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Recent Statistics Related to
Book Publishing and Marketing
by John Kremer

This page features some of the more recent statistics I've run across since the other pages of this section on statistics were created. I wanted to highlight the newest ones, so I created this new page.

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Here is a very interesting excerpt from Chris Anderson's bestseller, The Long Tail:

“The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implications: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are. In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity.”

Do you get it? Even if you can't get your book distributed via bookstores, you can sell more books than many titles now sold via retail stores. You just have to find the long tail that fits your book and the audience for it.

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In a survey of 1,000 new iPhone owners, USA Today reports the following:

• 90% of iPhone owners were extremely or very satisfied with their phone.
• 30% were first-time Apple customers. 40% were first-time iPod users.
• Half of the buyers switched from another phone carrier, paying an average of $167 to break the old contract.
• iPhone owners expected to pay about $35 more in monthly service fees.

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There were 772 million people online in May 2007 (Comscore), up from 766 million in April 2007.

Google sites worldwide had 536 million unique visitors in May 2007. Visitors averaged 27.4 visits. Microsoft had 528 million visitors averaging 23 trips, while Yahoo had 469 million visitors.

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There are 2.4 billion mobile phone subscribers (GSM Association).

350 billion text messages are exchanged every month (The Yankee Group). 15% of those messages are classified as marketing or commercial communications.

Mobile marketing is expected to become a billion dollar industry this year (Mobile Marketing Association).

According to a recent survey of 15,000 mobile community users, ages 18 to 25, by AirG (a provider of mobile communities), 48% said they would accept ads on their mobile phones in exchange for free service or the chance to win a prize. Here are other results:

• 55% would accept ads in exchange for a free ringtone.
• 56% would watch five or more ads per day to get a free cell phone.
• 71% would not stop using their cell phone if they received ads.
• 30% have bought something after seeing an ad on their cell phone.
• 29% of users have clicked on a cell phone ad.
• 21% have participated in a mobile context or promotion.

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In 2006, $16.8 billion was spent on Internet advertising (Internet Advertising Bureau). That was up from $12.5 billion in Internet advertising in 2005.

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“Sales on the Internet are expected to reach $116 billion this year, or 5 percent of all retail sales.... Analysts project that by 2011, online sales will account for nearly 7 percent of overall retail sales, though categories like computer hardware and software generate more than 40 percent of their sales on the Internet.” (New York Times, June 16, 2007)

Online book sales will rise 11% this year, compared with nearly 40% in 2006 (Forrester Research).

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According to a study by Forrester Research, when it comes to brands, people say they are more influenced by their own opinions and their friends than by ads. Below are the percentage of people reporting the following brand influences:

• 72% - own experience
• 56% - friends or family
• 10% - TV commercials
• 9% - newspaper ads
• 6% - radio commercials

The Keller Fay Group found that 90% of word of mouth still happens offline. 72% of word-of-mouth takes place face to face while 18% takes place via the telephone.

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The latest statistics from Technorati's The State of the Live Web: April 2007:

• Technorati tracks 70 million blogs.
• About 120,000 new blogs are created each day, or 1.4 new blogs every second.
• 3000-7000 new splogs (spam blogs) are created every day.
• 1.5 million posts per day, or 17 posts per second, or 45 million posts per month (that works out to less than 1 post per blog each month, so obviously a lot of blogs are really inactive).
• Going from 35 million to 75 million blogs took 320 days.
• 22 of the top 100 blogs are among the top 100 sources linked to in the fourth quarter of 2006. In the previous quarter, 12 of the top 100 blogs were among the top 100 sources.
• Japanese is the #1 blogging language at 37%; English second at 33%; Chinese third at 8%; Italian fourth at 3%; Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%.
• Technorati tracks 230 million posts with tags or categories.
• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags.
• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February.

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A third of the population has reviewed something online, and any one of those reviews can be read by millions of people. — Andy Sernovitz, CEO, Word of Mouth Marketing Association

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In a survey of 4,000 adults in the United Kingdom, 55% said “they buy books for decoration, and have no intention of actually reading them.” (Teletext) This is another important reason why your books should be well-designed. They should look good on a buyer's coffee table, bookshelf, bedside stand, etc.

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When 24 hours of any activity, most people remember (Customer Service Advantage newsletter):

10% of what they read
20% of what they hear
30% of what they see
50% of what they see and hear
70% of what they say, and
90% of what they say and do

What does this mean to you as a book author, website designer, speaker, or whatever? It means that when you give a talk, workshop, or teleseminar, get people involved. Have them repeat back to you some of your points. Get them to stand up. Have them write a letter within 24 hours.

When designing a book, include summary points and activities at the end of each chapter for people to do. Encourage them to do the activities within 24 hours of reading that chapter. Encourage them also to read the chapter's summary points aloud.

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According to an article in PW Daily (12/06), 23% of readers have visited an author’s website while only 18% have visited a publisher’s website. Make sure your author has a site.

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As of January 2007, here are the numbers for the top search engines. Note that Google accounts for almost 70% of worldwide searches.

52.02% Google
10.61% Yahoo!
8.40% Google UK
5.04% MSN
4.39% Google AdSense
3.26% Google Canada
16.19% Other

In comparison, here are the numbers for January 2006:

48.09% Google
13.02% Yahoo!
9.18% MSN
7.45% Google UK
3.23% Google Canada
2.93% AOL
16.06% Other

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Using Statistics to Plan New Editorial / Following the Trends
Using Statistics to Create Marketing Plans / Internet Marketing Statistics
Sources of Statistics / Looking Ahead for 2003 and Beyond

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