2018 LITRING READER

SURVEY REPORT

MELISSA STORM
1 / SURVEY INTRODUCTION

Hello, and welcome to this year’s Reader Survey Report.

As you may already know, LitRing was founded on
January 1, 2017. To cap off our first year, we conducted a
survey of more than 10,000 readers to learn about their atti-
tudes toward different genres, giveaways, newsletters, and
more. If you’d like to check out the full results of that survey,
you can download our 2017 report at
www.LitRing.com/2017report.
For 2018, we followed that up with some of the same
questions to measure how the industry grew and changed in
the past calendar year. We also asked some pressing new
questions to help us better understand reader behavior and
so that we could make smart business recommendations for
authors baed on what we learned.
Although the number of readers surveyed was slightly
lower this year (6,318), the period of time during which we

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collected the data was much shorter—only six weeks as
compared to five months last time around.
This report includes our findings for 2018 along with our
first layer of yearly comparison data. Each year we will
monitor readers’ attitudes and report on how they compare
to previous years. We can’t wait for even more data to
analyze!
For now, we have assessed reader attitudes as they
pertain to 13 unique genres. This report seeks to answer the
following questions:

What is the average price point readers are willing

to pay for eBooks, and how does that vary
by genre?
Which retailers are customers using to purchase
new eBooks, and how has that distribution
changed from last year?
How many Amazon readers subscribe to Kindle
Unlimited, and how long have they been
members?
How many books do our respondents read each
month, and how does that vary by genre and
heat level?
Do free books still work?
After downloading a free book, how long does it
take for the reader to get to it?
Do readers prefer short series, long series, or
stand-alones?

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 What factors influence a reader to buy?
Which genre niches saw growth this year? Which
saw decline? And which are most profitable
overall?

We’ll answer all these questions and more within this

year’s free reader survey report.
We will also be diving deeper into each of our genres with
follow up surveys directed specifically at a sample of the
most dedicated readers in each genre.
The follow-up genre reports as well as a deep dive into
our big 2018 data set for each of these genres will be
presented in a series of live webinars. Each with actionable
takeaways pertaining specifically to your genre based on what
readers want right now.
To learn more about these webinars and to have the
chance to submit questions for our follow up surveys, please
make sure you join our book marketing group on Facebook at
www.LitRing.com/AuthorGroup.
Now onto the report!

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2 / GENRE BREAKDOWN

We asked readers to rank 13 genres according to whether

they frequently read it, sometimes read it, rarely read it, or
never read it.
To provide a single score for analysis, we assigned the
numeric value of 5 to all "frequently read" responses, 2 to
“sometimes read” responses, a value of 1 to "rarely read"
responses, and 0 for "never read".
Therefore, in the following chart, 100% would mean that
ALL of LitRing's readers read the genre frequently, while 0%
means that NONE of our readers ever read the genre.

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59% Mysteries
57% Contemporary Romance
52% Romantic Suspense
46% Historical Romance
43% Paranormal Romance
43% Thrillers
33% Young Adult
32% Christian
32% Nonfiction

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 29% Science Fiction
27% Urban Fantasy
27% Epic Fantasy
20% Horror

To show how our readership grew and changed from 2017

despite a slightly different response scale, we standardized
the measurement scale by setting the value of Mysteries
to 100%.
By doing so, we were able to see that our proportion of
Contemporary Romance readers grew, while most other
Romance sub-genres, Nonfiction, Christian Fiction, and YA
remained steady year over year.
Romantic Suspense and Thrillers along with Science
Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror decreased in popularity.
This could possibly hint at a shift in general reader atti-
tudes away from the action-packed genres and toward more
comforting reads.
Because the size of these changes were relatively small,
however, we believe it’s simply a shift in the readers coming
to LitRing and not a reflection on the market as a whole.

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3 / MARKET SHARE

As we’ve previously learned, LitRing’s distribution of readers

closely matches the larger eBook market. By comparing to
last year’s results, we were able to see that Kindle actually
gained market share in 2018, wresting their additional
readers from iBooks in particular.
The percentage of Kindle readers increased by 4% this
year relative to the other retailers. Half of that difference
came from a drop in the proportion of iBooks readers. The
other half was evenly split among Nook, Kobo, and
GooglePlay.

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 In 2017, roughly 18.5% of Kindle readers subscribed to
Kindle Unlimited. In 2018, that number jumped to 26.5%,
showing a substantial increase in market share for the
program.
Based on additional survey questions we asked this year,
the average length of subscription for KU subscribers who
took this survey is 14 months, suggesting that subscribers
like to stick around once they sign up.

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4 / KINDLE UNLIMITED

Via conditional branch logic, we asked all respondents who

read on Amazon whether or not they subscribe to Kindle
Unlimited. Based on the response to that question, we then
asked either:

Why not? to those who don’t subscribe

What do you like about Kindle Unlimited? to those who
do subscribe

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 These were write-in responses, because we didn’t want to
limit the feedback to a preset list of answers. We then stan-
dardized the data by grouping like responses together to give
us a better picture of overall reader attitudes.

THOSE WHO DON’T SUBSCRIBE

Of 3,517 survey respondents who read on Kindle, but do not

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subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, the most commonly cited
reasons were:

45% found the program to be cost prohibitive or

preferred not to sign on for a recurring
subscription
17.2% prefer to keep the books they purchase
7% believe the program is unfair to authors in
terms of payout structure and would rather not
support it
6.8% employ other means to get free or discounted
books, such as ARC teams, newsletter lead
magnets, or deals sites
6.3% feel as if they already have more than enough
books to read
4.2% found the program to be limiting in terms of
its rules or selection of content

Other reasons cited were that the reader preferred to get

books through their local library systems or through Amazon
Prime, that Kindle Unlimited was not offered in their coun-
try, or that the program just doesn’t appeal to them.
Based on these responses, authors who prefer not to
enroll their books in KU may consider emphasizing the
ability for readers to keep the books they purchase or direct
readers to library programs like Overdrive or Bibliotecha.

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THOSE WHO DO SUBSCRIBE

Of the 1,410 survey respondents who do subscribe to Kindle

Unlimited, the reasons they most like the program are as
follows:

53.8% believe the program saves them a significant

amount of money
25% enjoy the wide selection of books offered
16.3% say it’s a good way to try out new books,
authors, and genres risk-free
8.7% like the way the system works and find its
terms and workflow to be user-friendly

No surprises here!

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5 / EBOOK PRICING

Wondering how much readers are willing to pay for eBooks

these days? Well, the answer varies significantly by genre,
but we’ll dive into that a bit later.
Our survey determined that the average price point the
general reader is willing to pay for an eBook is $4.37. If you
remove KU subscribers from the equation, that number actu-
ally decreases to $4.16, suggesting that Kindle Unlimited
subscribers may get a large majority of their books from the
program, but are willing to pay more for books they want
that are not enrolled.

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6 / PURCHASE DECISIONS

HOW DO YOU DETERMINE WHETHER TO BUY A NEW BOOK?

CHECK ALL THAT APPLY.

That was the question we asked readers to figure out which

elements of a book’s product presentation make the biggest
difference when it comes to closing the deal and getting
them to click “BUY NOW!”
The results vary by genre, of course, but overall the most
important factors are exactly what you’d think. Readers even
admit that they totally judge our books by their covers.
In order from most to least important, we have:

Description (85.2%)
Price (76.9%)
Cover (48.6%)
Customer Reviews (46.7%)

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 Excerpt (45.6%)
Recommendations from Family and Friends
(36.4%)

And hype (AKA seeing a book so many times it’s hard to

forget about it) ranks lowest at 9%.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported behaviors on
the behalf of those surveyed. I’d posit that hype and a good
cover have much more impact in the purchasing decision
than readers may consciously realize.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY DISCOVER NEW BOOKS?

We left our next question open-ended to make sure we

weren’t leaving out any important modes of discoverability.
Readers wrote in their favorite ways of finding new books,
and—my goodness—there are so, so many ways to
find them!
Among the most popular roads to discovery were:

31.7% Reader-Oriented Websites Other than

Bookbub 1
22.6% Amazon Charts & Also Boughts
22.5% Recommendations from Friends & Family
14.1% Bookbub
17.7% Facebook Groups, Pages & Ads
13.4% Author Newsletters

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 Hooray for LitRing! As much as we’d like to throw a party
to celebrate the finding that we made the top of the list, this
was a survey of our readers, so… Yeah.
Also note that recommendations from loved ones factor
heavily into how readers discover books, but don’t have as
large an impact on whether they will actually end up
buying it.
Other methods of finding new books that were
mentioned by less than 10% of readers include: bookstores,
book clubs, blogs, giveaways, BookTube, Goodreads, Twitter,
Instagram, Pinterest, publishers, subscription boxes, live
author events, retailers other than Amazon, and—of course
—the library.

1. Those most mentioned were: LitRing, BookDoggy, Ebook Discovery,

ProlificWorks, Freebooksy, Barginbooksy, NetGalley, Fiction DB, eread-
eriq, Book Gorilla, Hidden Gems, The Fussy Librarian, Bookreporter,
Book Bassett, eReader News, Kindle Buffet, Author Buzz, Book Cave,
BookSprout, Book Hub, BookFunnel, Robins Reads, Fantastic Fiction

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7 / FREE BOOK OFFERS

Do free eBooks still work? The answer is a resounding YES!

Of those surveyed, 66.2% said they love free books and find
them to be a great way to try out new-to-them authors.
As to those who chose other responses, the breakdown is
as follows:

10.4% usually enjoy freebies, but sometimes run

into quality issues with the books they download.
10.1% still download free books knowing they may
never get around to reading them
7.9% feel that they already have too many free
books and thus exercise care when deciding
whether to grab a new offer
3.2% typically only download free books from
authors they already know and like.

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 And 2.2% say they are burnt out on free books and
give them a hard pass

Even if you can convince a reader to download your free

book, it does neither of you much good if they don’t also
choose to read it!
That’s why we asked readers how long it takes them to
get around to reading the free books they download.

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 A whopping 47.2% report reading their freebies within
the first month following download, while 15.4% admit that
there’s a good chance they’ll never actually read their free
downloads.

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8 / SERIES ATTITUDES

Do readers still like series? Survey says… Yes (although pref-

erences seem to be shifting slightly toward shorter series
these days). Only 13.1% of our respondents say they prefer
stand-alones to series.
Nearly a quarter (22.9%) of readers would rather wait for
multiple books in a series to be out before they start reading,
proving we all still love a good binge!
Price is an important factor for readers in deciding
whether to start a series as well, which could further explain
the slight shift in preference toward short, closed series as
opposed to long, open-ended series.

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9 / WHAT READERS WANT

Of course, we all know what readers want: More awesome

books from authors they love!
We wanted to get a little more specific than that, though,
so we asked an open-ended question and allowed readers to
type in whatever their hearts desired.
We asked this:

WHAT DO YOU WISH MORE AUTHORS WOULD DO FOR THEIR

READERS?

And even though it was an optional question at the very end

of the survey, 83.2% of readers decided to tell us exactly
what was on their minds!
Roughly half of those who responded simply wanted to
say that authors are doing a great job and should just keep
writing.

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 Others had some pretty solid suggestions to offer, too.
Here are their requests:
The top request was for more sales and discounts, so that
they can easily read more of your books. The suggested
things like ladder pricing for series, first in series free, pre-
order discounts, and special fan pricing for new releases.
Next up, they want more of you—not just your books.
Many readers requested the opportunity to get to know
authors better through social media, more personal informa-
tion in their newsletters, reader Q&As, sharing book recom-
mendations, offering the story behind the story, and just
generally conversing with their fans.
When it comes to newsletters, most readers who spoke
up wanted to let us know that they aren’t hearing enough
from you! Many prefer to hear from authors every other
week instead of only when a new release hits the digital
shelves. They requested less swapping and promoting other
authors, too. Remember, they signed up to hear about you
and your books—not somebody else!
Readers also reminded us that they love contests and
giveaways. Again, consider the source. This is LitRing’s audi-
ence, after all, and we’re kind of known for that thing. To
that end, they want a higher number of smaller prizes rather
than one big grand prize that only one person can win. They
also want to make sure giveaways aren’t limited to members
of a specific social media platform or US residents only. They
hate having to sign up for multiple newsletters to enter a
single giveaway.

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 Another trend we noticed, readers are crying out for
clearly labeled quality fiction! Many specifically asked that
authors not skimp on a good editor. Hey, throw a proofreader
in there, too. They also said that they feel too many authors
are rushing to publish fast that the stories are starting to
suffer as a result—or become repetitive. Readers, too, some-
times feel mislead by the branding or description of a book.
They’d love to have the genre and heat level clearly stated
right there in the blurb. They’d also prefer if you gave them a
heads up whether a book is a stand-alone or part of a series
and whether it will have a cliffhanger ending.
Other requests that were made on a much smaller scale
include:

More ARC team opportunities

More chances to win or purchase autographed
books and swag
More book signings and live author events,
especially to places off the beaten path
More content from the stories they love, such as
deleted scenes, bonus excerpts, and follow-up
shorts
“Join KU! Go wide! Just give me more!”

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WHAT DO YOU GENERALLY DO WHEN YOU LIKE AN AUTHOR?
CHECK ALL THAT APPLY.

When a reader finds an author they love, of course, they

want more! Here are the most common ways they choose to
connect:

83.2% will join the author’s newsletter

63.4% buy new books whenever they come out
59.5% opt to sign up for Bookbub or Amazon
alerts
58.8% will leave reviews
53.1% tell friends and/or family
49.7% choose to purchase books when they're
discounted
47.5% will look the author up on Facebook
31.2% will try to join the author’s ARC team
28.4% listen to the author’s book
recommendations as a way of discovering even
more great authors
8.5% go to live events to meet authors in person
7.7% will buy books and swag directly from the
author's website
6.1% will seek out signed copies to add to their
home libraries

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10 / GENRE REPORTS

Our 13 genres actually became 17 once we further broke

down our 4 Romance sub-genres by heat level. We have so
much data here, especially when adding multiple levels of
analysis, such as:

Genre readers by retailer

Genre readers who subscribe to KU
Genre readers who will pay up to $9.99 per eBook
Genre readers who prefer long series to shorter
ones
…and more!

This is why, as mentioned at the beginning of this report,

we will be giving each genre its own full report based both
on this survey’s data and a follow-up specialized survey
exclusively for each genre.

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 Results will be delivered in a series of live webinars that
will invite authors to ask questions and give a list of action-
able items to consider when planning the publishing
year ahead.
To learn more or to submit questions to our follow-up
genre survey for consideration, please join our book
marketing group on Facebook at
www.LitRing.com/AuthorGroup.

A HIGH LEVEL GENRE ANALYSIS

Worry not! We still have some great, descriptive data to

share with you today. Before we jump into how reader atti-
tudes and behaviors shift according to genre preference, it’s
important to understand how we created our genre
groupings.
For Each Non-Romance Genre: We assessed how
frequent genre readers differ from those who never read the
genre. Respondents who indicated they read rarely or occa-
sionally were thrown out for the purposes of this analysis.
For Each Romance Sub-Genre: We assessed how
frequent steamy sub-genre readers differ from frequent sweet
sub-genre readers and from those who never read the genre.
Respondents who indicated they read rarely or occasionally
were thrown out for the purposes of this analysis. We also
threw out those who indicated a preferred heat level of 3 on
our scale of 1 to 5, since they could not clearly be categorized
as preferring “Sweet” or “Steamy.”

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 This means that, yes, it is possible for a respondent to be
a frequent reader of more than one genre. This breakdown
seeks to pinpoint differences between fans of a specific genre
and those of the general reading population.
Here are the numbers of frequent readers for each genre/
steam level we are working with in this section:

Mystery: 2,603
Thriller: 1,587

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 Steamy Contemporary Romance: 1,527
Steamy Paranormal Romance: 1,299
Christian Fiction: 1,153
Steamy Romantic Suspense: 1,144
Young Adult: 947
Science Fiction: 927
Urban Fantasy: 871
Steamy Historical Romance: 866
Epic Fantasy: 857
Nonfiction: 707
Horror: 529
Sweet Historical Romance: 462
Sweet Contemporary Romance: 412
Sweet Romantic Suspense: 392
Sweet Paranormal Romance: 138

Here’s a quick rundown of some of our most interesting

findings:

Steamy Paranormal Romance, Steamy Romantic

Suspense, and Urban Fantasy have the highest
proportion of Kindle Unlimited readers.
Steamy Romance readers are the most voracious.
They read the highest number of books per month
across all 4 sub-genres.
Epic Fantasy and Science Fiction readers are least
likely to expect free books, while Paranormal

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 Romance readers (of both heat levels) get the most
excited about them.
Sweet Romance readers read their freebies fastest;
whereas, Mystery and Thriller readers take the
longest to make space for free downloads on their
reading schedule.
The genres that most enjoy stand-alone books?
Nonfiction, Sweet Contemporary Romance,
Thrillers, and Sweet Historical Romance.
The genres that least enjoy stand-alone books?
Urban Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, and Young Adult.
The cover matters most to readers of the following
genres: Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, and Steamy
Paranormal Romance. And least to readers who enjoy
Sweet Romance, Thrillers, Mysteries, and Nonfiction.
Readers are willing to pay the most per eBook for
Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Nonfiction.
They expect to pay the least for Christian Fiction,
Sweet Contemporary Romance, and Sweet
Historical Romance.

Because we asked respondents to tell us how many books

they read per month and how much they are willing to spend
per eBook purchase, we were able to determine overall genre
profitability as well.
But first here’s a graph (I didn’t know where else to
share it)!

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 Okay, are you ready to find out which genre is the most
profitable and which is the least?
For each genre group, the “genre profitability score” was
calculated by taking the average number of books read per
month and multiplying it by the average price a reader is
willing to pay for an eBook, then dividing it by the total
number of respondents in the group.
The resulting figure is a theoretical number more than a
practical one (technically it’s how much the average reader of

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said genre is projected to spend on eBooks each month).
Rather than considering the actual dollar amount attached,
consider the scale and how your genre of choice compares to
others on the list.

Steamy Paranormal Romance: $79.18

Steamy Romantic Suspense: $77.74
Steamy Contemporary Romance: $75.37
Steamy Historical Romance: $73.79
Urban Fantasy: $73.15
Science Fiction: $66.00
Epic Fantasy: $63.23
Young Adult: $56.77
Thriller: $55.22

All right, I’m taking a quick break here, because this spot
is where the average profitability score of all genres occurs
on the list. That means, anything above this paragraph is
considered more profitable than average and anything below
was determined to be less profitable than average.

Mystery: $54.41
Sweet Paranormal Romance: $52.16
Nonfiction: $51.06
Horror: $50.90
Sweet Romantic Suspense: $49.38
Christian Fiction: $47.38
Sweet Contemporary Romance: $45.63

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 Sweet Historical Romance: $39.60

So, if you write Steamy Romance, rejoice! If you write

Sweet Romance or Christian Fiction, don’t lose heart.
Authors can and do succeed in all of the genres listed
above. Write what’s in your heart, but do it with eyes wide
open to help make the best decisions for your career.
I hope you found this report helpful, encouraging, and
exciting! See you next year!

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