Undiscovered | What It Takes to Be Famous ✓

Now, Where Are Those Books Hiding? || Undiscovered

What Does It Mean To Be Undiscovered?

Well, let's have our lovely participants tell us. We asked them how many reads it took a book to stop being undiscovered. Their options were:

⭑ <50, ⭑ 100,  ⭑ 1K,  ⭑ 5K,
⭑ 10K,⭑ 15K, ⭑ 20K, ⭑ 50K,  ⭑ 100K,
⭑ 200K, ⭑ 500K, ⭑ 1M, ⭑ several millions or more, or 
⭑ "I don't believe that reads determine
if a book is undiscovered or not."

And this is what they came up with:

Most of the participants chose 10K. Not only is it the most common answer, it's also the middle (median) answer. In other words, if you line up all the data in order, the people who chose 10K fall smack in the middle of everyone else.

The second most common answer was 100K. In addition to being the second common, it's the arithmetic average, meaning that if you add all the answers up and divide by the number of answers, you come up with 100K. This average answer is so much bigger than the middle answer of 10K in this case because some people chose 1M and Several Millions, and those are huge numbers.

However, anything between 10K and 100K is fair game. Fifty percent of the data fell between those two points, meaning that most people (in our survey) thought that the most reads you could have before you stopped being undiscovered was at least 10K but at most 100K.

That's a lot of wiggle room. It's better than no data, but not exactly precise. 

For that reason, I think if I were to use this data to make a personal definition, I would draw the line in the sand at 10K. It's the most common answer and the one at the bottom of the most-agreed upon range. If you're going to call yourself undiscovered, it would probably be better to be a little conservative than a little too generous. After all, if someone who thinks you stop being undiscovered at 10K sees you calling your 88,000 views book "undiscovered," they might be a little miffed. On the other hand, if someone who thinks you stop being undiscovered at 100K views sees you not call your 88K book undiscovered, no one's going to be upset. It is generally my goal online to avoid upsetting people, so I'm going to pick the stricter definition.

What about you, though?
Comment in-line how many reads you think
it takes to stop being undiscovered.

Okay, guys. I gotta admit something to you—I messed up a bit. When I was building the "How many followers does a profile have to have before they stop being undiscovered," I might have, um...

Well, I copied the numbers from the previous question. And there are way different milestones for reads than there are for followers because it's (generally) easier to get reads than followers. That might be why people chose what I would consider weirdly high numbers. 

For instance, if I ask you to estimate how much a bag weighs, and the options I give you are 5 pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds, 500 pounds, 1 million pounds... you might be hesitant to pick 5 pounds even if the bag does weigh that much because the options just seem to lean toward a heavier answer.

So, take the following results with a grain of salt.

It seems like most people agree that you stop being undiscovered at 1K followers. However, there was no option for 200 or 500 followers, which I think would have also been important milestones. It's also interesting to note that about 50% more people said that they "don't believe follows determine if an author is undiscovered" than they did on the related answer for reads ("I don't believe reads determine if a book is undiscovered.").

So, I'll leave it up to you guys. Vote in-line below for what you think the right answer should have been.

How Many Followers Does an Author Have to Get
Before They Stop Being Undiscovered?

⭑ 50

⭑ 100

⭑ 200

⭑ 500

⭑ 1K

⭑ 5K

⭑ 10K

⭑ More than 10K

⭑ Don't Believe Follows Determine This