Book statistics

[Athena]

I've been putting my books into LibraryThing (I already had them on GoodReads, which is the main site I use) and into Book Collector (software). This post was inspired by I think it was frankie's statistics of the books she read in 2012 (sorry if it was someone else!). I hope you don't mind, frankie .I thought it'd be fun to post some statistics (for those of you who are interested in that) of my books, that I've come across. Apologies to all of you who aren't interested in statistics, this post may not be of interest to you.

 

Note: For the statistics derived from LibraryThing, most of my Dutch books written by Dutch authors are not taken into account. This is because they aren't in the LibraryThing database, though it occurs to me as I'm writing this, that they have several search engines you can select which might've made a difference .

Note 2: For all statistics, I only count books I own. I've read more books but I don't own them so they aren't in the list (some are on GR).

Note 3: The statistics exclude all children's books (some are on GR) (note: all Donald Duck comics are also not included).

Note 4: Some books belong to more than one genre. In this case I'm unsure which genre it's counted as in the book software. Possibly the first one alphabetically.

Note 5: I own many more Information books than are in my database. All the books I bought (and read) for my study and for secondary school etc., are not included.

Note 6: I've rounded off all values, so the total isn't always 100%.

Note 7: For some reason the forum doesn't accept either tabs or spaces to make this post more readable (to put the numbers in one column). I'm not sure why this is. So apologies for that.

Note 8: These were all the statistics I found that were interesting, I'm sure there's other interesting ones too.

 

Genre: (Book Collector)

Fantasy 31 %

Contemporary Fiction 18 %

Chick-lit 13 %

Science-fiction 9 %

Literature 8 %

Thriller 5 %

Young-Adult 4 %

Historical Fiction 4 %

Information 2 %

Paranormal 2 %

Detective 1 %

Autobiography 1 %

Horror 1 %

Biography 1 %

Comic % (I don't own many adult comics)

Cooking % (mainly because I have some Dutch cook books that aren't well known thus not in LT etc)

Manga % (most of the manga I read is owned by my boyfriend)

Travel % (I've not put in most of my travel books)

 

Country: (Book Collector)

United States 48 % (it would be more if I counted my children's and teenager books)

Great-Britain 37 % (I didn't expect to have so many British books)

Australia 4 %

Ireland 3 %

Netherlands 3 % (it would be more if I counted my children's and teenager books)

Other 6 % (various other countries, such as Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Russia..)

 

Format: (Book Collector)

Paperback 94 % (I do much prefer paperbacks and generally only buy hardcover books if they're really cheap)

Hardcover 5 %

Ebook 1 % (I expect this to change in a while as I'll be getting a Kindle soon)

 

Male/female authors (LibraryThing)

Male: 46%

Female: 45%

Unknown: 10%

 

I was surprised at this, that's a pretty good ratio (about 50-50)!

 

Alive/dead authors (LibraryThing)

Dead 18 %

Alive 56 %

Unknown 26 %

 

Pages: (Excel) (LT has its own stats for this, but for the Dutch translations LT counts the pages of the English versions because it didn't find the Dutch version. So I think my Excel sheet would be more accurate.)

<1 4 % (books still in the wrapper I tend not to unwrap those until I want to read them, to keep them fresh)

1 - 100 1 %

100-200 5 %

200-300 12 %

300-400 25 %

400-500 25 %

500-600 11 %

600-700 10 %

800-900 3 %

900-1000 2 %

1000+ 2 %

 

Average amount of pages: 463

 

Ratings: (Book Collector)

 

Most of my books are rated four or five stars. There are a few I've rated one or two stars. There are more that I've rated three stars. The Book Collector software works in a 1-10 scale, my Excel sheet works with 1-5 stars. I've tried to scale things to a 1-10 scale, but because I'm so used to the 1-5 scale, the amount of "9s" is not that high.

 

5 or lower 3 %

6 5 %

7 12 %

8 28 %

9 10 %

10 42 %

 

Note that these statistics only include books I've read. What also helps with the statistics, is that I tend to know what kind of books I like, and I try not to buy any books that I won't like. Of course you don't always know that when you pick something up in an impulse buy, but I seem to have a pretty good idea generally (or maybe I'm not that critical XD).

 

Feel free to post your own statistics if you have them .

[Talisman]

I wouldn't know where to start !

[Janet]

I

Male/female authors (LibraryThing)

Male: 46%

Female: 45%

Unknown: 10%

 

I was surprised at this, that's a pretty good ratio (about 50-50)!

 

That's 101%  

 

Interesting thread. I do my stats at the end of the year from my spreadsheets.  

[emelee]

458 books

 

Language:
331 Swedish

95 English

4 German

2 Norweigan

1 Danish

1 Finnish

1 French

1 Spanish

 

Authors:

Men 66.94%

Women: 33.06%

64% of the authors are still alive. 

Most of the authors are 1) Swedish 2) American 3) Brittish 4) Other 5) French 6) Irish

 

If I were to pile them, my books would reach 70.1 feet, somewhere between Cleopatra's needle & Sfinx, and I will need 4.59 Billy bookshelves from IKEA to fit them. 

[pontalba]

Gad Zooks!  I'm lucky I get them input, much less categorizing them! 

 

My only criteria is that I have to own the book.  It gets listed, that's it. 

 

I envy people that can be so precise, but it isn't in me. /sigh/

[emelee]

Gad Zooks!  I'm lucky I get them input, much less categorizing them! 

 

My only criteria is that I have to own the book.  It gets listed, that's it. 

 

I envy people that can be so precise, but it isn't in me. /sigh/

 

I have put up all my books on LibraryThing, and it's from there I have gotten all my statistics. They have a tab for different kind of statistics made from the library you have put up there. I love that site.  

[pontalba]

 

I have put up all my books on LibraryThing, and it's from there I have gotten all my statistics. They have a tab for different kind of statistics made from the library you have put up there. I love that site.

It's true, Library Thing has all sorts of bells and whistles.  Some of them are recent.  I've been a member for several years, so some of said B&W are newish.  I, unfortunately, don't usually bother with tags.     Also, we have 3 accounts.....

It's far too much trouble to go back and tag stuff.  I do wish I'd tagged from the beginning though.  /regret/

[frankie]

Athena, yes I believe it was me, and no, of course I don't mind! I love reading other people's statistics on books!

 

I think there are so many different interesting categories... For example, I've never thought about calculating how many books I've read are books by live authors. I think that would make an interesting addition to my own statistics...

 

And you definitely like your fantasy novels, they take up almost a third of all the books you read!

 

I'm also interested in the ratio for women/men. I always thought that for some reason I read more books by men but when I started keeping tabs I realised it was pretty much 50-50 on average.

 

Keep them statistics coming, it's all interesting!

 

Edit: Athena, did you originally  mean this to be a thread for your own statistics or did you mean it as a general thread for all to take part in as much as they liked?

[Athena]

Edit: Athena, did you originally  mean this to be a thread for your own statistics or did you mean it as a general thread for all to take part in as much as they liked?

The second one! I encourage people to post their own statistics, would love to see them.

 

EDIT And yes I do love fantasy novels, though I didn't think I liked them more than ie. contemporary fiction and science-fiction. But it's true I've read a lot of them XD.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Athena

[frankie]

According to goodreads, out of the 23 authors I've most read books by, only three are male authors. Which is pretty interesting since my ratio for books read are pretty much 50-50% the last two years since I've been doing them stats.