I posted a web novel I've been working on with up to six chapters and out of literally no where the views went from 0 to 584. I keep refreshing because that feels incredibly fake, especially since I don't have a presence on the website, but the number hasn't changed. Are these views genuine? They feel very bottish.

    There's been a lot of conversations about this in the past. The views aren't the best to judge reading perception, since anything can bump up the views like going in and out of your own book. Collections and power stone votes are usually better indications that someone is reading or interested in reading your book.

      BRibbon From what I've seen, it's a click count and not an actual view count. I'm inclined to say there are some bots in play, but since I can't prove it, I won't venture into that territory. As for your collections, it is also not necessarily accurate since many people use more than one account to own more power stones.

      However, it's still a much better indicator than the "view count."

          Exactly as everyone has said.
          I will add that while bots can't directly be proved, pirating does happen for a fact, and most likely that way is through bots as manually would make the updates more accurate (since some authors put up dummy chapters and then post the real one later, meaning the bots grab the very first upload only). I started doing this too after seeing mine get pirated some time back (I was so surprised too since my novel was so unknown then, and is still is honestly haha).

            BlissfulDeath
            Wow Thanks. This is my first time posting on a site quite like this so I'm a little confused by how it works. I appreciate the insight. I wish there was a magical number where it would just tell me whether people enjoy it XD

                Chryiss

                That's a good Idea, I'll keep that in mind. I didn't know pirating a story would be something to be aware of thats annoying. Thanks for the heads up.

                  a year later

                  I have almost 7k views after posting my novel for less than 48 hours, it's so happy to know that so many bots and spiders are paying attention to my novel... Haha

                    AI380 I mean, I've made a little over 100k views in less than 20 days on a completly new novel, without any previous readers base.

                    Some of these views are real and I do get them from readers, but I would imagine that most of these views are either bots or just me myself refreshing my novel dozens of times :P

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