Fun with Reader Statistics!

Some people seemed very surprised to be part of a 1% club. So, I’m going to do some amusing crunching with numbers, so everyone can see the percentages of who reads what.

Why am I doing this?

It’s Friday night, I’m curious, and I figured I’d show some more behind the scenes stuff.

Please note that this is not asking anyone to read a book they are not interested in. But what this does do is demonstrate the reason why I segregate series off by pen name if they aren’t a perfect match for the R.J. Blain vibe I’m going for.

So, the most read / purchased book I have is Playing with Fire, which is a total of 80,468 readers. Please note that I am using read instead of purchased moving forward in this post because I am lazy.

As such, that’s our baseline. If you haven’t read Playing with Fire, you definitely can’t have read all my books, thus not belonging to the… actually a little more than 1% of those who have read everything.

Note: these numbers are retail only and exclude Patreon. Patreon is a special case situation, and realistically… the people on Patreon (in the Otters+ tiers) are probably a pretty close representation of the number of people who have actually read everything.

Spoiler alert: that’s approximately 650 people.

When playing around with statistical probability, 800 people (1%) is pretty close to who probably has read everything I’ve written under every pen name.

However… I excluded new releases from this. A Light in the Dark is simply the lowest that has had a chance to mature, so I’m using those numbers… for the moment. I’ll go into the latest releases a little later.

The lowest selling book (that has had time to mature) I have written is A Light in the Dark by Audrey Greene. This is a paranormal and science fiction slipstream with cozy vibes. There are shapeshifters, wish fulfillment, and warm fuzzy feelings along with socio-political issues associated with mass migration (due to the destruction of Earth.)

It’s one of my best books, and it’s also a chonky little baby at 150,000 words. You don’t have to read Moon Tamed, during which the Earth is destroyed, but some characters from Moon Tamed make appearances in A Light in the Dark.

3,132 have read A Light in the Dark. 3,810 have read Moon Tamed. (If we count Patreon, roughly +650 each for those books. Patreon tends to be very stable and doesn’t budge much at all, for which I’m hugely grateful for.) So, while I’ll mention the Patreon subscribers here and there, I don’t calculate most of my numbers including Patreon… because Patreon isn’t what I’m trying to grow and cultivate.

Retail is. (I’m hugely grateful for those who subscribe to my Patreon, but I’m not sitting here trying to convince people to sign up for my Patreon as a general rule. If someone loves my books THAT much, they’ll find their way to my website and eventually find their way to my Patreon if that’s their sort of thing.)

Anyway, moving on.

Amusingly, Audrey Greene enjoys the highest read through rate of all of my series with a 82.2% read through rate.

3.89% of people who have read Playing with Fire have read A Light in the Dark. Now, let’s be realistic… the probability of 100% of those 3.89% of people (aka 3,132) having read A Light in the Dark having read everything else is basically 0, but you know? We’ll pretend.

Game On has 1,299 preorders. (1.61%)

Winter Paradise has 1,284 preorders. (1.59%)

Realistically, these numbers won’t increase all THAT much. (I’m not advertising the preorders outside of my website and rely on organic conversion until the week of release, where I do most of my advertising; this saves me a significant amount of money and allows me to keep trucking along.)

Now, to dig in a little deeper… at absolute most, only 7,832 readers (excluding Patreon) has completely read the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series. That’s 9.7% of those who started the series.

And that, right there, is why I use pen names. Readers are very picky. 9.7% of readers are the max who made it through my most popular series under that one pen name.

And that’s fine. Clearly, if I wanted people to read more in the series, I would have done a better job of writing, marketing, and presenting the series to keep more people reading it.

It’s not you, it’s me and the books I wrote.

But for the almost 4% of you who have potentially read everything, thanks! You’re so appreciated.

But think about the pen names this way: I would have lost a bunch of readers had I put the Audrey Greene books under the R.J. Blain umbrella and still would have only had those readers. By separating the new series that don’t have the right vibe or tone, I allow readers to decide for themselves if they want to hop over to a new pen name or not. But there is always a reason I make a new pen name, and it usually involves the understanding that I’m trying to be friendlier to the 90+% of those who aren’t reading everything rather than the almost 4% of those who do.

So, some food for thought.

Also… I have a lot of Susan Copperfield readers who absolutely just will not touch R.J. Blain. I’m not sure why, but apparently, I have cooties or something. (Which makes me laugh, because it’s the same exact author behind all these entities.)

But, I’m not a one trick pony, nor am I a machine, and every human out there is allowed and encouraged to have their personal taste when it comes to books.

There are plenty of authors I like and I just don’t enjoy some of their series, so I don’t read those because they aren’t to my taste.

And so there you have it. Putting series that aren’t really compatible with the Mag Rom Com readership under new pen names is the best thing for me and my career.

Because those Mag Rom Com readers? Most of them aren’t even interested in finishing the entire series–which is fine! (If I had written better books, they’d be more interested. Once again, that’s on me.) This just helps make sure I can keep writing books later, as I’m better able to advertise to readers who want to write the type of book I’m writing under that specific pen name.

And let’s face facts… it’s not THAT hard to keep track of pen names. They’re listed in the back of all new books. If you can’t remember who I write as, just open a newer one of my books and check the back. The list is there.