How many Book fans are there really?

[AdamA]

You can't directly compare book sales to show viewership. Books can be shared, but I would guess most readers have their own copy. On the other hand, Amazon and Netflix can only capture streams per account, but plenty if not most rooms being streamed to are going to be families or at least couples, not people watching alone. Number of unique viewers is going to far exceed number of unique accounts, but the published viewership can only be unique accounts.

 

Whether or not book readers end up constituting a majority or large percentage of show viewers, I definitely don't think that's what Amazon or the showrunners want. They're trying to reach a new audience. There are demographic differences, too. Television tries to favor the 18-24 demographic. I'm guessing the Wheel of Time readership skews older than that, with most having at least hit middle school before the 90s were over.

[Windigo]

11 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

 

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.

-----

 

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.

  

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.
 

While I agree with you that there is a large number of book fans that are not part of fandom today ( it was much larger 20 years ago! )  and because the books started in 1990 there are many fans that are older and not likely to be rating on good reads or other online platforms, and many others who may not have Amazon Prime. 
I agree that they need to build and attract new fans, and that the existing fan base is only the starting point.
A better number would be how many purchased AMoL  as that would show a better number of readers of the entire series.  

AMoL  debuted at #1 and was on the NYT list for 10 weeks.  

 

[jeffreycwagner]

I know I yielded earlier, but one other nugget - GoT viewers were split right at 50/50 between those who read the books and those that did not, so, does my wild guess at 50% still seem ridiculous? ? 

 

PS: thanks for making this my topic and getting it out of the show review section ?

[Sandokat]

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. 

 

 

Ha, I am one in a million!

[Calana]

Huge book fan, straight out almost a deal breaker on continuing the series, is this dragon can be a female crud. Jordan created powerful females integral to the series, just as integral as the men. There is nooooo need for this trying to hint that a dragon could be female. Rubbish 

[Deadsy]

14 hours ago, 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%.

 

 

Very highly unlikely

[Daenelia]

There is a point to story telling here.

 

As a book fan I recognised characters before they were named. But that doesn't mean I don't want those introductions. Yes, I read the books, but I don't mind hearing the story again, maybe with a different flow to it.

 

I loved Little Red Riding hood as a child. I did not stop my grandmother from telling it again by saying 'Oh, I know, the grandma gets eaten and then he eats the girl and then the hunter comes and rescues them'.

 

... also, because there are other versions of Red Ridinghood out there, where it's Red Ridinghood who kills the wolf and rescues grandma. I liked all of the versions. (Okay, I liked it that Red Ridinghood is actually a bad ass evil-wolfkiller, but I don't dislike or disregard the other versions.) ?

[Ralph]

The vast majority of people who read the whole series will have read it once only. That aren't invested in it, or emotionally connected to it. They never knew a lot of the early foreshadowing or fan theories. That just read the books. 

 

Those people will be interested in watching the show, and won't care how much it has been changed

Edited November 20, 2021 by Ralph

[Chwooly]

Delete

Edited November 23, 2021 by Chwooly

[Gothic Flame]

I reread the books a couple times during the year...and in between I may grab one particular book just to reread certain passages.

I guess that makes me a fan of the books.

I won't be watching the show.

[Raezold]

3 hours ago, Gothic Flame said:

I reread the books a couple times during the year...and in between I may grab one particular book just to reread certain passages.

I guess that makes me a fan of the books.

I won't be watching the show.

 

Wait.., what?
You read the entire series a couple times a year?

That's hardcore.

[Gothic Flame]

1 minute ago, Raezold said:

 

Wait.., what?
You read the entire series a couple times a year?

That's hardcore.

I recall my eye doctor asking me "how fast do you read?"

Me; "I can't say. I only see pictures when I read."

[DaddyFinn]

1 minute ago, Gothic Flame said:

I recall my eye doctor asking me "how fast do you read?"

Me; "I can't say. I only see pictures when I read."

Should have said: "Yes." ?

[Youss99]

On 11/19/2021 at 12:23 PM, Apoc81 said:

  Rigney wasn't just popular in the USA. 

 

Edited November 21, 2021 by Youss99

[Daenelia]

I think the audience for the show is different than for the books. The book fans may well be more critical, or more hyped about it. Those who dont know the books may never get to read it. I don't blame them, it's a lot easier to watch an episode that it is to go through the books. Not everyone is a speedy reader ?

 

... and speedy reading is not always the best way to really get to the core of a story. But anyway.

 

I'll repeat what I said when I joined the forum: I am just eager to meet the new fans and eager to discuss things with the book fans. Because this is a thing we all love, right? One aspect at least.

[Windigo]

On 11/20/2021 at 3:52 PM, Ralph said:

The vast majority of people who read the whole series will have read it once only. That aren't invested in it, or emotionally connected to it. They never knew a lot of the early foreshadowing or fan theories. That just read the books. 

 

Those people will be interested in watching the show, and won't care how much it has been changed

I don't know about that,  before we were so inundated with online media and easy access to books, or the increase in the number of fantasy book options, since it could be years in-between releases  it was common for most people I knew to re-read a series before the next book came out.  
For readers who started later once the series was complete or near the end, then it would be more likely to be a read once,  though I still have series like WoT that I re-read every year or 2. 

[Daenelia]

It's hard to remember the before-time. I went through books like ... whoosh! 3 books a week? No problemo! Add in 4 or 5 books per month for my studies? Heap it on! I eat books for breakfast!

 

Now, I can barely find the time to read 3 books a month. I may get to 12 books a year, if I am really on a roll. And that is not life getting in the way.

 

It is the blasted INTERNET. With its FORUMS. And the YOUTUBES.

 

(I'm sorry. I am coming up on a momentous big birthday and I am trying out my grumpy old woman coat.)

[Vambram]

I started reading The Eye of the World back in 1991. Since then, I would re-read the entire series at least once before the next WoT book would be published. After I read AMOL, I have read the whole series a few more times. The only other book series which I have re-read more than one time is Malazan Books of the Fallen, and Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere series. 

 

Although I have read literally over a thousand novels in the course of my life, there is no other book series which has even come close to capturing my love the way that the Wheel of Time has. 

 

For over a couple of decades, I've dreamed of seeing the Wheel of Time on television. So, even though Amazon's Wheel of Time is not exactly what I envisioned it would be, it is still a dream come true for me. I'm ecstatic beyond words that I we have season 1, and season 2 is in the works now, and also, according to rumors I've seen, Amazon has also greenlit season 3 as well. Also, Amazon announced that the Wheel of Time was their most successful original series of this year, and had one of their Top 5 most successful launches ever!! I am keeping my fingers crossed that Amazon's Wheel of Time will continue to be successful enough to give all of us WoT maniacs here 8 to 10 great seasons!!

[Apoc81]

On 11/19/2021 at 4:18 PM, AdamA said:

You can't directly compare book sales to show viewership. Books can be shared, but I would guess most readers have their own copy. On the other hand, Amazon and Netflix can only capture streams per account, but plenty if not most rooms being streamed to are going to be families or at least couples, not people watching alone. Number of unique viewers is going to far exceed number of unique accounts, but the published viewership can only be unique accounts.

 

Whether or not book readers end up constituting a majority or large percentage of show viewers, I definitely don't think that's what Amazon or the showrunners want. They're trying to reach a new audience. There are demographic differences, too. Television tries to favor the 18-24 demographic. I'm guessing the Wheel of Time readership skews older than that, with most having at least hit middle school before the 90s were over.

Actually it's 18-45. Thats the magic tv demo. But that doesn't matter because Amazon isn't selling ads on their programs.

[Jaysen Gore]

My take on this discussion:

80 million books sold divided by 15 books works out to about 5.3 million / book.  Probably higher for the first 3, and lower for the last 3, and maybe 250,000 library copies. So call it 5 million people bought the series. And if you don't own the series, I can't call you a fan. If you spent $150 on a book series you're a fan;  $500 for hardcovers and you're a serious fan. And my assumption is if you're a fan, you're going to at least check out the series if you can.  A better measure for fandom would be sales of A Memory of Light, but I can't find that.

 

Next, we come to the viewership, which isn't public information. 

- Approximately 350 million Amazon Prime subscribers, with 150 million in the US (99 stats). This is great, because the global numbers are comparable to the full US population. 

- the most watched non-sports broadcast show in 2021 in the US was NCIS at about 12 million (Nielson). If WoT was beating this, they'd be screaming it from the mountain tops.  So it's not as high as 12 million

- Screenrants claims "tens of millions of views" in the first 3 days of the series. So take 30 million divide it by 3 episodes, and you get 10 million per episode as an upper number. 

 

BUT...Let's say 10% of book fans watch the episodes twice on average, and another 60% watch it once, with the last 30% not having Prime. That's 10% x 2 x 5 million + 60% x 1 x 5 million = 1 million + 3 million = 4 million total views from book readers. 

 

The final calculation = 4 million views from book readers / 10 million total views

= 40% of the audience are existing book fans. 

 

This assumes that non-book readers aren't doing multiple viewings in material numbers, and that Prime has a higher penetration rate with WoT readers than the general public due to demographics. And while it's possible both the numerator and denominator in the above calculations can move up or down due to assumptions, I think they would mostly move in the same direction leaving the percentage of the audience roughly the same. It's definitely more than a third, and definitely less than a half, though.

 

So what does this mean? Basically, as long as the series doesn't piss off the book readers enough that they stop watching, that will give Amazon a solid foundation to grow from, with a lot of potential upside. But for now, they're way more dependent on the readers than you'd think.

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Jaysen Gore

[Bruan]

Yeah... The book readers are important for getting this show off the ground and expanding it to the general population. Unfortunately at this point, I think most book readers are suffering through the season 1 hoping things get better. There will be less love for season 2 the way things are going, maybe leading up to a low budget season 3 and a flop. 

[Jaysen Gore]

17 minutes ago, Bruan said:

Yeah... The book readers are important for getting this show off the ground and expanding it to the general population. Unfortunately at this point, I think most book readers are suffering through the season 1 hoping things get better. There will be less love for season 2 the way things are going, maybe leading up to a low budget season 3 and a flop. 

I would politely disagree.  I think the negative vocal online communities is way smaller than people think, and are the most rabid of the fan base.  A quick review of site stats and Youtube channel subscriptions make me think there are fewer than 20,000 WoT fans who care enough to participate in the online communities. And they are the ones most likely to display what I think of as "The Black Album" syndrome, where changes made by an artist enrage diehard fans who want the series to stay their own little private thing, instead of gaining mass appeal. Apostasy infuriates them, and every little nitpick or change is a reason for torches and pitchforks.

 

And for the record, the Entertainment Industrial complex is well aware of that behaviourial pattern, which is why they are justified most of the time in not caring what we think, in the grand scheme of things; we're not even big enough to be a rounding error.

 

[JenniferL]

Nearly all of the Wheel of Time fans I know in person or through JordanCon enjoy the show. But that’s not a representative sample anymore than this forum is. I think the only real way we can know if enough people watched the first season is if Amazon okays a third season. ??‍♀️

[Skipp]

All of the book-tubers that I follow that have read the series seem to be enjoying it.  Once again this is a poor sample size to consider anything but these type of content creators are making awesome content to get more and more people to try the series, both books and show. 

 

I am absolutely loving being able to witness this cycle.

[Apoc81]

On 11/20/2021 at 12:09 AM, jeffreycwagner said:

I know I yielded earlier, but one other nugget - GoT viewers were split right at 50/50 between those who read the books and those that did not, so, does my wild guess at 50% still seem ridiculous? ? 

 

PS: thanks for making this my topic and getting it out of the show review section ?

No, this is not true or even close. 50% might have read them AFTER GoT became the big thing, but yes, your 50% is still absolutely ridiculous. GoT was only popular in fantasy circles before the show started.