Good morning! And yes…. I did just say “far out” in the title of this post. It seemed appropriate.
If you kept up with me this week you know I was in Mankato the past couple of days for the Minnesota Library Annual Conference. There were sessions aimed towards Librarians and staff, and also Friends Of The Library (fundraising ideas, grant writing, 501c3 uses, membership building, etc…) it was a lot of fun and I came home with a few ideas. More on that tomorrow 🙂
Today I wanted to share with you the funny phenomenon of Gone Girl. Those of you who have read me for some time are probably familiar with my spoiler page. This is an additional page I write on books that I want to talk about in more detail because they totally blew me away, or made me angry, or… whatever. I do not use the spoiler page often. If you look at my link (also found in the tabs under my header) you will see the books I have used it on. Occasionally, when a book becomes a movie or there is some hype surrounding the book, I will notice an increase on hits on a particular spoiler post.
But not like Gone Girl.
If you are familiar with the book Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, then you probably know the movie released on the 3rd of this month. In September, the views of my spoiler page for Gone Girl started climbing… not just by 100’s… but by thousands of view a day. It was odd. In face here is what my top post views looked like on October 3rd:
Top Posts & Pages
These posts on your site got the most traffic.
Is that not just crazy? The post had been receiving hits around 15,000 – 19,000 per day for weeks, but opening day was the largest.
What is the big interest in knowing what people are saying about the book?
What do you think the draw is?
The words they are looking up to find this post are:
Search Engine Terms
These are terms people used to find your site.
What are your thoughts on this? Is it just that people are looking to reach out to others that have read the book? Are they looking for confirmation on their feelings regarding the story line?
Book Journey 
I’m always getting hits for “such and such a book spoilers”. Of course, most of my reviews start with “There are no spoilers for this book” so I’m sure the searchers are disappointed! :–) My guess is that people just want to know what happened without bothering to read the book! LOL
Cheaters! LOL 🙂
Maybe they are men that have girlfriends or wives that say “Honey, you need to read this book”, so they look for spoiler so they can sound like they did! 😛
I definitely would not read a spoilery discussion of a film before I watched it! I hate knowing what’s coming in books and movies.
I’ve only heard of GONE GIRL, Sheila, so I’m not familiar with the story or popularity, but obviously it is! What I don’t get is why anyone WANTS something spoiled! ????
Right? The point of the page is to discuss the book more deeply after reading it. Who knows why all the curiosity… so odd. It is a good read 🙂
Those numbers are crazy! I can see people wanting to read it after seeing the movie but what’s the point of before? Maybe so they can talk about it without seeing it?
It is odd – I can not explain it.
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Wow! I’m definitely tempted to do that right now because everyone I know has said they hated every character in Gone Girl, but the twist is a doozy. I really don’t have any interest in reading it or seeing the movie, but I do want to know the twist. I don’t know if tens of thousands of people feel that way, though.