ThE lAST WoRD

Stat’s all folks!

Cindy Bennett, Member #4170

Lies, damn lies and statistics, said Benjamin Disraeli but the stats on Issuu (the publication platform of the BMWMCQ Journal) tell an interesting tale - and are not a lie at all! Back first to a bit of history…from mid-2016 this Journal has been in digital format, and there was a fair outcry at the time about losing the hard copy B&W magazine that came in the mail after being sent away to print and then being bagged and stuffed and taken to Australia Post (with varying degrees of frustration…) Another downside of the printed journal was that it was unknown how many members actually read the publication. Did they collect it from their mail box, sit it in the pile of other materials so that it got mixed up with recycling? Had they moved house and forgot to tell the Records Officer? Were they using it as papier mache medium, or worse? A mystery wrapped in a plastic bag enigma. However the 2 years we have been editors have been using the digital format, which makes our jobs way, way cruisier than editors in past times – for which we are eternally grateful to the digital publishing gods! We can now also keep track of the popularity (or otherwise) of each issue (Issuu?) by viewing the statistics. I must admit not closely checking the stats, as once we have finally got to the publishing stage for the month the Editor PC and 3 big screens are shut down for a week or so of peace until it’s time to casually start work on the following edition – well all except December as there is no Journal in January! So back to my first point about the fascinating statistics, and I promise you won’t need to be demographer Bernard Salt to appreciate them. As you will see with the map of the world below, our readers (purple shaded countries) are spread far and wide across the earth – with Australia not surprisingly topping the list at near 18,000 reads (to 19th October 2021). But having over 1,000 readers from the USA (second top country) is quite incredible I think. And this doesn’t even include PDF copy reads.....

Top 10 Countries:

Australia 17,971 Unknown* 184 USA 1,096 Canada 176 NZ 400 Germany 137 UK 255 Holland 115 Italy 197 Spain 95

*I am wondering what the ‘Unknown Country” could be, maybe dissidents in North Korea accessing the Journal furtively under their doona?