My name is Christine Raneri and I’ve recently joined the New Shelves Distribution Team as their Marketing Manager.  Before this I was a College Professor and Business Consultant.  a few months ago, the publishing industry was new to me and  I decided to slide into the land of books.  I found myself on the seesaw of print vs. e-book, self vs. vanity press, urban vs. traditional fantasy… Once I got a grasp of all that, I decided to jump into the sandbox of factoids.  I am sharing what I believe might be useful to those who are just starting to think about writing, those who are in the middle of writing, those who already have a book written, and those who just love books and factoids.  So here we go with some book industry fun facts:

• Every 30 minutes a fiction book is published in the US.  In 2013, over 400,000 titles were self-published.
• Although e-books continue to climb in reader popularity, print copies are still the preferred choice of how readers would like to read a book.
• Those of middle-age are the ones buying the most books.  Those who live in the US West outpace Easterners in book buying by 40%
• Amazon says the average age of e-book readers on their site is 18-29 years old.
• According to a survey of teens, their book purchase is influenced mostly by authors they have read and liked in the past.  The second major influence are libraries.  29% of teens said they found their books by browsing around libraries.
  • 80% of people, who use the internet to research books and other products, stated trusting online reviews.
  • Readers were given a list of genres and asked to pick their favorites.  Below are what was found:
    • Favorite/preferred fiction genres:
      • 50% of those readers prefer mystery, thriller and crime genre.
      • 25% prefer science fiction
      • 25% literature
      • 25% romance
      • 10% graphic novels
      • 8%  chick lit
      • 5% westerns
  • Favorite/preferred non-fiction genres:
    • 29%  biographies
    • 27% history
    • 24% religious and spiritual
    • 18% self-help
    • 13% true crime
    • 12% current affairs
    • 11% political
    • 10% business

What does this mean to you?  It means when you are playing with the idea of writing a book, think about what the genre is and if it is a niche to a small following of readers or a favorite.  If you have a book started think about who your target audience is and if you need to have your book published in many formats.  If you have already written a book think about how you are going to generate reviews for your book since people tend to pay attention to reviews when purchasing.  If your book is geared towards the Young Adult and New Adult age group, a good idea would be to get reviews from librarians and utilizing Library Thing.  Next time I’ll swing us into the importance of reviews.  Specifically; who reviewers are, what reviews do, where to find them, how to ask for them, when to expect to see them.  In the meantime continue to have fun writing, thinking about, and reading books.

Sites

http://www.statista.com

http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/12-stats-on-the-state-of-bookstores-in-america-today/

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/864/Default.aspx