How I work
The standards behind every romance signal piece
At a glance
- Every piece names its sources.
- Every number carries a source and a date.
- Every Notebook finding is labeled by how strong its evidence is.
- Mistakes are corrected in public.
- romance signal takes no payment from anything it covers.
Sourcing
Every piece ends with a Receipts list naming each source it relies on. I go to the original wherever I can: a platform's own help pages rather than a summary of them, and a dated copy of a page rather than a memory of it.
When a company or platform makes a claim about itself, such as TikTok's figure for BookTok sales, I name it as their claim, not as a checked fact.
Data
There are two kinds of pieces. A case study uses only information anyone can find on a public page. A Notebook entry can also use other data, such as a dataset I bought, so every finding in it is labeled with how strong the evidence is.
| Where the data comes from | Used in | How it's reported |
|---|---|---|
| Counts I took by hand from public pages | Case studies and Notebook entries | The count, and the date it was read |
| What a platform or company says about itself, such as Amazon's help pages | Case studies and Notebook entries | Named as their claim |
| A dataset bought from a data company | Notebook entries only | The seller, what the data holds, and its known gaps |
Counts change daily, so every count carries the date it was read. To see what a number used to be, I use dated captures from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. A missing capture is recorded as unknown, never as zero. NB-002 shows how to do this yourself.
Labels
Every question on my list of what I'm checking carries a status, from Written up to Needs more data. Anything labeled Theory is my own idea, not a finding.
Every Notebook finding also carries one of four labels:
- Solid in this file: a clear pattern that held up when re-checked.
- Suggestive: it's in the data, but the way the data was collected could be causing it.
- Outside sources: not from my data. Reporting and industry claims, cited.
- Unknown: I looked, and found no good answer.
Limits
Every piece states what it can't show. A count shows what a page said on the day it was read. A dataset is a sample, and how it was collected can shape what it shows. Neither proves that a pattern holds everywhere.
Privacy
I report totals and shares. I don't name social accounts, individual posts or fan writers, and I don't republish anyone's work.
Corrections
If a source changes after I publish, or someone shows me a mistake, I look again. If a claim no longer holds, I fix the piece and log what changed, and when, on the Corrections page. If you're a company or author I've written about and have data or a method I missed, send it and I'll review it.
Email info@romancesignal.com with the piece and what you think is wrong.
Money and independence
romance signal doesn't take payment from any tool, product, service or author it mentions or covers.
I also founded threnne, which makes tools for romance readers and writers. How the two are kept apart explains how I handle that.