How many Book fans are there really?

[jeffreycwagner]

Just now, Apoc81 said:

How is it longer than it should be? Perhaps to newer readers it was obvious, but at this point in the book, back in 1992, we certainly did not yet know Rand was the dragon. I don't get why you're against them playing it out that way for new viewers. It's not just us watching. We're probably 5% of the total audience.

The hope is we are 5% of the total audience, but I would guess right now we are well over 50%, and the balance have been dragged into this by the 50%.

[Apoc81]

Just now, jeffreycwagner said:

The hope is we are 5% of the total audience, but I would guess right now we are well over 50%, and the balance have been dragged into this by the 50%.

I mean, I definitely disagree. We are a tiny percentage, the rest will find it the same way they find other streaming shows. 

It's well shot. There are a very few small problems, but anyone hoping it follow every beat and storyline in the book are being ridiculous, and non book readers will not have the same complaints as obsessive fans.

[AusLeviathan]

16 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

How is it longer than it should be? Perhaps to newer readers it was obvious, but at this point in the book, back in 1992, we certainly did not yet know Rand was the dragon. I don't get why you're against them playing it out that way for new viewers. It's not just us watching. We're probably 5% of the total audience.

We knew from chapter one after the prologue when the Dragon killing himself transitions to Rand and we then spend 80% of the book following him. At no point did RJ try to hide that Rand was the Dragon Reborn. This idea that we actually have a mystery of 5 people (or 4 the show can't really decide) who it could be is completely new to the show and implementing it has required quite a lot of changes. Perhaps most notably, several early scenes like Tam's fever dream about the Aiel and Rand meeting Min have been moved to later whilst Egwene as well as the rest of the EF5 have had new scenes created for the early episodes.

 

Also Prime Video viewership isn't anywhere near as big as Netflix. It wouldn't surprise me if book fans are currently making up 50% of viewers.

Edited November 19, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[jeffreycwagner]

15 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

I mean, I definitely disagree. We are a tiny percentage, the rest will find it the same way they find other streaming shows. 

It's well shot. There are a very few small problems, but anyone hoping it follow every beat and storyline in the book are being ridiculous, and non book readers will not have the same complaints as obsessive fans.

You could be right.  But, GoT was at its height, getting about 14 million viewers, WoT has about 6 million readers, I presume most will watch, meaning if book readers are only 5%, the series will be pushing something over 100 million viewers - so I am going to stick with readers making up closer to 50% then 5% ?

Edited November 19, 2021 by jeffreycwagner

[Apoc81]

1 minute ago, AusLeviathan said:

We knew from chapter one after the prologue when the Dragon killing himself transitions to Rand and we then spend 80% of the book following him. At no point did RJ try to hide that Rand was the Dragon Reborn. This idea that we actually have a mystery of 5 people (or 4 the show can't really decide) who it could be is completely new to the show and implementing it has required quite a lot of changes. Perhaps most notably, several early scenes like Tam's fever dream about the Aiel and Rand meeting Min have been moved to later and Egwene as well as the rest of the EF5 have had scenes created for early episodes.

 

Also Prime Video viewership isn't anywhere near as big as Netflix. It wouldn't surprise me if book fans are currently making up 50% of viewers.

Prime video viewership is Massive. The Boys and Expanse both proved that. And most people already have it free with Amazon Prime.

 

I don't know what it will take to make some of you understand that this show is made for someone new to the series. They are not, and never were going to cater to book readers, it is rightfully designed to be watchable by anyone. You are a tiny piece of viewership, they know book readers will watch, its new fans they want. They did not make this show to please book readers.

[Apoc81]

1 minute ago, jeffreycwagner said:

You could be right.  But, GoT was at its height, getting about 14 million viewers, WoT has about 6 million readers, I presume most will watch, meaning if book readers are only 5%, the series it will be pushing something over 100 million viewers - so I am going to stick with readers making up closer to 50% then 5% ?

No, your math doesn't work. Of those six million, at least half don't care, and maybe a tenth are real fans.

I don't know why it's so hard to understand that you are not the target. We are a tiny minority. No, 6 million readers are not rushing to watch this. How many of those 6m even finished the series.

 

Plain and simple, shows like this are made to draw in the casual viewer, not the hardcore fan. And the casual viewer will not have your complaints.

[jeffreycwagner]

7 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

Prime video viewership is Massive. The Boys and Expanse both proved that. And most people already have it free with Amazon Prime.

 

I don't know what it will take to make some of you understand that this show is made for someone new to the series. They are not, and never were going to cater to book readers, it is rightfully designed to be watchable by anyone. You are a tiny piece of viewership, they know book readers will watch, its new fans they want. They did not make this show to please book readers.

The Boys had average viewers of 8 million per episode.  Still think it is hard to believe WoT readers will be closer to 5% than 50% . . .

[SinisterDeath]

15 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

Also Prime Video viewership isn't anywhere near as big as Netflix. It wouldn't surprise me if book fans are currently making up 50% of viewers.

Book fans that actually know about the tv show make up 1% of all book fans.

[jeffreycwagner]

5 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

No, your math doesn't work. Of those six million, at least half don't care, and maybe a tenth are real fans.

I don't know why it's so hard to understand that you are not the target. We are a tiny minority. No, 6 million readers are not rushing to watch this. How many of those 6m even finished the series.

 

Plain and simple, shows like this are made to draw in the casual viewer, not the hardcore fan. And the casual viewer will not have your complaints.

As I stated you could be right, but the books sold a total of 90 million, so that is about 6 million per book, so I would guess close to 6 million read all 14 books .  And I stated closer to 50% than 5% and especially right now.  But, yeah you are most likely right.

[Apoc81]

1 minute ago, jeffreycwagner said:

The Boys had average viewers of 8 million per episode.  Still think it is hard to believe WoT readers will be closer to 5% than 50% . . .

You realize 8m is absolutely huge for a series, right? TV shows survive with less than 1m in key demographics. And its between 5-10%, which is standard amongst shows based off book series. More will read the books because of the show, but if it does well, it won't be because of prior fans. Again, we are never the target, we can't sustain a show with that budget.

[AusLeviathan]

8 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Book fans that actually know about the tv show make up 1% of all book fans.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, what exactly do you think drove interest in the show?

 

18 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

Prime video viewership is Massive. The Boys and Expanse both proved that. And most people already have it free with Amazon Prime.

With the exception of The Boys there hasn't really been anything on Prime Video that could come close to challenging Netflix and indeed The Boys season 1 being watched by 8 million people in the US was considered a massive win for them.

Edited November 19, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[Apoc81]

1 minute ago, jeffreycwagner said:

As I stated you could be right, but the books sold a total of 90 million, so that is about 6 million per book, so I would guess close to 6 million read all 14 books .  And I stated closer to 50% than 5% and especially right now.  But, yeah you are most likely right.

90 million in dozens of languages, and it doesn't work out 6 million people buying 14 books. Millions of those bought one or two, or quit in the middle. They did not sell 6 million sets of 14 books. 

90m worldwide, not in the English speaking west.

90m over 30 years.

Some bought more than one set of books (like me) through the years.

 

Your math just doesn't work out.

[Apoc81]

3 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, what exactly do you think drove interest in the show?

 

With the exception of The Boys there hasn't really been anything on Prime Video that could come close to challenging Netflix and indeed The Boys season 1 being watched by 8 million people in the US was considered a massive win for them.

 

Remember that whilst Prime Video has a high subscriber count this is largely driven by it being tied to Amazon Prime. A lot of people have a Prime Video subscription and barely use it and in many cases don't even realize they have it in the first place.

8m is a massive win on any platform anywhere. 

Again, Expanse is also huge. 

Everyone I know has prime.

[jeffreycwagner]

13 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Book fans that actually know about the tv show make up 1% of all book fans.

So the contention is book fans will not even know the show exists and yet it is going to get millions of viewers that are not book fans?

 

I withdraw my humble suggestions that a lot of book fans are watching the show.  I bow to the superior knowledge and math of  SinisterDeath  & Apoc81  

 

Let's all get back to our thoughts, complaints, compliments of Leavetaking!!

[Verbal32]

48.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot

 

?

[SinisterDeath]

22 minutes ago, jeffreycwagner said:

As I stated you could be right, but the books sold a total of 90 million,

90 Million split disproportionally between 15 books. Many of which we bought in triplicate. 
It's entirely possible 50% of that 90 Million only read book 1.

[Apoc81]

1 minute ago, SinisterDeath said:

90 Million split between 15 books. Many of which we bought in triplicate.

And across at least a dozen languages.

[AusLeviathan]

17 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

8m is a massive win on any platform anywhere.

The argument though was whether the viewership was comprised of a significant amount of book fans.

 

So lets think about it. 90 million sales, front heavy as most long series are, at least 10 million EOTW in the US. In terms of every book we'd be going lower but even so it's at least 2-3 million books bought in the US.

 

That doesn't tell the whole story however, book sharing between friends and family is pretty normal and many people don't buy books instead opting for a cheaper alternative like a library. Plus books have been the easiest media to pirate for decades with unofficial reproductions of popular books predating the internet. Once the internet became big piracy of books really took off to the point that it's probably not even worth using the sales figures as a real judgement of the amount of people who've read a book.

 

So even conservatively we're looking at having at least 4 million people in the US who have read all the books, 10+ million if just counting at least only the first book. Prime Video's biggest first season so far was basically at 8 million viewers.

 

Those numbers tell a pretty clear story to me. Combine that with reviews that aren't as good as the early The Boys reviews and yeah it wouldn't surprise me if the non book fans who this show has been targeted at in fact make up quite a bit under 50% of viewers.

Edited November 19, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[SinisterDeath]

20 minutes ago, Verbal32 said:

48.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot

 

?

We caught a Verb in the wild!
Quick, don't let 'em escape!

 

33 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, what exactly do you think drove interest in the show?

It means exactly what It said.
Not all book fans are part of online communities/fandom.

If you were to total up every active member on DM, Twitter of Time, Facebook Wheel of Time/DM you'd be lucky to get 200k.

 

 

21 minutes ago, jeffreycwagner said:

So the contention is book fans will not even know the show exists and yet it is going to get millions of viewers that are not book fans?

It'll take time for the most of the book fans to even know about the show. I know 3 IRL that had no idea the show was even coming out this month. They don't participate in online fandom.

We aren't going to make or break the show's ratings.

We are the shows cheerleaders. It's free advertisers.

If the show is to thrive, it needs to hook millions of non-book fans.

 

  

12 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

So even conservatively we're looking at having at least 4 million people in the US who have read all the books, 10+ million if just counting at least only the first book. Prime Video's biggest first season so far was basically at 8 million viewers.

  

9 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

There is nothing conservative about pretending 4m Americans read all 15 books of WoT, lol.

Those 90m sales are worldwide, America is not the whole world.

Facebook DM = 20k likes
The Wheel of Time page has 84k likes.
Good Reads has 439K ratings for the Eye of the world.
Good Reads has 120k ratings for A Memory of Light.

That means 1 in 3.65 read EoTW and finished AMOL.

All of those numbers combined, don't even come close to 90M. ? 

TLDR: "If" there's 90 Million sold, a fraction of them are fans, and even among fandom not all of them are even aware of the show's existence. So while one can hope the show gets 50% of fans watching it, it's far more likely to get under ~10%.... and book fans are probably more apt to dislike it.

[Apoc81]

3 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

The argument though was whether the viewership was comprised of a significant amount of book fans.

 

So lets think about it. 90 million sales, front heavy as most long series are, at least 10 million EOTW in the US. In terms of every book we'd be going lower but even so it's at least 2-3 million books bought in the US.

 

That doesn't tell the whole story however, book sharing between friends and family is pretty normal and many people don't buy books instead opting for a cheaper alternative like a library. Plus books have been the easiest media to pirate for decades with unofficial reproductions of popular books predating the internet. Once the internet became big piracy of books really took off to the point that it's probably not even worth using the sales figures as a real judgement of the amount of people who've read a book.

 

So even conservatively we're looking at having at least 4 million people in the US who have read all the books, 10+ million if just counting at least only the first book. Prime Video's biggest first season so far was basically at 8 million viewers.

 

Those numbers tell a pretty clear story to me. Combine that reviews aren't as good as the early The Boys reviews and yeah it wouldn't surprise me if the non book fans who this show has been targeted at in fact make up quite a bit under 50% of viewers.

There is nothing conservative about pretending 4m Americans read all 15 books of WoT, lol.

Those 90m sales are worldwide, America is not the whole world. Your numbers are ridiculously high, to point of absurd.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Apoc81

[AusLeviathan]

14 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

There is nothing conservative about pretending 4m Americans read all 15 books of WoT, lol.

Those 90m sales are worldwide, America is not the whole world. Your numbers are ridiculously high, to point of absurd.

I mean I've offered my explanation of how I came to my number, you're welcome to explain how you think a US written series that was published by a US publisher somehow hit 90 million sales worldwide but ended up with less than 4 million reading (not buying, reading) the entire series in the US.

 

Do you think the series was popular overseas compared to the US or do you think that people just bought multiple copies of the books and hoarded them for themselves whilst the entire too cheap to buy crowd apparently never bother to read the books either?

 

You're really underselling the books in an attempt to justify this series being written to include drawn out mysteries and surprises that won't really surprise the fan base and I'm not sure why.

Edited November 19, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[Apoc81]

6 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I mean I've offered my explanation of how I came to my number, you're welcome to explain how you think a US written series that was published by a US publisher somehow hit 90 million worldwide but ended up with less what 4 million reading (not buying, reading) the entire series in the US.

 

Do you think the series was popular overseas compared to the US or do you think that people just bought multiple copies of the books and hoarded them for themselves whilst the entire too cheap to buy crowd apparently never bother to read the books either?

 

You're really underselling the books in an attempt to justify this series being written to include drawn out mysteries and surprises that won't really surprise the fan base and I'm not sure why.

Im not underselling anything, im stating facts. This book was published in everything from Russian to Japanese. It was sold in over a hundred countries. You gave numbers based on nothing but 90m sold, positing that everyone who read EotW read the whole series. Your math is wrong. 4m Americans have not read all 14(15) books, and its not close.

 

Hell, Ive bought 3 sets myself, and copies of EotW for at least a dozen friends since 1992. The majority never read the second book, because thats how this goes.

Edited November 19, 2021 by Apoc81

[AusLeviathan]

29 minutes ago, Apoc81 said:

Im not underselling anything, im stating facts. This book was published in everything from Russian to Japanese. It was sold in over a hundred countries.

Of which you have no numbers and indeed books are one form of media where most countries do favor their own writers (because unlike making films and shows it's cheap enough to publish books for poorer countries to encourage their own people to do it).

 

Plus like I said, sales figures mean nothing because a significant amount of the population doesn't buy books and hasn't for a long time. Do you realize how easy it is to pirate books, it would actually be more of a hassle buying the ebook from Amazon.

 

Out of curiosity how many people do you think read the series all the way through in the US? I said 4 million based on a conservative at least 2 million per book sold and you said no. So I'm wondering how low do you think it could possibly go?

Edited November 19, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, AusLeviathan said:

We knew from chapter one after the prologue when the Dragon killing himself transitions to Rand and we then spend 80% of the book following him. At no point did RJ try to hide that Rand was the Dragon Reborn.

actually, when i read it first, i didn't knew rand was the dragon until close to the end. as in, i didn't understood anything about the prologue (the dragon? the dark one? ishamael? ilyena? who are those dorks?) and i had no idea someone would be the dragon. i did realize the lighting bolt that killed the darkfriends in four kings was channeling, but i was still uncertain if the channeler was rand or mat.

 

nowadays, it seems incredible. i have pretty good plot spotting abilities. at the time, i was much less genre savy

[Apoc81]

51 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

Of which you have no numbers and indeed books are one form of media where most countries do favor their own writers (because unlike making films and shows it's cheap enough to publish books for poorer countries to encourage their own people to do it).

 

Plus like I said, sales figures mean nothing because a significant amount of the population doesn't buy books and hasn't for a long time. Do you realize how easy it is to pirate books, it would actually be more of a hassle buying the ebook from Amazon.

 

Out of curiosity how many people do you think read the series all the way through in the US? I said 4 million based on a conservative at least 2 million per book sold and you said no. So I'm wondering how low do you think it could possibly go?

Nobody is pirating wheel of time. Not in significant numbers. 

4 million is not conservative.Its a huge overstatement. 

 

 

How many Americans read all 15 books? Probably less than a million. 

Id say 5-6 million read some books, but never finished. Book sales are ALWAYS extremely front heavy for the early books. 

 

Also, you're wrong about other countries. Japan, Russia, and Poland all loved the series, and those are the ones I know for sure.  Rigney wasn't just popular in the USA.