A closer look at the KOLL #1

A closer look at the KOLL #1

Amazon introduced the

Kindle Owners Lending Library

on November 2nd, 2011.

This no additional cost benefit for eligible Prime members who own a hardware Kindle has grown incredibly quickly…the first time I got a count on the titles, it was 5,156. Now, not even two years later, the count is 351,178. That’s an average of over 600 books added…per day!

Now, it’s worth noting that books go in and come out of the KOLL. When independent publishers using Kindle Direct Publishing put their books into the library (using a program called KDP Select), they have to have the books there exclusively during that period. That doesn’t mean you can’t also buy them from Amazon, but the publisher (and that’s often just the author) can’t sell them anywhere else. So, publishers might bounce books into and out of the KOLL, and I do think that happens.

I’ve been using it every month, and I do think if that was the only reason I had Prime, I would have saved more than the annual cost of Prime. However, I can’t say I would have bought all of the books I’ve read through it…in fact, I can confidently say I wouldn’t have done so.

That got me thinking: what sorts of books are in the KOLL?

I can’t tell you which books are most borrowed: what I can see is what are the most popular books that are in the KOLL. It’s possible that a book is very popular, and in the KOLL, and not being borrowed much…no good way to tell.

First, let’s look at the categories in the KOLL:

Literature & Fiction	159,805
Romance	41,646
Religion & Spirituality	40,798
Professional & Technical	32,184
Children’s Books	29,023
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense	28,502
Self-Help	27,306
Science Fiction & Fantasy	26,226
Education & Reference	23,119
Health, Fitness & Dieting	21,986
Business & Investing	20,162
Christian Books & Bibles	17,352
Humor & Entertainment	16,614
Biographies & Memoirs	13,610
Arts & Photography	12,899
Parenting & Relationships	11,210
Politics & Social Sciences	10,430
Cookbooks, Food & Wine	9,917
History	9,054
Crafts, Hobbies & Home	8,725
Travel	7,349
Computers & Technology	6,765
Science & Math	6,415
Sports & Outdoors	6,246
Medical Books	5,094
Comics & Graphic Novels	3,136
Gay & Lesbian	2,683
Law	1,960
Teens	425

For comparison, here is the general population of Kindle books:

Literature & Fiction	730,977
Professional & Technical	292,985
Education & Reference	229,451
Religion & Spirituality	221,409
Romance	215,050
Politics & Social Sciences	158,117
Business & Investing	127,741
History	124,208
Christian Books & Bibles	111,679
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense	108,509
Science Fiction & Fantasy	104,180
Arts & Photography	102,076
Health, Fitness & Dieting	99,154
Children’s Books	97,457
Biographies & Memoirs	94,779
Self-Help	93,557
Science & Math	89,710
Humor & Entertainment	66,858
Medical Books	61,474
Computers & Technology	46,199
Crafts, Hobbies & Home	41,508
Parenting & Relationships	41,503
Sports & Outdoors	33,379
Travel	32,060
Law	31,226
Cookbooks, Food & Wine	27,855
Gay & Lesbian	22,302
Teens	17,677
Comics & Graphic Novels	17,328

When you look at those two, the available titles don’t look massively different. Even though they aren’t in the same order, 17 of the top twenty categories (out of 29) are the same.

The three that are in the top for the KOLL and not for the general population?

Parenting & Relationships
Cookbooks, Food & Wine
Crafts, Hobbies & Home

How about when we look at popularity?

KOLL	GP	Same?
Romance	Romance	Yes
Cookbook	Cookbook	Yes
Crafts, Hobbies & Home	Crafts, Hobbies & Home	Yes
Crafts, Hobbies & Home	Crafts, Hobbies & Home	Yes
Health, Fitness & Dieting	Health, Fitness & Dieting	Yes
Cookbook	Cookbook	Yes
Cookbook	Cookbook	Yes
Business & Investing	Business & Investing	Yes
Professional & Technical	Comics & Graphic Novels	No
Computers & Technology	Professional & Technical	No

Nine out of the top ten are the same, with the first eight in the exact same order!

Hm…this suggests that being popular in the KOLL might have a massive impact on being popular in the general population, although it’s possible that a popular book is a popular book in either case.

Let me try taking a look at books that are not in the KOLL.

That changes things!

We have to get to #9 in the general population before we find a book that isn’t also in the KOLL.

Here are the top ten ranked books not in the KOLL (with their ranks in the general population):

Rank	Pre-order	Free
9	No	No
12	Yes	No
20	No	No
21	No	No
24	Yes	Yes
25	Yes	Yes
26	No	No
28	Yes	No
29	Yes	No
30	No	Yes

In other words, two thirds of the top thirty books in the Kindle store are in the KOLL! We used to have people thinking that the most popular books aren’t part of the deal…and if you were looking at tradpubs (traditional publishers), that would likely be true.

The tradpubs don’t rule the Kindle store any more, though.

You can see from the two other columns above that half of the ones not in the KOLL are only available through pre-order. I’m sure they can’t be in the KOLL while that’s the case, so they might be in there after release.  Three of them are also free…you can have a free book in the KOLL, but I”m not sure if a search will find it as Prime eligible. Oh, I just checked: yes, a book will be found by the search I used as both free and in the KOLL.

I find this quite interesting. First, that a book in the KOLL appears to be much more popular as a part of the general population than one that isn’t. Why is that? Does being in the KOLL drive sales? Maybe…especially for less-well known authors. Maybe it’s that borrows in the KOLL drive the book up the bestseller list… a lot.

Second, my intuition was that people might tend to borrow non-fiction, including things like cookbooks, relatively more than fiction. I don’t think people tend to re-read non-fiction as much. That’s not obvious from the figures.

I may do this again later on…I always like to see what happens over time. 🙂

Anything stand out to you in this research? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

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

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