Book Buying Tally Analysis: 2011

Yesterday I posted a list of the books I've bought or borrowed from the library recently and why I picked those books. Today I wanted to talk about the results. I also wanted to compare this year's results from last year's.

2010 tally results

My results from August 2, 2010:
23% Word of mouth
15% Liked author
15% Book in a series
15% Cover/book trailer
8% Similar to another author
8% Referenced elsewhere
8% Similar to a WiP
8% Back summary only

My results from this year:
35% Book in a series
20% Liked author (10% read author before, 5% heard good things about author, 5% author's internet presence)
20% Word of mouth
10% Already read and wanted to own
5% Being made into movie
5% Summary

I'm not surprised that my purchase of books in a series went up 20%. A lot of the books from series I'm reading came out in the last couple months. There are also more series on the market and more that I'm reading.

Liking the author and word of mouth both increased from last year. I'm not really surprised by either of the increases. The more books I read, the more authors I find that I enjoy reading and I want to find more of their work. Also, as I become more active in social networking and become friends with more and more writers/readers, I'm getting more recommendations. It can be hard to keep up at times.

I'm surprised that summary went down three percent. A few years ago, these stats would look very different. Summary probably would've been closer to seventy-five percent with maybe five going to word of mouth and the last twenty going to books in series. This is probably related to the fact that most of my new release posts are coming from my Goodreads instead of my typical searches of Amazon's and Borders' new release lists.

I predict that if I do this next year, books in a series will go down (I'm avoiding series as much as possible for the exact reason that I don't want to have to constantly be buying the next book) and liking the author will increase.

What do you think? Is there anything that surprises you about your recent buying habits? What's your biggest factor when choosing a book?

Comments

Brittany said…
These analysis posts are really interesting, and I think my results would be close to the same, though I mostly buy books that I've already read, and a lot of series books.

Also, I've given you the Liebster blog award, so you can find that on my blog HERE. :)
August 9, 2011 at 12:58 PM
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