@TerryHancock @alcinnz @avalos@mstdn.social @josias @be

SHORT VERSION:
I would like to suggest the idea to make it more personal and therefore more measurable before handing your work over to machines.
It needs thinking about as a separate thing and while I might not have it 100% below, but it's adjustable with something personal for the way forward between people and medium.

LONGER VERSION BELOW
(Note: Mostly replying the messages by @TerryHancock only)

The idea or ball-park tactic is to make it personal and more measurable in that way in order to achieve what you want as indication / reassurance / respect (love to hear more in order to consider it).

At the same time some of making it personal in your work and in life it creates by-products or involves more (obviously more than what is wanted usually) but handing it to machines seems quite an obvious cause to most of the things you mentioned and the typical 'what did you expect!' :)
I suggest these things below because I think you can it your own accordingly or even start personal and when you're happy enough reduce personal level of interaction. But it seems either way it must be more personal otherwise else it falls in the list of things I picked from your text, generally perhaps you're not sure from all the downloads and people what's happening with your material.

If I get you right what you would like both the personal and measurable sides which only the user might know or might say about)

So my suggestion is:
Rather than not being personal much at all, make it more about that. At least in the early stages of hype or release it seems that is the time to get what you want and that way get a bit of everything.

To give it to a machine more pr less make it anonymous or depesonalises it. It makes your work plain, less human and perhaps most of all less-memorable.
I write a lot forgive me, perhaps just now I can say:
"human contact before download" as the way and then in a friendly way "you also figure that out!" with suggestions before

While I've mentioned personal I believe it can be purely from the user sending you personal data and from their point of view (not personal always that you need to be there or have 2-way interaction). Machine-assisted forms might be perfect for you where you get a comment by the person downloading every time to confirm it's not fake (like a spam captcha but giving you feedback on "Why do you want to download this?" and "How did you get here / what's your journey" and you would be able to get your signal or feedback that "my work is great because they like this or saw it from that..."

To make sure you it's not just take take take + getting feedback I think this would give you a bit of a disposable bombardment of signal that "yeah they are real and they do like the idea of the title"

Moving on from that kind of idea, more personal could be 1-to-1
email and reply or 1-to-many (like on live forum/live meeting) before giving it to machines.
Hold your gift also with some personalisation. You will get your buzz and reaction from that. It's an effort but I think there is a balance or enough to get what you want then bail out gracefully!
This wasn't easy before but now safely and instantly Jitsi Meet can do this right now (for example: https://meet.jit.si/mybookmeeting) and then share link there (and then publicly / more anonymously)

The suggestion can be the longest-but-more-surest way, based on getting feedback with some of these ways listed; again perhaps in other ways, some I've listed
- such as a form with a box people (similar to contact form but goes to download or reveals link after). People can type in saying optionally why they are downloading it, what they like, encourage them to praise you! I feel like leaving work out in the computer rain is just a bit cold and even negligent! Have to point nicely and even spoon feed a bit to make sure it's not wasted.
- Sign guestbook - simply anonymous, even with a few spam one can scroll down / reset after a while
- simple etherpad / online text editor just for them to say hi
- mailing list
- mastodon account... Questions could be sent 1 way as comments or if you're daring 2-way!...

I think people are happy to describe (SHARE) the journey they are on but we are also avoiding it and putting computers as filters and over-protective guards.

For hit counters that you're not sure about (you said you already have that on Internet Archive) maybe these things could point to your mastodon page or guestbook for them to scribble on, at least to LEAD people into other things from Internet Archive or leave some thing (maybe you have this done, haven't seen anything - some put their audio or books there without much note and I guess that's a typical school-boy error I'm covering, some visual picture of you of whatever more memorable and stands a bit for itself)

GENERAL MESSAGE
It seems this part may be overlooked or an easy innocent assumption that writing a great book and having massive piece of work done should automatically earn itself something different in the area of marketing :) Not really unless you're already famous.

If you (one) can imagine it as an object out there on the internet with lots of other objects, + the habit of downloading already, then you can imagine it as just-another-download.
It's something to click and gobble and even yes it is something personal to people but like you said you can't see it... so that's one of your main aims I guess.
Things can grow behind our back... or we can tend to them as we tend to people taking our stuff... "Hello I'm the author, please steal my book and let me know how it's going for you, what do you want to see in life?" <---- !!!

If you acting just as a dropper of object impersonal, then yes what would I expect? Maybe some comments like thanks but nothing much, no links to me or ways back, no time given to this so err guess that is fair in the balance of effort for that.

The book is one big work but it doesn't do the personal part or much difference to an impersonal hyperlink to this or that other thing.

Something more memorable is ideally what I'd like including:

- Talking with authors, even before reading.
- Have the book signed after
- Sending comments on video page (book page). Seeing other people's comments. (All make people feel part of it and gives feedback you can easily scroll).

So I think perhaps if you're able to invest some time in some of these methods and practices with fans directly or indirectly without too much tech then at least those downloading have a chance and way directing them... otherwise there is not much value because they haven't read it yet and perhaps it's a chore to find your page to contact you (for example with your download do you have a contact link or easy go-to page?).
All of us forget or appreciate pointers so after digesting it the come back or paths are obvious.

Some of this is the way to go even for only the early part of release.... with machine assistance and without (can be combination or something to test and traverse on to next weapon after trying the one and getting tired of it to massage all things nicely)!

*Some* might hunt you down and search but it's certainly not doing yourself justice to not put links to your mastodon account inviting contact or some way *before* giving it to a machine just to copy out and just give you an anonymous hit counter.

So what homework did you do to get something back more ? (if you did then fairplay, I'm completely fresh here, but the creativity in this is also maybe an art to balance after releasing a few things to see how it comes back and can be food for practical thought in your work... NO OFFENCE to creators but it's this memorable person contact that is now worth more (even for shitty stuff) because there is so much shit and good stuff so as usual anyway it has to be more personal.

A few more points:

If you're approach is rather giving it away (which is good for those that don't mind and accept the work might have to organically doing it's best over the years) great, but if you want some appreciation or measurement that too needs work too.

- even 10 personal people might be great / enough
This could be a more manageable way because "who wants to meet and greet every fan?" (even if it was possible would you want to message or talk to 50 people over the course of whatever timeline you can manage? I person would even at 1 per week- happy for the interaction- GOLDEN one might say!)... so I'm suggesting something in the middle of 'extreme' here without even claiming it will be perfect but you get the idea.

- This personal touch is missing as far as I see across the board (or there are people doing it but systematically or industrially it's being cut out all the time so that is the inverse of what we need to do more often to put meaning and relativity back to life, not just machine like efficiency.. to really grow life and yes use/abuse machines too)

Pput it this way, whatever you put out there, if it's not more personally treated and just for download then it's possible that's what you will get.

If you're looking for something measurable and personal I suggest you do it yourself the hard way and smile with personal endeavours... I am happy to 'manage' meeting / moderate / collect people without it being a paid 'management' type thing.

Because if you let things go then it's not much to wonder it doesn't come back, you also have to escort it a bit, plan for that, even as part of writing the book!

I hope that make sense and we can even personalise it more to your tastes as these are just as range of things you / we could do. I'm also offering help though first keen to see what you think and how motivated you feel for some of these things.

If you don't mind - Make your own points of what you liked and didn't like to get feel for what you think. Thanks