In praise of: Iain Sharp

This is probably of no interest to anyone but me and Iain Sharp, but someone at a US social media site called StumbleUpon has recommended Iain’s article on James K Baxter from the August 1994 issue of the magazine, republished on the blog here.

I don’t know what the recommendation says because to see it I would have to sign up to StumbleUpon and frankly Facebook is bad enough. If any reader has signed up and can tell me, I’d be grateful.

Anyway, as a result hits on the blog have gone through the roof. Not very far through the roof, which is close to the ground, but still noticeably. It got 284 unique visitors and 471 page views on Tuesday, and 342 unique visitors and 383 page views on Wednesday and it looks as if it will do something similar today. Readership is building gradually over time but 200 visitors is a good result – so 342 is awesome.

The really nice thing is that the piece has been recommended to a whole new overseas audience – who are in Kent, Washington; Boulder, Colorado; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; and a whole bunch of other song-related places. Plus Melbourne.

They read it too – three or four minutes minimum, anyway. Sometimes much more, never less. And some of them stay to look at articles from the magazine on other New Zealand authors such as Alan Duff, CK Stead, Frank Sargeson, Chad Taylor and so on.

Which was the whole point of starting the blog. As the six-year-old would say, “Yay.”