Sunday, October 30, 2016

How Do Goodreads Members Rate Books?

Some time ago (April 2016 to be exact) Goodreads hit a milestone of 50 million reviews. That's a lot of feedback! The first review was written by Otis Chandler (founder of Goodreads) on September 4, 2006. The gang at Goodreads analyzed the reviews and they showed some interesting data about how the ratings breakdown. Here it is:


If you calculate the average, it works out to 3.98. I was, not unsurprisingly, interested about how my own books stacked up against the site-wide average, and Robin was nice enough to do some number crunching for me.  Here are the results:

Title
5-star
4-star
3-star
 2-star
 1-star
Total
Average
Theft of Swords
13,529
12,433
4,269
937
360
31,528
4.20
Rise of Empire
11,718
9,451
2,546
332
99
24,146
4.34
Heir of Novron
13,439
7,610
1,984
307
109
23,449
4.45
The Crown Tower
7,325
6,007
1,679
289
120
15,420
4.31
The Rose and the Thorn
5,510
4,236
1,057
105
34
10,942
4.38
The Death of Dulgath
2,055
1,706
415
42
18
4,236
4.35
The Crown Conspiracy
4,495
4,232
1,807
410
152
11,096
4.13
Avempartha
2,791
2,438
768
124
21
6,142
4.28
Nyphron Rising
2,366
2,032
592
75
14
5,079
4.31
The Emerald Storm
1,974
1,684
552
70
10
4,290
4.29
Wintertide
2,619
1,700
450
62
20
4,851
4.41
Percepliquis
2,803
1,291
302
43
15
4,454
4.53
Age of Myth
1,913
1,541
437
90
27
4,008
4.30
Total Reviews
   72,537   
   56,361   
   16,858   
   2,886   
    999    
  149,641  
4.31
% of Reviews
48.5%
37.7%
11.3%
1.9%
0.7%

 Difference with Average  
+11.5%
+3.7%
-9.7%
-4.1%
-1.3%


I'm pleased to say that after almost 150,000 reviews (for the Riyria books and Legends of the First Empire) the 5-star and 4-star reviews have been much higher than most books, and the 1-star and 2-star reviews were much lower.

It's always great to take stock and see how people are receiving what I write, and I'm so glad that you all seem to like the books! Thanks for reading, and if you rated one (or several) of my books on Goodreads, thanks for that as well.

1 comment:

  1. The 5 and 4 star reviews of your books are thoroughly deserved as they are fantastic, spell binding adventures!

    ReplyDelete

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