Analysis: Amazon's 100 top-selling Kindle books of 2011

Analysis: Amazon’s 100 top-selling Kindle books of 2011

This year, Amazon has given us a list of the

100 Top-Selling Kindle Books of 2011

I thought I’d do some analysis on it…I’m curious as to how certain characteristics might affect sales ranking. I can test that within this group.

First, the data I collected:

E-books	Price	Agency	Genre	TTS	Lending	Reviews	Rating	KS	Prime
1	0.99	No	Fiction	Yes	Yes	655	4
2	2.99	No	Mystery	Yes	Yes	501	4
3	11.99	Yes	Biographies	No	No	964	4
4	12.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	328	4
5	14.99	Yes	Thriller	No	No	234	3
6	14.99	Yes	Nonfiction	No	No	726	4
7	12.99	Yes	History	Yes	No	536	4
8	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	254	4
9	8.99	Yes	Mystery	Yes	No	480	3
10	2.99	No	Mystery	Yes	Yes	265	4
11	13.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	258	4
12	9.99	Yes	Thriller	No	No	467	3
13	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	368	3
14	Unk	No	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk
15	9.99	Yes	Thriller	No	No	139	3
16	1.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	125	3	Y
17	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	793	3
18	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	227	3
19	0.79	No	Science Fiction	Yes	No	322	4
20	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	154	4
21	0.99	No	Thriller	Yes	Yes	42	4
22	14.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	116	3
23	13.99	Yes	Mystery	No	No	187	4
24	0.99	No	Action	Yes	Yes	54	4
25	0.99	No	Thriller	Yes	Yes	81	4
26	2.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	221	3	Y
27	0.99	No	Mystery	Yes	Yes	187	3		Y
28	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	92	3
29	12.99	Yes	Mystery	Yes	No	219	2
30	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	508	4
31	9.99	No	Children’s	No	Yes	308	4
32	14.99	Yes	Science Fiction	No	No	570	4
33	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	111	3
34	0.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	46	2	Y
35	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	179	4
36	14.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	1139	3
37	13.99	Yes	Children’s	Yes	No	689	3
38	3.99	No	Romance	Yes	No	14	3
39	12.99	Yes	History	Yes	No	2544	3
40	9.99	Yes	Romance	Yes	No	144	3
41	12.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	121	3
42	12.99	Yes	Mystery	No	No	79	3
43	2.99	No	Mystery	Yes	Yes	99	4
44	13.99	Yes	Mystery	No	No	102	3
45	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	82	4
46	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	85	4
47	2.99	No	Romance	Yes	Yes	71	4
48	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	175	3
49	9.29	No	Children’s	No	Yes	145	4
50	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	130	4
51	7.99	Yes	Romance	Yes	No	154	4
52	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	87	4
53	12.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	209	4
54	12.99	Yes	Action	Yes	No	178	3
55	14.99	Yes	Mystery	Yes	No	177	4
56	12.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	78	3
57	12.99	Yes	Mystery	Yes	No	106	4
58	8.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	1056	2
59	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	135	4
60	0.99	No	Romance	Yes	Yes	59	4
61	8.37	No	Romance	Yes	No	69	4
62	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	58	3
63	0.99	No	Western	Yes	Yes	58	4
64	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	162	3
65	0.99	No	Action	Yes	Yes	65	4
66	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk
67	11.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	204	3
68	12.99	Yes	Nonfiction	Yes	No	208	4
69	4.79	No	Romance	Yes	No	53	4
70	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	170	3
71	12.99	Yes	Fantasy	Yes	No	547	4
72	2.99	No	Nonfiction	Yes	Yes	36	3		Y
73	0.99	No	Romance	Yes	Yes	54	4
74	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk	Unk
75	12.99	Yes	Nonfiction	Yes	No	245	4
76	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	242	2
77	4.97	No	Thriller	Yes	Yes	46	3
78	2.99	No	Fiction	Yes	No	27	4	Y
79	5.21	No	Romance	Yes	No	42	4
80	3.99	No	Children’s	Yes	Yes	252	4
81	14.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	90	3
82	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	160	3
83	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	114	4
84	2.99	No	Thriller	Yes	Yes	87	3
85	9.34	No	Nonfiction	No	No	150	4
86	3.99	No	Romance	Yes	Yes	77	4
87	13.99	Yes	Romance	Yes	No	47	4
88	2.99	No	Romance	Yes	Yes	95	4
89	7.99	No	Horror	Yes	No	526	4
90	11.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	157	4
91	7.99	Yes	Mystery	Yes	No	102	3
92	13.99	Yes	Romance	Yes	No	51	3
93	0.99	No	Romance	Yes	Yes	37	3
94	12.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	106	2
95	2.24	No	Nonfiction	Yes	Yes	108	4	Y
96	9.99	Yes	Fiction	No	No	445	4
97	2.99	Yes	Fiction	Yes	No	32	3
98	0.99	No	Action	Yes	Yes	259	4		Y
99	12.99	Yes	Thriller	Yes	No	66	4
100	19.99	Yes	Nonfiction	No	No	147	4

A couple of comments about the data:

• When it says “unk” (for unknown), it’s becasue the book is not available right now. That in itself was interesting to me. I sort of expect e-books to always stay available, certainly fiction ones. That would seem to be doubly true of ones that sell well, like the ones on this list…but it’s not
• KS stands for “Kindle Single”. They can be proud of that program…5 of the top 100 are Kindle Singles. That’a very high representation in the first (partial) year of a program!
• Prime means that the book is available as part of the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, which is avaialable to paid subscribers to Prime. That probably won’t have affected sales much (it happened too recently)
• The genres are a little subjective on my part. I didn’t choose one that wasn’t listed, but if I had both “fiction” and “romance” listed for Danielle Steel, I went with romance.
• As you’ve no doubt noticed, I didn’t list titles or authors. I don’t like to promote books that have text-to-speech access blocked, so I didn’t list any of them. I also like to look at it a bit more generically…while a famous author certainly may affect sales, I’m looking at these other characteristics this time
• When I’m looking at rating, I’m rounding down and just doing it based on the stars. If the fourth started was partially filled in, I counted it as three stars
• Note that the information you are seeing may have changed during the course of the year. The price now hasn’t necessarily been stable for the year

The first thing I wanted to look at was how many of the books were not published by the Agency Model publishers. Those are largely the Big Six…the six largest trade publishers in the US.

My reason for that is that, before e-publishing became popular (before the Kindle in 2007), best-seller lists would almost always be comprised entirely of books from traditional publishers. The difficulties of distribution meant that it was very hard a small or independent publisher to crack that list.

Remarkably, 33 of the books on the list were non-Agency books! Two more were unknown, but I would presume, based on the books, that they are non-Agency. Remember that before e-publishing, the number would likely have been very close to zero. If you check the paperbook best-sellers from Amazon this year, I think you’ll find a few that aren’t Agency Model…but none that were independently published.

The next question for me is whether being an Agency Model book hurt or helped within this group.

With 100 titles, the average ranking is 50.5.

The lower the average ranking, the better you are doing (the #1 ranked seller is doing better than the #100 ranked seller).

The average ranking for the known Agency Model books in this group is 47.1. So, non-Agency books (counting the two unknown ones) did somewhat worse than Agency Model books.

The average ranking where text-to-speech access is known to be blocked is 39.2. Clearly, within this group, blocking text access is better. My guess is that the unknown ones did not block it, which would have affected this somewhat.

Oh, one key thing: when my listing says “Yes” for text-to-speech, it means it is available (it is not blocked).

My next check? Does enabling lending help? No, the average ranking there is 54.8.

I’ve also always thought that having more reviews (good, bad, or indifferent) helps the sales. The average number of reviews on this list was 247.1. The ranking for books with more than that? 33.6…that definitely seems to help. If the number of reviews is under 100, the average ranking is 62.6. If it’s over 500 reviews, the average ranking is 34.2.

What about the rating given by readers?

• 2 stars: 58.2 average ranking
• 3 stars: 47.2 average ranking
• 4 stars: 51.9 average ranking

Next, price points:

• 0.79 (1 title): 19 average ranking
• 0.99 (12): 48.67
• 1.99 (1): 16
• 2.24 (1): 95
• 2.99 (10): 45.7
• 3.99 (3): 68
• 4.79 (1): 69
• 4.97 (1): 77
• 5.21 (1): 79
• 7.99 (3): 77
• 8.37 (1): 61
• 8.99 (2): 33.5
• 9.29 (1): 49
• 9.34 (1): 85
• 9.99 (5): 38.8
• 11.99 (3): 53.3
• 12.99 (30): 48.4
• 13.99 (6): 49
• 14.99 (13): 39.5
• 19.99 (1): 100
• Unknown (3); 51.3

I checked books below $10 and books $10 or higher. The average rank for books over $9.99 was better, at 47.5.

I also looked at genres. I tended to lump rather than split…one exception is mystery and thriller being listed separately. I just don’t see a shoot-em-up in the same category as Agatha Christie.

• Action (4 titles): 60.3 average ranking
• Children’s (4): 49.3
• Fantasy (1): 71
• Fiction (27): 54.5
• History (2): 23 (this could have gone in nonfiction)
• Horror (1): 89
• Mystery (12): 36
• Nonfiction (8): 63
• Romance (14): 68.9
• Science Ficton (2): 25.5
• Thriller (21): 36.5
• Unknown (3): 51.3
• Western (1): 51.3

Just a few other things that caught my eye:

• John Locke is a one-person bestseller list! Locke has four titles on this list. Nora Roberts has three
• There were a number of Penguin books on the list…they’ve done some things some consumers haven’t liked, but their books still sell
• Congratulatins go to Kindle blogger and author Michael Gallagher for having a book on this list: Free Kindle Books and How to Get Them

Well, there you go. The big story to me is the loosening of the grip of the Big Six on publishing. I do think they may make some smart moves in the future (at least some of them), so i don’t want to say that the non-Agency Model publishers will outrank them on average next year…but it’s possible.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

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