The State of Our Reader Audience

The last time we published a comprehensive look at our reader audience was two years ago. Back then, Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy were our only sites and we had a total of 200,000 readers between the two. We’ve made great progress since then and we wanted to update you on where we are today.

We feel incredibly lucky and humbled to be helping so many readers find their next book, and we are honored to play a small part in supporting authors as they bring their stories to the world.

In May of 2017 we have over 700,000 readers signed up to get emails from our four web properties: Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather Romance, and NewInBooks. There are more readers out there than ever before and we are adding tens of thousands to our lists every month. This means more readers just waiting to discover your books! We pride ourselves on finding the most active, engaged readers, and it shows:

• On average, a Written Word Media reader reads 9 books per month. That’s more than 1 per week!
• 22% of our readers are active reviewers who “always” or “often” review the books they read.
• 80% of our readers live in the United States, followed by Canada (4%) and the United Kingdom (4%).
• The majority of our readers use the newsletters they receive from us as their primary source for picking their next read.

Let’s take a closer look at our specific audiences:

Freebooksy

• The total Freebooksy list now stands at 320,000 subscribers.  Over the past year we have been adding over 10,000 new subscribers to this list every month.
• Our largest lists are in popular fiction categories: Mystery (208k), Thriller (192k), Cozy Mystery (180k), Romance (158k-177k) and Fantasy (135k). You can see list sizes for all genres here.
• 62% of Freebooksy readers purchase books every month, in addition to reading the titles they download for free.
• Freebooksy subscribers love to receive our emails – our open rate is more than double the industry average and our click rate is a whopping seven times higher than the industry average.
• The vast majority (72%) of Freebooksy subscribers use Freebooksy to find their next read.

Bargain Booksy

• Bargain Booksy is flourishing with the total list now standing at 245,000 subscribers.
• Bargain Booksy readers are most likely to purchase a book priced at $2.99 and below, with titles priced at 99c being stand-out favorites.
• 21% of Bargain Booksy readers are also subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, so you can expect to see an uptick in your your KENP pages read when you run a promotion.
• 64% of Bargain Booksy readers primarily read on a Kindle or use the Kindle App while 8% are iBooks customers.

Red Feather Romance

• Red Feather Romance has grown at a red-hot pace with a total list of 90,000 subscribers. We have almost doubled the list in the past six months alone and we plan to continue to aggressively grow this audience over the coming year.
• 28% of Red Feather Romance readers are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. 80% of the readers who are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited subscribers also pay to purchase books not available within Kindle Unlimited.
• Red Feather Romance readers are voracious, with almost half (48%) reading over 10 books per month. Almost a quarter of subscribers read more than 20 books per month!
• These readers are die-hard fans of the steamy contemporary romance genre. For some of these readers, the more taboo, dark, or risque the story, the better.
• Red Feather Romance readers are active: More than a third of these subscribers will review a book often or very often.

NewInBooks

• The NewInBooks list currently stands at 80,000 total subscribers.
• The most popular genres on NewInBooks are Mystery/Thriller and Literary Fiction.
• 48% of NewInBooks readers read primarily eBooks, while 46% of readers prefer to read physical books.
• NewInBooks readers are less price-sensitive and are just as likely to purchase a full-priced book as they are a 99c title.
• NewInBooks readers are active on Goodreads, with 54% logging into the site at least once a week.

We are well on our way to reaching 1 million readers. Thank you for being a part of our growth, we couldn’t do it without you!