Sorry, I missed posting last week.
I found some statistics about Romance Readers and thought
I'd share. The full report of the statistics can be read by clicking
here.
- Women make up 91% of the romance book buyers,
men make up 9%
That's not really surprising to me, more women than men read
romance. But it is nice to know that men
are buying the books.
- The U.S. romance book buyer is most likely to be
aged between 30 and 54 years
I wonder what age is prevalent in other countries. But the key words I saw was "most
likely".
- Mean age for print romance book buyer: 49
- Mean age for e-book romance buyer: 42
Not that big of difference, which I must say surprised me. Usually the younger generation is more
comfortable with technology and uses it more often. This tells me that e-readers on the market
are getting easier to use, which is great.
- Top overall decision factors in buying a
romance:
o
The story
o
The author
o
It's part of a series
o
Back cover copy
These were all very interesting to me both as a author and
as a reader. It shows that story really
does matter. Readers want a really good
story and while an author's name or being part of a series still sells the
book, story is the most important.
- 1/3 or romance book buyers (31%) surveyed
currently read e-books, while 69% do not
- Of those e-book readers, 9 out of 10 are
actually using an e-reading device to read romance e-books in particular.
What this didn't tell me is how many readers actually read
both print and e-books. I'm really
interested in that statistic. Because I
hear from readers, they actually like both.
- E-books vs Print in Romance subgenres
o
Romantic suspense e-book 54% print 58%
o
Contemporary e-book 48% print 50%
o
Historical e-book 44% print 44%
o
Erotic romance e-book 32% print 15%
o
Paranormal e-book 30% print 21%
o
Young adult e-book 19% print 15%
o
Christian e-book 13% print 19%
In most cases, the e-book is very close to the print
percentage, there are some exceptions.
Mainly with erotic romance and paranormal, the break down give a good
showing of what is selling and what isn't.
·
E-book pricing, this assumed there is a print
mass market available for $9 and a digital copy of the same book; and a second
assumption is where only the e-book is available. This is how readers determined how much they
would pay:
|
|
$9 paperback is available
|
Only e-book available
|
|
E-book too expensive
|
$10.90
|
$11.73
|
|
E-book high priced but still reasonable
|
$8.33
|
$8.57
|
|
E-book fairest price
|
$5.90
|
$6.13
|
|
E-book floor price (would question quality)
|
$2.55
|
$2.66
|
This was very interesting to me and it helps me understand
the readers issues with the e-book being priced higher than a print book. The one question that no one asked is how the
readers feel about a $9 mass market paperback.
Most today don't go much over $7.99 so would a reader really buy a $9
book?
·
Activities that do or do not interest the
romance buyer, here are the top, already done answers:
o
Visited author website 41%
o
Saw a promotional book trailer or bought the
full book 18%
o
Read an author blog 16%
o
Followed an author on Facebook 13%
o
Gone to a live author event 12%
The rest of the answers were all below this, they include
entering an online contest, watching a YouTube video, following the author on
Twitter and some others.
This was interesting to me because it does show that readers
go to authors websites. While social
media still play a roll (blogs, facebook, twitter) it's not a big as some have
believed it is.
Next week I'll start talking about the self-publishing
craze.
