behavior.

Deus vult.

Sparks flying at Arkhaven

Jon Del Arroz’s superhero romance comic FLYING SPARKS is now available in high-resolution CBZ format at the Arkhaven Comics store.

Due to many requests from our readers for higher-resolution digital comics than the 1280×800 resolution utilized by Amazon Kindle format, Arkhaven and Dark Legion Comics will be releasing all of their new digital editions in 2048+ resolution DRM-free CBZ format for better-quality reading on tablets and smartphones.

Unfortunately, due to Amazon’s requirement of exclusivity for Kindle Select, this means that our digital editions will no longer be available on Kindle Unlimited. They will still be available on Amazon as regular Kindle ebooks.

In other Arkhaven news, the AH:Q 2.1 campaign has been very successfully concluded with 279 new backers. Thanks to all of you who force-multiplied the project. We anticipate the initial release of AH:Q #1 to all the backers by the end of the month. We can also announce that 176 of the original AH:Q backers will submit their joint request for arbitration to Indiegogo next week. The rubble will be bouncing.

Industrial scale wizardry

From Jordan Peterson to The Last Jedi, you simply can’t believe anything that the media tells you about what is big or smart or successful or popular anymore. Because it’s all just corporate gaslighting for profit.

Director Kyle Newman: You look at The Last Jedi, and honestly, I don’t know anybody out here, maybe two people in my life, out of hundreds of people that I’ve talked to, who liked the movie. All the filmmakers I know that won’t talk about it publicly. All the people I know internally, there’s all these people that won’t, even journalists who gave it positive reviews are like, I do that because I need to maintain my access. Privately, there’s a lot of people who really don’t like it.

Geeks and Gamers: So you’re saying that the ones who gave it good reviews really are phony reviews.

Newman: 100 percent. I can’t name them, but yes, 100 percent.

I find it interesting that despite the constant encouragement to “think different” and “question authority” and engage in “critical thinking”, the media devotes an incredible amount of resources to convincing those who consume its products to do precisely the opposite. This would appear to be the inversive wizardry that Owen Benjamin describes, albeit on a giant industrial scale.

That was unexpected

The Bengals finally part ways with Marvin Lewis:

The Bengals officially announced that Marvin Lewis is out as their head coach on Monday morning and the statement from the team called it a mutual decision to part ways.

Cue the drums beating for Eric Bienemy, whether he is ready to make the leap to head coach or not. Affirmative action destroys a lot more people than it helps.

Gase is out at Miami too. I suspect seeing the rapid success of Doug Pederson, Frank Reich, Sean McVey, and Matt Nagy is influencing a lot of owners these days.

The sacrifical Fake Indian

Elizabeth Warren tosses her headdress in the ring:

With a mere 673 days until the 2020 US presidential election, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has announced the formation of an “exploratory committee” to consider a run for the highest office in the land.

In American politics jargon, this means the Democratic senator is most definitely running for president. Warren had repeatedly been named as a possible 2020 candidate since 2016 and even earlier, so her candidacy has come as no surprise to pundits.

(sniff, sniff)

Do you smell that? That’s what TRUMPSLIDE 2020 smells like!

The Hollywood line holds

The Hollywood Mafia managed to kill the Esquire story on director Brian Singer:

J.Michael Trautmann@JMACdaKID
Whatever happened to that @esquire piece??

AJ Benza@RealAJBenza
I’m gonna talk a little on it on the next show (1/2). But, it seems to me what I feared. Possibly a major studio that Singer has either worked for or will be working for soon (Red Sonja perhaps?) stepped in and stopped it. I fear this became a war between lawyers. And Singer won.

But the line won’t hold forever. There is very good reason to believe that #MeToo is a controlled burn meant to protect the serious predators in Hollywood.

Progress

Do tell us more about how the USA has changed for the better:

In 1960, for example, average weight of an American man was 166 pounds, according to a previous CDC report. By 2002, it had increased to 190. During that same time period, average height increased by a single inch for men, from about 5 feet 8 inches on average to about 5 feet 9 inches.

Add another 14 years, bringing us to 2016, and average height stayed the same (or maybe even dropped a fraction of an inch), while weights jumped another 8.5 pounds on average for men– up to 197.9 pounds, according to the newer CDC report.

The numbers weren’t much better for women, for whom weights on average rose from 163.8 pounds in 2000 to 170.6 pounds two years ago.

They left out the bit about women weighing, on average, only 140.2 pounds in 1960.  And only 127.7 for women 20-29. What a hellish place the pre-1960s USA must have been!

Last chance

This is the final day of the Alt-Hero Q campaign, so if you’re interested in getting on board, this is your last chance to do so.  Remember to turn off NoScript if you’re placing an order! Thanks very much to all 1582 backers of the three components of the campaign; this has proven to be a more successful, and more significant, crowdfunding campaign than we had ever anticipated.

Arkhaven still has a long way to go before we can set the cruise control, but we are systematically putting the infrastructure in place for consistent long-term success and we really appreciate the way Arkhaven’s backers are continuing to make that posssible.

In other news, QMAMD #4 and #5 are being completed, Swan Knight’s Saga #1 is almost ready to go to the letterer, and the first Premium editions of Alt-Hero as well as the first Alt-Hero novel will be published in January.

And, of course, the complete Right Ho, Jeeves omnibus edition is now available in a beautiful 152-page paperback that includes all six individual issues.

UPDATE: A high-level back of AH:Q shares his thoughts about backing the original campaign at the digital edition level:

I had no idea it would be so good and really regret only supporting for digital editions. Since then, I have gone for all the editions on the Alt-Hero: Q, during the silent campaign