*Dorothy’s husband, Peter Grant, has just released #3 in the Maxwell saga, btw.)
William Ockham said on 28-01-2014
I discovered something very interesting this weekend. There are about 7.5 million adults in the U.S. who read more than 100 books a year. That’s 3% of the adult population. And we (because I’m one) read somewhere between 750 million and 1 billion books a year, more than 25% of all the books that get read. I base this on a re-analysis of the raw data from one of Pew Research’s surveys where they asked people how many books a year they read. Pew is perhaps the only survey company that publishes their raw data (with the weighting factors!). So I’m in the midst of seeing what I can figure out about the reading public, but this factoid just blew my mind.
Since I have mentioned this in a couple places in the comments section, some power readers have “outed” themselves. So far, I’ve found a fairly consistent pattern of behavior. Power readers are constantly searching for new authors and new series. We like a free or discounted book to try out and then, if we like the writer, we work our way through everything they have. The good new for writers is that you will have multiple chances to get a power reader’s attention. There are some who won’t even look at an author until they have 5 or 6 books out.
A lot of power readers are women who read mostly romance, but most power readers appear to be read multiple genres. I’m still working on doing more analysis, but when indie authors think about pricing, this is almost certainly the target market.
[The strangest thing about this fact is that as best I can tell, no one knew this*. Doesn’t anyone in traditional publishing do real market research?]
*Of course, Amazon knows this because a huge chunk of us are their best customers. But they don’t see any advantage in giving away that sort of proprietary data.
Pulled from Lindsay Buroker’s post on ebook pricing: http://www.lindsayburoker.com/e-publishing/ebook-pricing-worth-vs-making-the-most-money/
William Ockham goes into more depth and breadth of detail here: http://jakonrath.blogspot.kr/2014/01/a-longwinded-screed-for-mike-shatzkin.html?m=1
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It wasn’t until I saw this comment paired with Kris Rusch’s market segmentation post that the lightbulb went on over my head. If you haven’t read it, it’s good stuff! Go here: http://kriswrites.com/2014/01/29/the-business-rusch-marketing-and-readers-discoverability-part-who-knows/
Publishing has been decrying the death of bookstores selling new books – but the real power-readers I know all haunt used book stores, once they’ve run out of material at their library. (At $30/hardcover and $8-$9/paperback, we can’t afford reading 100-300 new books/year.) They go straight to their favorite section, look to see if anything new has come in from their favorite authors, and then start browsing everything else, looking for eye-catching covers and interesting blurbs.
And the “indie price point” (0.99 to 4.99) is right in line with <b><i>used book prices.</i></b> What market are we really targeting? How big is it? Has anyone ever run the numbers to define the used book sales in the USA, or Canada, or any country?
Now, take a thoughtful look around the discount book stores, and the used book stores – what are the big sections there? What really moves, when publishers aren’t pushing it?
This also explains the disconnect between the increasing number of bookstores in the USA, and the crying by publishing that ebooks are killing bookstores. (Border’s decision to be gifts and music, with almost no books, killed it, and will kill Barnes & Noble long before ebooks get the chance to.) If 25% of the ebook market (according to Nook, 1 year ago – estimates out of Amazon at the end of 2013 are even larger), is indie, where did the readers come from?
Heck, look at the new book stores, too. What do power readers – for that matter, what do people who read more than 6 books a year – read? Romance readers are among the most obvious prolific readers – and the biggest buyers of new books that I know. However, for all the indie authors talking about them as though they were the only exception, I have a countering thought: star trek / star wars franchises. Paramount wouldn’t still be cranking out multiple new novels each month for those franchises if they weren’t be picked up and read by a steady cash-generating audience. What have you seen when someone walks up to the counter with a stack of books?
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30 responses to “Power Readers and Ebook Marketing, a guest post by Dorothy Grant”
In high school, one of my friends from our Darkover fan club bragged how she told a random woman in the bookstore about Darkover, and the next time she was there, the woman was at the counter with 6 Darkover books.
Although I usually have a book going, I’m not in “power” mode these days myself. But I remember that one of the great things about a series for a power reader is that you can go back and start at the beginning, and you experience a different kind of read, one informed by the awareness or backdrop of all the other books.
We spent seven years in Thailand when I was a kid, and I re-read my books a lot. When we came back, I went through all the SF collections in the library, at least tried all the novels, and babysat for book money so I could buy the ones I really wanted. Back then, I always wanted more. Now, I can’t keep up.
It isn’t always the big sections in used bookstores that you want to be in. The big sections are usually suspense/thriller or just general novels (no specific subgenre). But the ones that have the most turnover is where you want to be. Oftentimes I look at stuff on the shelves and if there are a half a dozen of the same book, well it is probably something pushed by the publisher and not really that good, after all everyone is getting rid of it instead of keeping it to reread. (romance readers seem to be an exception to this, they very seldom reread books, possibly because as despicable as Harlequin can be to its authors they have better business sense than most of the rest of the publishers and put out a boatload of books monthly at new prices that power readers can afford). Look in the SF section, you will find very few mil-SF books in most used bookstores, and those that are on the shelf won’t be there next time you come in, but the people that are running such stores always tell me that they are one of their best sellers, they just can’t keep them on the shelves. Louis L’amour is always well represented, but that is because there are hundreds of millions of his books in print, there is still a high turnover at used bookstores (for that matter they still sell new better than most new releases, I sometimes think he is singlehandedly keeping Bantam in business still, 25 years after his death).
And I’m late, have to leave, and forgot the point I intended to make when I started this comment.
…I missed a few words there. “(Border’s decision to be gifts & music, with almost no books, will kill Borders long before the ebooks get the chance to.)” Should have been “Border’s decision to be gifts and music, with almost no books, killed it, and will kill Barnes & Noble long before ebooks get the chance to.”
Thank you for not making fun of my missing the disconnect between words-on-page and words-in-head. Clearly, I need a beta-reader for my guest posts!
Don.
aw, thanks 🙂
I stopped going to Barnes and Noble because I am arthritic and it hurts to stand and browse. They used to have a few library stools around I could wheel up to the science fiction shelves and sit and try to find something. Now it seems their attitude is – “Buy something and get out.”
I had the same problem with Borders before their closing. It seems the management mind set easily slips into ‘managing’ their customers as well as their stores. Perhaps they need reminded they can’t fire the customers, but we can quit.
And some of us do. I have pretty much stopped shopping at B&N because of the cost, as well as the delay. For example, Sarah’s _AFGM_ arrived at B&N in Amarillo about two months after the initial release date. _Darkship_ books appeared sooner. The other local chain bookstore stocks a good number of Baen titles, but can’t order some other Baen books.
I quit going to book stores because, no matter what book I was particularly looking for, they’d never have what I was looking for. I realize they can’t carry everything. Also, the practice of only keeping books on the shelf for a short time means that you miss what you want.
I guess, after all, this does relate to power readers. People who read a lot would have different shopping habits than people who buy a book once in a while. It makes sense that power readers would have authors and series that they particularly look for.
This is an easily remedied problem. I shop at Barnes and Noble a lot. If you call them and tell them what you want they’ll order a copy for you. Then they’ll call/email you to let you know when they get it in. If they already have it, they’ll pull a copy for you. It’s a really easy system.
Or a person can just go online, buy a book, and the postal service delivers it to the house. 🙂
yep.
Good information, thanks! As a power reader from a very early age, I used to rely on the library, I couldn’t afford to buy every book i read. Now, with ebooks, I can get a lot more for the same money by buying mostly indie titles at $2-5. I’ve even been known to nag at an author (coffPetercoff) to raise their prices a bit!
Funny, I think I’ve been having that same debate with that same stubborn ol’…. sweetheart. 😀
You mean I could have backup to help me gang up on him? Ooooohhhh, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship… 😛
More seriously, while he and I have been debating back and forth on the pricing, I’ve also been keeping an eye on the median, mean, and the mode in the top 100 of his subgenres. You want to come over and see my etchi.. uh, spreadsheets?
LOL! I wish I were close enough to drop by and discuss. I’m pretty sure Sarah and Amanda would lend their voices, they are the ones that persuaded me to set the price for my novels at 4.99 (and it has been suggested I put TN at 5.99 on release). Also, massive wordage is out there on the topic by Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch.
We need to get together more often than once a year! I shall start plotting… muahahahaha! Or is that mrrrrow?
My love firmly believes that his debut book needed a debut price. I have persuaded him to set the price at $3.99, but he drew the line firmly there. It’s a dynamic discussion, ranging back and forth. We’re still debating raising book 2 while dropping the price of book one, leaving what’s working where it’s at, offering sales versus permafree, and all the other debates that the indie-authour-o-sphere has with itself every day.
In fact, I’m at a seminar and a professional statistician just determined for a novel between 100 and 300 pages, the ideal price is 4.99. you heard it here first. 4.99 ebook, 16,99 paper.
I’ve always thought that $4.99 was a good price for an impulse purchase. I think that I started buying a lot fewer paperbacks when the price jumped above five bucks.
I’m experimenting with price, just now. $5.99 for most, $7.99 for the most recent. I’ll report in a couple of months as to whether I’m dropping the prices or not.
As someone with one book out and the next one coming out next month (that’s the plan, anyway), I’m going with 3.99. I originally priced my first one at 5.99, panicked when I saw that I was the only unknown doing so and dropped to 3.99 after a month. The next one I’m going to put on the Kindle Countdown via Kindle Select. You can only do Kindle Select if you don’t put the book up anywhere else, as probably everyone here knows. Since it took me a couple of months, which was due to my own slowness, to get it to Smashwords, I’m going to use Select this time for the Countdown. Also, I sold about 9 times as many on Amazon as on all the other platforms combined so a three month delay doesn’t worry me too much. I’m doing the Countdown to get more eyeballs on the next book than the first one got.
It occurs to me that 100 books a year is less than two books a week. Depending on availability, I read at least three or more a week. But over the last couple of years I’ve bought less from the big box stores as they had less to offer and more from other places that cater to my need. The funny thing is that I have had memberships with both Borders and B&N in the past and apparently after going to the trouble of collecting that data, they don’t do anything with it. Amazon doesn’t seem to understand power readers either. Frankly considering what I spend with them on a typical month they should give me Prime.
I used to be a power reader. Now that I’m writing, I don’t feel that urge to slide into a parallel universe for a few hours. I live there permanently.
I don’t think it’s that, Pam. I think you use your emotions on your own writing and are too tired to slip into another. If you check, you’ve probably doubled your reading of non-fic.
I’m not writing, yet lately I’m reading a LOT more nonfiction than fiction. With most of it not being work related, unless reading about Nixon and Reagan in the ’70’s counts.
Yup on the non-fic. In progress are: a really good history of Hapsburg policy post 1680, a history of the Hungarians, Keegan’s _WWI_, just finished a reread of _The Guns of August_, and a collection of short stories by a nurse in the Hebrides Islands.
Thanks for the heads up about the latest in the Maxwell series. I’ve been waiting for that.
I certainly fit the description of a power reader, but in recent years I’ve stopped buying paper fiction altogether and don’t haunt the used/discount bookshops, or our local Waterstones (UK equivalent of B&N) as I did in the past. I buy in e-format online, mostly from Baen and Amazon because they make it so easy to keep track of my favourite authors and to find new ones I like. And its great to be able to browse anytime, read a sample, and if I like the story get it immediately. I wonder how many others are doing that and what the effect will be. I’ve already noticed a decline in the number of used/discount bookshops in the area.
I find that my rate or reading goes down, unconsciously, with the age of my optical prescription. I really need new glasses. Probably bifocals, since I find myself using clip-on magnifiers more and more. I have coverage, I just haven’t gotten around to using it.
(And I’m feeling really crushed, not a single sale in a week. And I didn’t get on the Book Plug Friday.)
Power reader, eh? Finally have a definition for my lifestyle. You hit the nail on the head when you say that we (power readers) can’t afford to pay retail prices for most of the books we read. The happiest day in my life was when I moved to the big city and discovered an amazing thing called “used book stores”. I almost never buy a brand new book at Barnes & Noble or other brick & mortar store. In fact, at this point, I’m trying to stick with ebooks for their portability, and I simply don’t need to add to the massive stacks of books in my personal library.
For me to try a completely new author, the price point for entry has to be pretty low, if not free, for the first book in a series. If I like their work, I’m happy to pay for the next few books. Peter’s price point has been quite reasonable, and presents no barriers to entry. I’m about midway through Maxwell #3 at this point, and just hope he keeps on writing fun SF for a long time to come.
I bet your librarian could not only peg the local power readers but tell you exactly which flavors they prefer. I’ve had librarians tell me “Oh, this came in and I put it on hold for you,” many times. Not that I requested the book or had my name on a hold list, but that the librarian knew my reading habits well enough to hold the book.
I’m not your desired power reader, though, because my book buying budget is so tiny I mostly spend it on damaged or lost books at the library. When one has children and has in excess of 50 books a week (power readers are nurtured, in my opinion) then there is a certain amount of damage that happens, and the children strive very hard to hide and keep certain titles.
Not any more. The library I can get to easily has NOTHING I can read. Mostly it has movies and music now.
[…] Grant starts out a fascinating post of market data, pricing, and readers with a quote from William Ockham. “I discovered something […]