I recently ran a contest for members of
my VIP email list. I do this every month, to thank the two hundred or
so folks on the list for letting me send them promo messages. To
enter, a person usually just sends an email to a special address I've
set up for contests, and I draw the winners at random.
Sometimes I use this sort of giveaway
for market research. This past month, I asked people who entered to
answer two questions: 1) how many books do you typically read per
month? 2) how many books do you typically buy per month?
Thirty three people entered this
contest. The answers were pretty interesting. Many of these people
read so much, I don't know how they get anything else done in their
lives! Quite a few answered with ranges, so that's how I tallied the
results.
Here are the statistics. "Lower bound" means the lower end of a range, while "upper bound" means the upper end. If a reader specified a single number, I used that for both lower and upper bound.
Read per month, lower bound – average
17 --- min 2, max 45
Read per month, upper bound – average
20 --- min 3. max 45
Bought per month, lower bound –
average 11 --- min 0, max 30
Bought per month, upper bound –
average 15 --- min 0, max 50
Quite a few responses explicitly
mentioned that they read a lot of free fiction as well (presumably
from Kindle or other free sites). Also some talked about using the
library rather than buying books because of financial constraints.
Several people said that the price of a book made a significant
difference in their decision whether to buy or not.
Seven out of thirty three respondents
typically buy more books than they read. In one extreme
case, the person reads 4-6 books per month but buys 30-50! (Some of
those might be free; she didn't specify.)
Several people made a distinction
between short fiction (short stories/novellas) and novels. In cases
where this wasn't stated, I assume that many of the books are
actually shorter than novel length.
Most of these readers are people I've
met via erotic romance promotion rather than pure erotica. Still,
it's hard to claim from this (admittedly limited) data that people
are not reading, or that they're not buying books.
I should mention that many of my
readers consume far more books that I do!
(And by the way, if you want to be added to my email list and have a chance to win exclusive prizes every month, just send me email at lisabet [at] lisabetsarai [dot] com!)
1 comment:
Yup, I'm like your e-mail list people. I read a ton, and I also buy more books than I read. I also frequently read the first chapter or two of a book and then put it down, or a few stories from a collection and then put it down, so I'm not sure how to count those.
There's pretty strong evidence that the "people aren't reading" claim is factually incorrect. The publishing industry's been shaken and people's reading habits have changed, but it seems pretty clear (particularly if you count internet reading) that people are spending huge amounts of time engaged in the act of moving their eyes over words.
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