2017 Reading Stats

Posted January 5, 2018 by Lola in Lola's Ramblings / 28 Comments

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For the duration of 2017 I kept a spreadsheet with all the books I read and recorded multiple different statistics for those books. In today’s posts I wanted to share some of those statistics with you. Most of these didn’t really surprise me, but there are a few times when the graphs did give me more insight in my reading habits, which I think it pretty neat.

General Stats

  • Total: 116
  • New to me authors: 31
  • New release challenge: 77
  • New Series started: 36
  • Series finished: 6
  • Standalone Books Read: 9
  • Authors by whom I read 5 or more books this year: Joanne Rock (7), Siobhan Davis (6), Kelly St Clare (6), HY Hanna (6), Jordan Ford (5), Erin Hayes (5) and Athena Grayson (5)
  • Point of view: 52 books with 3th point of view, 60 books with 1 st person point of view and 2 anthologies and 2 books that combined 1st and 3rd person point of views.

How many books did I read

  • Total: 116
  • January: 13
  • February: 9
  • March: 11
  • April: 8
  • May: 9
  • June: 8
  • July: 12
  • August: 12
  • September: 7
  • October: 7
  • November: 9
  • December: 11

I seem to read pretty much around the same amount of books each month, no big fluctuations, although you do see some months I read decidedly more and two months with only 7 books read. I am pretty sure I read a large anthology book in September, which accounts for part of that.

What was my favorite read each month?

  • January: Love, Lies and Hocus Pocus Revelations by Lydia Sherrer
  • February: The Daydreamer Detective Opens A Tea Shop by SJ Pajonas
  • March: Losing Kyler by Siobhan Davis
  • April: Scandal by Athena Grayson
  • May: Witch Summer Night’s Cream by HY Hanna
  • June: Fantasy of Flight by Kelly ST Clare and Crash Land on Kurai by SJ Pajonas
  • July: Loving Kalvin by Siobhan Davis
  • August: Dances Under the Harvest Moon by Joanne Rock
  • September: The Release by Athena Grayson
  • October: Fantasy of Freedom by Kelly St Clare
  • November: Chaos in Kadoma Ward by SJ Pajonas
  • December: Leo Loves Aries by Anyta Sunday

I did a stat recap post almost each month in my Sunday post and thought it was fun to list here which book I listed as my favorite for each month. If you want to know what my favorite books of 2017 were, you can read that post.

Which genres did I read?

Genre Chart 2017
This one had so many variables that I want with a different type of graph instead. I did cut off part of the genres, that largest contemporary slice should be contemporary romance. I have to admit I am surprised that’s my most read genre, although that’s partly because of how specific I was with most genres, I am changing that next year. And that I read a bunch of shorter contemporary romances that take shorter to get through. I also noticed that I have a tendency to request a lot of contemporary romance books and don’t get around to reading them all, so that’s a genre I have to be careful with next year. As I do seem to read a lot of contemporary romance book and still mostly have contemporary romances and cozies review copies from last year unread. It fits what I thought to see Cozy Mysteries, Urban fantasy, Science fiction and paranormal romance as some of my most read genres

How did I rate my books?

Rating Chart
It’s nice to see these stats in a graph, although it did fit what I think it would show. Most of my reads I give 4 stars, after that the 3 star is most common and only a few 5 star and DNF’s. It’s nice I didn’t have a 2 star read this year and only 3 DNFR’s and 6 books I gave a 5 star is high for me.

Which age categories I did read?

Age category chart
I noticed that in my reading tastes I am shifting more and more toward adult books, so the graph reflects this nicely. But still almost 25% of all my books is Young Adult. I think I only read one Middle Grade (The Summer of Bad Ideas) and one kids/ picture book (Crazy Crab) this year, those are those tiny slices. And not too many New Adult books either.

Where did the story take place?

Country chart
I think this is one of my favorite charts. Look at all those different locations I read about. I have to admit I am surprised the US slice isn’t bigger, but even now almost half of the books I read that place in the US. I still feel like a lot of the books I read take place there, so that fits. Nice to see I got so many books read in the UK (I can thank HY Hanna’s cozy series for almost half of that amount), Space, other planets and Fantasy worlds. The slices are so small it didn’t even list all of the countries.

Point of view

Point of View chart
I actually changed how I measured this halfway through the year, Female means only pov of a female, male is only male pov, dual pov is usually in the case of a romance book both male and female pov and then multiple point of view are all the books with more than that. I seem to read a lot more books with female main character, a bunch of dual pov ones thanks to all the romances I read and only very few male point of views and multiple point of views.

Romance

Romance Chart
I was tracking the romance tropes, but that didn’t work out, so at the end of the year I switched to this method. Counting whether the romance was the main focus, side plot, hint only or no romance. This one doesn’t surprise me too much, most of the books I read have a romance, although I still mostly read books with romance as a side plot and after that a bunch of books with romance as the main focus. The stat from this graph that most surprises me is the 9 books with no romance.

Source of the book

Source Chart
Seems like I’ve been doing better with balancing review books and non-review books than I thought. The review copies only end up accounting for 57,8% of all the books. I wouldn’t mind getting that down a few percentages, but I didn’t realize I did so well with this, probably because some months I don’t and other months I do better. I actually got to 34 books that I bought this year and 13 books I got for free, that latter one does surprise me. You know how sometimes online you hear authors wonder whether readers those free books, well it turns out I do read some of those freebies, although I get way more than I actually read. I think that’s only 1 beta read and one won book read this year. i scaled back from beta reading so that makes sense and I mostly won gift cards this year not books.

Release year


I was excited to see how this graph turned out, not too many surprises there either. Although I am surprised I only read 2 books of 2018, I didn’t get started early with the 2018 books this year. But that’s mostly because most indie authors don’t give out ARC’s that early in advance. So 71,6% of all my books were published in 2017 and then a few older reads with 2016 books taking up the biggest slice after 2017. I mostly stick to recently published books.

Book format and on which device I read

Bookformat chart
Up until this year I read way more physical format and I notice here as well that I am shifting more and more toward e-copies. I read only 3 paperback copies (Missing, Starflight and Dances Under the Harvest Moon) and that tiny orange slice is the one hardcopy book (Rituals) I read this year. Kelley Armstrong’s books are some of the few I still get in physical format, some books with pretty covers, cozy mysteries or when the physical copy is a lot cheaper. That trend you can clearly see here.

ipad chart
This is a chart that also took me by surprise a bit. I always read a book on both my ipad and one in the evenings before I go to bed. I feel like I go so slowly to my evenings books at time, but it’s nice that at the end of the year that still adds up to almost 25% of the books I read. Those small slices are for a picture book i read on my computer and one book I read both as evening book and on my ipad so I could finish it in time for release date.

Publishers and self published books

Publisher chart
I have to admit this chart just makes me happy. Look at all those self published books I read this year. I knew I read a lot of self published books, but isn’t it nice to see it a graph like this. This graph shows the amount of books I read by each publisher. So that’s 87 self published books I read this year. Not to see surprised to see HaprCollins and Kensington as the two publishers I read most of. I frequently request cozy mysteries from Kensington on Netgalley and a lot of those HarperCollins book are harlequin romances from two of my favorite contemporary romance authors Joanne and Karen Rock. Most of the other publishers only have 1 or 2 books I read by them.

Full length and novella’s

Book Length chart
No big surprises here. I know I mostly read full length novels, although I am a bit surprised I still read 18 novella’s/ short stories as well.

How many books did you read in 2017? Did you keep track of any statistics? Which of my statistics surprises you the most?

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28 responses to “2017 Reading Stats

  1. Yep! I love that you do this. Your charts and stats fascinate me and make me wish I tracked some of this better. I do know where I got the book from, when I read it, genre, publisher, rating, and most of the time what form the book took if I go on GoodReads. I didn’t track indie vs. publisher, but I am this year.

    I’m startled that you read contemporary the most and that you had so many indies just a little. Most of your charts show a good balance over all. And way to go getting to some of your freebies. I need to do better at those now that I’m getting my review stacks under control.

    But yes, this was great. Thanks for sharing, Lola!
    Sophia Rose recently posted…Review: Promise Not to Tell by Jayne Ann KrentzMy Profile

    • I am glad to hear you enjoyed reading this post! I have to admit I was a bit afraid people wouldn’t care for the stats, even tough I personally like them.

      I saw Kristen at Metaphors and Moonlight do a stat post like this last year and decide to start tracking what I read with a spreadsheet in 2017. I am keeping a spreadsheet again in 2018 to track some of these things again and I added a few new things as well.

      It does help that some of the contemporary romances I read were a bit shorter and fantasy and sci-fi books are distributed over multiple genre categories, which is why I am tracking that differently as well next year. But yeah I was surprised that came out as my most read genre. And I am kinda happy to see I actually read so many indies :).

  2. I’m actually very impressed that you detailed out your reading records and it was obvious how much effort and passion you put together in this particular post! I’d admit that I do also tend to gravitate towards NA/Adult Contemporary Romance (mostly because I have always been a fan of the romance genre) and I no longer enjoy YA romance as much as I did when I was younger, sad to admit but true. I loved the charts too!!! This is the best post I’ve read today! πŸ˜€

    • Thanks! That makes me happy to hear you enjoyed this post :).

      It did take a lot more time than I had anticipated to write and make the graphs, but it was very fun to make the graphs and see the stats of what I read this year.

      I still enjoy YA books, although I try not to read many of them in a row, but I do notice that in general I am reading more adult books.

    • Thanks! I actually found it easier to keep track of everything than I thought. When I sit down to write my review, I make sure to fill in the book data in a spreadsheet and if you do one book at a time it doens’t take that much time either. And it is great to be able to reflect on my reading like this at the end of the year.

    • Oh that’s neat you also posted your reading graphs, I’ll check those out next. I hope you can find some more self published and small presses books to read next year!

  3. This makes fascinating reading, Lola:)). The graph makes it very easy to follow your stats – I’ll be posting my own reading stats in graph form next week, but I’m intrigued to see some of the fields that you keep track of. It hasn’t occurred to me to track the pov of my books and I tend to lump all the sub-genres of fantasy and science fiction into the parent genre – well done you for teasing them all out! Many thanks for sharing this – I really enjoyed reading it.

    • Thanks! I am glad to hear you think the graphs are easy to follow. I’ll keep ane eye out for your stats graph post. When I see others do stats posts I always notice things I don’t track or differently. It sure is interesting. I am going to try and track main and sub genres next year as now I find it hard to get a good overview of how much in each genre I read, but selecting main genres is hard too, lol.

  4. Haha I love how you started 36 new series but finished 6 because I feel like that reflects all of us and is exactly why we are all in the middle of like a hundred different series.

    You read a great balance of 1st and 3rd persson POV. And your rating chart looks really similar to mine, I think, if you round up my half stars (which is what I do on GR and Am). We both tend to give mostly 4 stars, some 3 stars, and the rest are significantly smaller. I think our age charts are similar too, mostly adult.

    Your settings chart does look cool! That’s awesome you found so many books outside the US. That’s also interesting that you tracked whether the romance was the focus or a side plot or just a hint. I never thought to do that. I did change my stats last year though to track whether it was romance, an already established relationship, just sex, or no romance at all. And look at us, both of us read more books than usual without romance! We’re branching out lol.

    I only read one book from 2018. Like you said, self-pub don’t usually give books super early, and also, when I do get a book months in advance, I don’t push myself to read it right away if I’m not in the mood.

    If I had made a chart for format, it would’ve looked like yours. Pretty sure the only physical copies I read this year were when I had no power and couldn’t charge my electronics lol.

    Yay for self-pub! I didn’t bother tracking indie pubs, I just lumped those all together as “other” and lumped all the Big 5 and their imprints together, as best as I could figure out. But I love that we both read so much self-pub πŸ™‚

    Awesome stats!
    Kristen @ Metaphors and Moonlight recently posted…Book Review: The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles Book 3) by Anne RiceMy Profile

    • Exactly! It does reflect how many new series I start and how few I end each year.

      I do think our rating and age categories graphs are pretty similar indeed.

      I didn’t realize I still read so many books that take place outside of the US, I tought it was a nice chart to see. I was trackign romance tropes at first, but that didn’t quite work out, I tought tracking whether the romance ws main focus or not was better to trakc instead. Next year I am also trakcign whetehr it’s a FM romance, MM or RH etc. I am surprised I had so many books without romance, lol.

      Same here, most self publishers don’t give out the ARC too early, so I only read 2 books from 2018 in 2017. And even the few I got early I didn’t read right away.

      The format chart was a bit boring with almost all the books being e-format.

      I did try to only name the main publishing company, like with harpercollins, I didn’t want to split that up into different imprints. And a few small pub ones might’ve landed in the self-publishing category. We do both seem to read a lot of self published books, which is great :).

    • It took me some time to figure out what to track or not and I think I even tracked some things I didn’t list here. It is great to have al those stats when you look back at the year.

  5. I did a similar post a couple of days ago too! I just love numbers! It’s so cool seeing all these different categories with number and graphs! I love it! Lol. However, I didn’t read nearly as much πŸ™ I only read 55 books, but I am really hoping to surpass that his year!
    Liliana recently posted…Bookish Stats of 2017!My Profile

    • That’s fun you did a similar post, I’ll have to check it out :). It’s so fun seeing all those graphs and stats. 55 books is a great number!

    • Thanks! I really liked making all these charts :). I wans’t surprised by many of these either, although I didn’t realize I read so many contemporary books this year.

  6. Wow, this is quite impressive! I do wish I kept statistics of what I read, because I LOVE these graphs- especially the format, the source, etc- those are something I would really enjoy seeing from year to year. But alas, I am just lucky that I mark them down in ANY capacity, so I guess I’ll have to just live with not knowing. I think your ebook level surprised me the most! That is quite a bit, I found that interesting. I read 152 books I think? But I have NO idea what the breakdown is, and that does bum me out- I at least wish I knew star ratings, source, something! Ugh. Maybe that can be a goal for this year- but probably not, I’ll just admire yours πŸ˜€
    Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight recently posted…Why Did I Not Read These 2017 Books?My Profile

    • Thanks! I started keeping track of all the books I read last year (after I saw another blogger do a stats post) and it turned out to be easier than I expected actually. I just write down the stats of each book once I finish and then it doesn’t seem like as much time or effort to keep track that way. It is very interesting to be able to look down at my reading year like this :).

      That’s great you read so many books!

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