How many Book fans are there really?

[WheelofJuke]

11 hours ago, Daenelia said:

 I stopped watching Merlin because I thought it was dreadful and childish ? Go figure (And yes: I stopped watching. That might be a novel approach when faced with a series one does not like. And I don't begrudge people who do like Merlin and find something useful and entertaining in it. My dislike is in no way a judgement of other people's experience. ) For me the current tv series of WoT is much better than Merlin.

 

As for other books, like HP: I bought three editions of the first book: a paperback, a paperback with the 'adult' copy (which I then lent to someone and never got back) and a HB copy later on. I now have zero copies on my shelves because I don't keep books I don't intent to re-read. So, am I a fan? No, I am not a Harry Potter fan. (I also had all the books in Dutch, because I actually think the dutch translation is a little better ... weird.)

 

I don't think it is that important how many book fans there are and if they are the audience that needs to be catered to. Love the books, hate the series: it's possible. And the other way around too: there will be fans of the series that will just hate the books. As @DojoToadsaid: book readers and tv viewers can have their own complaints about the books/series. It's independent.

 

And maybe we should keep in mind that a lot of the issues people have, with either medium, is not an absolute given. It is extremely hard to set a standard and have objective measurements of something being good or bad.

 

People tought Rembrandt was bad at lighting and colours. People thought Van Gogh was rubbish because his work was less realisme and leaning towards impressionism. Now some people think differently.

I appreciate this, but Rafe Judkins is very much NOT Rembrandt. ??

 

Just so that's clear. ?

[Scarloc99]

10 hours ago, Gothic Flame said:

No.

If it wasn't altered to fit book-fans wouldn't have turned away. Book fans are already aware of the little flourishes and braid pulls, etc that fill the books, much of which can be cut. Also book-fans are all too aware of how "experimental" Jordan's writing was in several books which I surmise can easily be condensed into a cohesive whole. (With Sanderson's help.) 

Many Book-fans would and should be rightfully angry at cutting scenes from the books to add pointless time-wasting minutiae that contribute nothing beyond speculation of a producer/director's ego.

I think you seriously underestimate how hard it is to appeal to the vocal minority, and lets be honest, the people who post here are the vocal minority of the millions of book readers. I tend to see the same profiles over and over. The fact is WOT has an 83% rating on rotten tomatoes, and 7.5 out of 10 on IMDB. Both tend to be a realistic rating system that doesn't get bought or paid for and these ratings are perfectly good ratings for a first season of a fantasy epic. 

[Scarloc99]

On 12/12/2021 at 8:00 PM, Jaysen Gore said:

I am speculating based on available numbers (I was going to footnote sources, but thought nah)  since Amazon doesn't publish their streaming numbers, nor Tor their sales. I would be curious where you're getting book specific sales for fantasy series, though, since I haven't seen any specific breakdowns for most series. But let's assume you're right, and there's an exponential drop off across the first 3 books:

 

EOTW almost 10 million (it's not on the 10 million list of individual books sold, and other series' books are if they have) List of best-selling books - Wikipedia

TGH sells 5 million

TDR sells 2.5 million

That still leaves 62.5 million sold across the remaining 12, or 5.2 million sold per book.

 

But say Wikipedia's wrong (shocking, I know), and 20 million copies of EOTW have been sold - and looking at the books that HAVE sold 20+ million, EOTW was never one of those those - with 10 million of tGH, and 5 million of TDR. accounting for 35 million of the total 80 million sales. That's still an average 3.75 million copies sold for each of the next 12.

 

If I look at the two fantasy series that were big enough to have individual books on the Wiki list above, only about 1/2 the people that bought Philosopher's Stone bought Chamber of Secrets, and only 90% of people that bought Chamber bought Prisoner. BUT... Prisoner numbers, Hallows numbers, and everything in between are the same 65 million. 0 drop off from book 3 onward. There was a 50% drop off from Hunger Games to Catching Fire, but 95% of people who read CF read Mockingjay. So once fantasy readers get past the second book, they're mostly along until the end.

 

If I use the Potter percentages, and the 80 million sales number:

12 million bought EOTW, 6 bought tGH, 4.75 million bought TDR, and finished the series. 12+6+4.75*13 = 79.75 million. Sure we lose some in the slog, but when you're dealing with averages across a dozen books, it's only a couple hundred thousand.

 

We'll never know, since Tor won't release their book by book actual sales numbers, but my assumption is that better than 90% of people who bought the Shadow Rising bought A Memory of Light.  Hence why I'm confident in saying the total number of readers for the Wheel of Time is where it is - between 4.5 and 5 million.

 

You can still say I'm wrong, but please point me to which numbers you're using to back that up.

There are people on this forum who have said they stopped at Shadow rising because it got bogged down, you can't use this logic at all, people stop reading for all sorts of reasons. 

I will also say that the 90 milllion number ignores E books and Audio books, 

[Gothic Flame]

1 hour ago, Sir_Charrid said:

. The fact is WOT has an 83% rating on rotten tomatoes, and 7.5 out of 10 on IMDB. Both tend to be a realistic rating system that doesn't get bought or paid for and these ratings are perfectly good ratings for a first season of a fantasy epic. 

By that measure "Shannara Chronicles" must be pretty good at 80% fresh.

[Scarloc99]

7 hours ago, Gothic Flame said:

By that measure "Shannara Chronicles" must be pretty good at 80% fresh.

As a fantasy series I didn't mind Shannara Chronicles, but I have never read the books and my wife, who loves WOT, loved that series as well, there was nothing in it I found horrendous. Speaking to a friend who loves the books he explained the changes they made, but also acknowledged that it made sense to get it on the TV screen (he works in TV so understands all this alot better then I, and in fact most people do). He has the same view of WOT, we had a talk about it and he said the books as they stand are un film-able, the ideas people have of just chopping and changing but keeping to the same story as the books he stated would make for an awfully disjointed jarring TV experiance for people who don't understand the world. He said you have ot make the world much much smaller and focus on very tiny parts of it in a scene when you have a limited time to tell your story on the screen, and once you change one part you end up having to change more and more, so you might as well just write a TV seri es that borrows from the source material but accept to tell a cohesive story you need to divert from the source material. 

Would I prefer it if WOT was more like See in terms of production, story pacing and the choreography of the fight scenes, yes, to me See is one of the best TV shows that has been produced ever. But it also was able to afford Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista so no idea how much Apple paid for that series. But I accepted long long ago that the WOT TV series was going to be like what we have or would be unwatchable exposition dumps and jumps from place to place with no real explanation. 

[Spiritweaver1]

22 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Yes. There is an excellent audio version of the series narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Rosamund Pike also recorded an audio version of EotW, though I have not listened and can't provide you with an opinion on it's quality.

Thank you

[DojoToad]

10 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

As a fantasy series I didn't mind Shannara Chronicles, but I have never read the books and my wife, who loves WOT, loved that series as well, there was nothing in it I found horrendous. Speaking to a friend who loves the books he explained the changes they made, but also acknowledged that it made sense to get it on the TV screen (he works in TV so understands all this alot better then I, and in fact most people do). He has the same view of WOT, we had a talk about it and he said the books as they stand are un film-able, the ideas people have of just chopping and changing but keeping to the same story as the books he stated would make for an awfully disjointed jarring TV experiance for people who don't understand the world. He said you have ot make the world much much smaller and focus on very tiny parts of it in a scene when you have a limited time to tell your story on the screen, and once you change one part you end up having to change more and more, so you might as well just write a TV seri es that borrows from the source material but accept to tell a cohesive story you need to divert from the source material. 

Would I prefer it if WOT was more like See in terms of production, story pacing and the choreography of the fight scenes, yes, to me See is one of the best TV shows that has been produced ever. But it also was able to afford Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista so no idea how much Apple paid for that series. But I accepted long long ago that the WOT TV series was going to be like what we have or would be unwatchable exposition dumps and jumps from place to place with no real explanation. 

'See' is going for 50% more at $15 million per episode.  Thanks for the heads-up, because I can't watch WoT.  Maybe Jason and David can fill that slot for me.

[Scarloc99]

13 hours ago, DojoToad said:

'See' is going for 50% more at $15 million per episode.  Thanks for the heads-up, because I can't watch WoT.  Maybe Jason and David can fill that slot for me.

Let me know what you think. is amazing then what an extra 5 million can get you ? 

[TheDreadReader]

On 12/13/2021 at 4:25 PM, WheelofJuke said:

I appreciate this, but Rafe Judkins is very much NOT Rembrandt. ??

 

Thankfully!

 

That old pile of bones hasn't done anything good for what seems like 300 years.

 

?

[SinisterDeath]

On 12/14/2021 at 3:07 AM, Sir_Charrid said:

As a fantasy series I didn't mind Shannara Chronicles, but I have never read the books and my wife, who loves WOT, loved that series as well, there was nothing in it I found horrendous.

Admittedly, I've only seen like 2 or 3 episodes of Shannara Chronicles. I believe I cut the cord around the time that show started airing. The FIL loved the show. I know I had a hard time getting past some of the actors "MTV" level of acting.

[AdamA]

It's possible that the Shannara adaptation was better than it gets credit for. I never watched it. But citing an 80% "average" is misleading. Rotten Tomatoes equally weights ever season's rating when calculating a show's overall rating. But Season One was 59% with 29 total reviews and Season Two was 100% with 5 total reviews. That doesn't sound like an 80% show to me. It sounds like a middling, mediocre show that critics didn't bother to even look at past the first season except the few who liked it. The fan rating also went up, so it probably actually got better, but I'm sure most of the people crapping on it in this thread didn't stay past the first season, so if it got better, they wouldn't know, and it didn't matter since it was canceled anyway.

[Gothic Flame]

3 hours ago, AdamA said:

It's possible that the Shannara adaptation was better than it gets credit for. I never watched it. But citing an 80% "average" is misleading. Rotten Tomatoes equally weights ever season's rating when calculating a show's overall rating. But Season One was 59% with 29 total reviews and Season Two was 100% with 5 total reviews. That doesn't sound like an 80% show to me. It sounds like a middling, mediocre show that critics didn't bother to even look at past the first season except the few who liked it. The fan rating also went up, so it probably actually got better, but I'm sure most of the people crapping on it in this thread didn't stay past the first season, so if it got better, they wouldn't know, and it didn't matter since it was canceled anyway.

Most know that the first few shows need to win the viewers over. 

[Elder_Haman]

31 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

Most know that the first few shows need to win the viewers over. 

And most concede by this point that WoT has done so with a critical mass of viewers.

[Jaysen Gore]

Another thing to remember with review sites is the audience is self-selecting. I watched about 2 1/2 episodes of Saved by the B'Elf, and bailed on it. But that certainly meant I wasn't going to be around to give a favourable review to episode 5

[Elder_Haman]

I mean:

https://tv.parrotanalytics.com/US/the-wheel-of-time-amazon-prime-video

[Kudzu]

10 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Admittedly, I've only seen like 2 or 3 episodes of Shannara Chronicles. I believe I cut the cord around the time that show started airing. The FIL loved the show. I know I had a hard time getting past some of the actors "MTV" level of acting.

 

I enjoyed the first season, but it certainly wasn't high end TV. It's been so long since I'd read the books that I wouldn't have known what was changed. Season 2 was pretty rubbish though.

[Elder_Haman]

Like SD, I found the acting unbearably bad.

[Kudzu]

I have a pretty high tolerance level for bad acting.

[TheDreadReader]

44 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

Most know that the first few shows need to win the viewers over. 

 

Generally, if you make it to the third episode you will more than likely watch the remainder of them. 

 

Netflix did a study on it a few years ago and I am sure that Amazon has done something similar to work up their release schedule. 

[JenniferL]

Okay, but we are veering wildly off topic here. Is there anything else to be said about how many readers there are and whether or not they make up a significant portion of the audience for the show? 

[dorotea]

4 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

I mean:

https://tv.parrotanalytics.com/US/the-wheel-of-time-amazon-prime-video

Yay, I now suspect that most of the $$ amazon spent on the show were spent on promoting it. The space on Times Square billboards ain't cheap. My employer's NASDAQ ticker went public yesterday so they  sent us all the livestream of NASDAQ closing with that guess what - WoT show promo was there as well. This was not cheap either.

[Scarloc99]

10 hours ago, TheDreadReader said:

 

Generally, if you make it to the third episode you will more than likely watch the remainder of them. 

 

Netflix did a study on it a few years ago and I am sure that Amazon has done something similar to work up their release schedule. 

This is why they do these limited release's dropping the first 3 episodes in one go then going to weekly, if someone invests and binges the first 3 hours they are more likely to come back week on week for the rest. 

[Scarloc99]

5 hours ago, dorotea said:

Yay, I now suspect that most of the $$ amazon spent on the show were spent on promoting it. The space on Times Square billboards ain't cheap. My employer's NASDAQ ticker went public yesterday so they  sent us all the livestream of NASDAQ closing with that guess what - WoT show promo was there as well. This was not cheap either.

Cost of making a TV series or movie rarely includes Promotion spend, it is why on paper many movies seem to have made a profit but actually made a massive loss, because while 250 million might be the defined cost of production, marketing cost 450 million world wide. 

 

It also used to be a way that Film Studios got out of paying actors, during the 90's early 2000's most actors for big budget movies would get part of the salary offered as a % of the profits made. The studio would then ensure that on paper, once marketing etc was taken into account, there was no profit. One way would be internally paying the marketing department from the movie profits. 

 

The cast of Harry Potter where stitched up like this for the first 2-3 movies, when they renegotiated they threatened to stop making the films unless they got a % of total revenue not profit. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Sir_Charrid

[Scarloc99]

22 hours ago, JenniferL said:

Okay, but we are veering wildly off topic here. Is there anything else to be said about how many readers there are and whether or not they make up a significant portion of the audience for the show? 

Honestly unless the publishers give full breakdowns of the numbers of each brook sold including digital/audio versions (which they won’t) and Amazon give a breakdown of viewers by total number as well as demographic, or even how many buy book 1 out of watching the series, which they won’t. Then any discussion about this is 100% guess work. Yes some may be more “scientific” guesses but you would have as much accuracy really as if you randomly generated a number. So probably not much more to discuss.