I originally wrote and published the bulk of this message on my blog, at
http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2008/04/numbers-endlessly-fascinating-
numbers.html#comments.
Konrad asked if I was going to repost it here, and I figured: hey,
that's *one* person vaguely interested.
This is about publi****ng rather than any specific work of SFF, so some
may consider it off-topic. To them I apologize in advance.
_Publishers Weekly_ this week has an article
(http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6548132.html)
with a couple
of charts from R.R. Bowker's new PubTrack Consumer service, tracking
book sales in 2007 by source of purchase and by genre.
The "Source of Purchases by Units" is what PW led with, but it's fairly
boring, and doesn't say much that's interesting. (Though "Book Clubs" is
the third-highest source, at 12%.) But on the "Genre Purchases by Units"
chart, the numbers are quite different from the conventional wisdom, and
I had to read the article a couple of times before I could figure out
why. (More on that later; for now, the sales are to adults of new books,
and are of units, rather than dollars.)
The charts aren't online, so here's the genre one -- overall, fiction
was at 49% and nonfiction 51% --
* Mystery/Detective 17%
* Romance 11%
* Science Fiction 5.5%
* Religion 5%
* Bio/Autobio 4%
* General Fiction 3%
* Espionage/Thriller 3%
* Cooking 3%
* History 3%
* Fantasy 3%
* Graphic Novels 2%
* Health & Fitness 2%
* Business/Economics 2%
* Horror/Occult 2%
* Computers 2%
Anyone else get that huh? moment, too? Perhaps when SF is listed at
being nearly twice as large as Fantasy? (There also must be a lot of
tiny genres, since the non-fiction categories listed above only add up
to 21% of its 49% share.) Surely those of us in the publi****ng business
would notice if SF, in aggregate, was selling twice as many copies as
Fantasy was?
(As far as we've noticed, it hasn't and isn't.)
Here's the deal, and the intriguing bit (which also may explain why
Romance is relatively small) -- these numbers are self-re****ted, via "an
online weekly survey of consumers' buying habits that is completed by
about 15,000 consumers weekly." So, assuming that these people are
representative -- and I think that's a fair assumption -- then the
takeaway is that readers think that they're reading more Mysteries and
SF books, and fewer Romances and Fantasy books, than we in the
publi****ng world think they are.
Some of that may be negative perception of those genres -- Romance and
Fantasy are the most obviously, blatantly escapist genres, and many
people may not perceive their own reading that way -- but some of it is
also clearly a difference of perception about the current group of
cross-genre books. Most of the mystery/romance/fantasy crossovers --
urban fantasy, paranormal romance, etc. -- are published as Romance or
Fantasy, but it seems that readers view them somewhat differently.
Or am I reading too much into one statistic? (And, in any case, what are
the other 28% of nonfiction readers reading?)
--
Andrew Wheeler
a geek at heart
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