My Reading Spreadsheet

I thought I'd share stuff about my reading spreadsheet today.  Yes, I have a reading spreadsheet.  Created it just this year to keep track of what I've downloaded, how much it cost me, where I got it from, and whether I actually read it.

Here's a screen capture of what it looks like:

Pink indicates books I've finished.  Blue is DNF.  Downloaded but unread is white, but you can't see it here.  I also use green for the book I'm currently reading.  That was on the hardcopy tab when I did this screen capture.  That tab also has gray rows for books I bought for research or books I bought in error (duplicates, etc.) that I don't intend on reading.  Here, I hid the title column to keep a measure of anonymity for the authors I DNF''d.  And I blanked out a couple things on the Source column that would've given away too much info - like the title of the first book in the series.

Most of my finds are from book newsletters I subscribe to.  Some are from FB groups I belong to.  If a person suggests a book or I picked up the book because I'm familiar with its author, their name would go there. :ahem, Silver:

I debated hiding the money column, but :shrug:  It is what it is.  I've spent just over $60 this year on books - 2/3rds of that on ebooks.  Pathetic amount, but things happen.  I do spent money where I need to.  The first book on the sheet there was $4.99 - a book 2 I really wanted bad.  So, I'm not a total Scrooge.  And I try to review the free books to help the authors sell more, so there's that. 

I probably should've filled in the dates of the books I read so I can keep track of how long it takes me to read a book after I've downloaded it.  Maybe next year.

So, as you can see, I've picked up 139 new books this year - 90 of which are ebooks.  I've finished reading 92 books so far.  I've DNF'd 42 books - 33 ebooks and 9 hardcopy.  And I have 7 unread new ebooks on my Kindle.  (Unread hardcopies?  Let's not be silly counting those, k?)

Yeah, this is probably way more information than any general reader wants to know or cares about.  I started this because figuring out how much money I'm spending on books at the end of each year was a total pain in the ass - going through receipts and trying to remember if I got a receipt and well, bleh.  It also helps me figure out which marketing sources are a better bang for my advertising buck.  If I'm not finding anything good on a newsletter, then I have to wonder how effective it is for selling my own books.  The same with figuring out if I'm consistently DNFing books from a particular source.  If readers aren't getting what they need from a source, they'll stop using that source, which makes them ineffective for my marketing purposes.  There are several sources I won't advertise with anymore based on this data.

I'll probably do a year-end wrap up of all of this data, but I thought this was a good time to look at it all.  Only 12 weeks left of the year, folks.  And I'm so ready for 2020 to start.

Do you keep track of how many books you read?  Do any of you keep track of anything else about your reading?  Or am I the only weird one?

The Numbers are In

In case you missed it, the Author Earnings Report is out.  Loads of pretty pretty graphs and charts.  Basically, what it boils down to is: ebooks are alive and well, self-publishing is alive and well, and the naysayers can bite us.

I love how big publishing keeps wanting us to believe that print sales are king and all that crap.  If you look at the total sales of all books everywhere, sure, the print slice of the pie chart looks overwhelming.  Until you remove textbooks.  And then you remove non-fiction.  Then the sales numbers and dollars of ebooks are way above print sales.  Natch.

"90% of all Romance purchases are ebooks."  Let that sink in.  Now, I don't write romance, but that number is pretty sweet. 

And it looks like self-publishers (those who have their own imprint and those who don't (like me)) are taking 35.9% of the ebook market in units sold.

Sure, the Big 5 are still taking the largest piece of the pie monetarily.  That's because they overcharge for everything and the market is still letting them.  :shrug:  All my books are $2.99ea and they will continue to be until I see a reason to raise my prices.  (Which mainly decided by my own purchasing ability.  I can't make myself buy higher priced books, so I'm not going to make other people shell out for them.  I'd feel like a hypocrite.  And I hate that.)  If I ever did decide to raise my prices, though, it would probably only be a buck hike.  Time will tell.

Anyway, this report gives me hope.  It always does.  My sales may still be down, but as long as there's hope, I'll keep plodding along.  Someday, I'll get a bigger piece of that pie.  =o)