Wow, I can’t believe 2018 is over already! It feels just like yesterday I was filling out my 2017 stats. 2018 was a whirlwind of activity and reading. and blogging. I had a lot of ups and downs but overall was a pretty great year despite everything.
Some General Stats
- In 2018 I read a total of 205 books, manga, and novellas, 156 of which were speculative fiction which equated to 74% of my reading. This is about average for me.
- 187 New Reads and 18 Re-Reads
- Of the 205 books they consisted of 98 different series, 2 story collections, and 32 Stand Alone novels from 114 different authors.
- Most read author – Jim Butcher with 14 books, but no surprise since I was working on Dresden Files throughout the year.
- There were 13 other instances where I read 3 or more books by the same author – so I did go on some author ‘binges’ a few times.
Reading Goal – Read More Sequels
Once again, one of my reading goals was to read more sequels and finish up some ongoing series I’ve started. How did I do?
- 22 books were the FINAL book in a series (woohoo!).
- 35 books were the MOST RECENT book of a series (caught up–for now!).
- Although out of the 35 MOST RECENT, 17 of those were FIRST in a new series.
- Even though I read 61 total FIRST in a series books, overall I did much better than last year (30% were FIRST books this year vs 39% last year).
- I read a higher percentage of sequels this year (53% compared to 45% last year).
To sum up this part, yes, I did improve over last year percentage-wise. YAY!! But because I read so many more books I did also start a lot more series overall compared to last year. Good thing a lot of the books I’m looking forward to this year are sequels! 😀
Reading Throughout The Year
I tracked my reading by month and season again because I continue to be a nerd. I always think it’s interesting to see which parts of the year I do most of my reading.
- No surprise at all to me that December was the highest reading month with 36 books read because I was on a full out reading binge trying to make 200 books before the year ended.
- July was the lightest month with only 11 books read.
The seasons are fairly even although I did read a little more in Spring and Fall than Winter and Summer overall.
Self-Published Books vs Traditionally Published Books
One of my informal goals last year was to read more self-published books. Overall I did a great job–I read A LOT more self-published books than last year! Last year I read 4 self published books, only 4% of my reading. This year I read 41 self-published books, 20% of my reading.
Library Loans, Review Copies, and Book Format
Book Format
A couple of years ago I got into reading through audiobooks and it’s had a huge impact on my reading and how many books I can get to in a year. This past year I started picking up more ebooks as well, ever since I got a new phone the previous Christmas with a bigger screen…well I just read a lot of books on my phone! I find it super convenient because I pretty much always have my phone with me and I don’t have to carry any extra items around with me. Also, I can just whip out my phone and read a few pages whenever I have some down time. This has resulted in a HUGE uptick in my ebook consumption over last year.
- I read 90 ebooks in 2018 vs 6 in 2017!
- Ebooks were 44% of my reading this past year!!!
- I read slightly less number of audiobooks in 2018 – 69 compared to 74 in 2017
- Percent of audiobooks read went down from 72% to 34% but that makes sense considering I read a lot more books overall–only so much listening time allotted!
- Percent of physical books remained the same at 22%
Library Loans
My library loans went down a lot compared to last year. In 2018 I read 22 library loans compared to 50 in 2017. That’s probably a good thing because I need to work on reading from all these books I have sitting around my house and on my electronic devices. That said I probably spent more money on audible since I usually listen to a lot of books through Overdrive…whoops!
Here’s the breakdown of library books by format:
| Audiobooks | 18 |
| Ebooks | 0 |
| Physical books | 4 |
| Total | 22 |
Review Copies and ARCs
Last year I started receiving some ARC’s and copies of books from publishers and authors for review purposes. Overall I read 24 books for review purposes! Not an overwhelming percentage of my overall reading but I suspect this will go up in 2019.
Here’s the breakdown of ARC’s and review copies by format:
| ARCs | Other Review Copies | Total | |
| Audiobooks | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ebooks | 14 | 4 | 18 |
| Physical books | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Total | 16 | 8 | 24 |
Genres, Subgenres, and Publication Year
Genres
Genre breakdown: Fantasy – 140 books (68%), Science Fiction – 16 books (8%), Romance – 41 books (22%), Other Fiction / Nonfiction – 8 books (4%).
I didn’t read a ton of genres last year, mostly speculative fiction genres and romance. I was a little surprised that my science fiction numbers were so low–it felt like a lot more!
I barely did any reading in nonfiction, mystery, or historical fiction. I’d like to read more of those genres in 2019 but it’s tough because I love spec-fic so much! We’ll see what happens!
Subgenres
For speculative fiction I’ve done a breakdown by subgenre to the best of my ability. Subgenres especially are tricky because there is so much overlap and sometimes books qualify for more than one! I put them where they felt right to me. I also had several that I couldn’t really think what fit best so put them under a general ‘fantasy’ label.
- Urban Fantasy was my most read subgenre with 33 books!
- Next highest actual subgenre was Epic Fantasy with 15 books!
YA vs Adult
76% of books read were Adult, vs 24% YA. This is about the same as last year. I read 72% adult and 28% YA last year so just slightly more adult fiction this year.
| Adult Books Read | 156 |
| YA Books Read | 49 |
Publication Year
I like tracking this as well, just to see if I’m reading more recent stuff or if I’m catching up on older books. No surprise, I’m reading mostly recent stuff–about 71% of the books I read this past year were published within the last 5 years.
- The oldest book I read was published in 1962 – A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle.
- The newest book I read will be published in April of next year – Lovestruck by Kate Watson.
- I read books published in 30 different years.
- In 2018 71% of books I read were published in the last 5 years in vs 48% in 2017.
- The most read year was 2018 with 62 books!
- The next most read year was 2017 with 37 books.
In previous years I’ve spent a lot of time playing catch up with new releases and while I do have some from 2018 I still need to get to, I read a lot of new books last year so I have less to catch up on in that regard. Woot!
Here’s a breakdown of books read by decade:
| Decade Published | # of Books Read |
| 1960’s | 1 |
| 1970’s | 1 |
| 1980’s | 2 |
| 1990’s | 15 |
| 2000’s | 21 |
| 2010’s | 165 |
Diversity of Books and Authors
Diversity of Authors
I’ve broken down my diversity stats by overall books read and then by just the SFF books I’ve read. I’ll be honest, I was a little bit surprised by some of these numbers.
Total Books Read:
- Out of the TOTAL 205 books 38 (19%) were by male authors, while 163 (79%) were by female authors, with 4 (2%) co-authored by male and female teams. I read zero books by non-binary authors.
- Out of the 114 unique authors, 17% were male, 81% were female, and 2% were male/female co-author teams.
- Out of the TOTAL 205 books 35 (17%) were written by an author of color while 170 (83%) were written by white authors.
- Out of the 114 unique authors, 16% were an author of color while 84% were white authors.
Speculative Fiction Books Only:
- Out of 152 SFF books 36 (24%) were by male authors, while 112 (74%) were by by female authors, with 4 (2%) co-authored by male and female teams.
- Out of 89 unique SFF authors, 22% were male, 76% were female, and 2% were male/female co-author teams.
- Out of 152 SFF books 26 (17%) were written by an author of color while 126 (76%) were written by white authors.
- Out of 89 unique SFF authors, 16% were an author of color while 84% were white authors.
I thought I had read MUCH more diversely this past year. But maybe it’s just that the vast majority of my favorites were by diverse authors so they stuck out in my mind more? Not sure. Either way, for Speculative Fiction books, my numbers did go up a tiny bit compared to last year but there’s still a lot more I could make an effort to improve on.
Diversity Within Books
Like last year I didn’t do a great job of filling out my spreadsheet as I read and instead filled it in a few times in huge chunks so this may not be 100% accurate as I was going off of my memory. Still, I think it’s fairly accurate.
Total Books Read:
- Like last year, even though the VAST MAJORITY of the books I read were by female authors, the genders of the protagonists were more evenly split (compared to author stats). 41% female, 21% male, 34% combination, and 4% non-binary and unspecified.
- There were also a lot of books (70 total) with two or more protagonists that were a combination of male, female, and non-binary genders.
- 22% had protagonists of color.
- 38% of books had some LBGTQ+ characters
Speculative Fiction Books Only:
- The percentages for protagonist gender in SpecFic is 49% female, 25% male, 21% combination, 5% non-binary and unspecified.
- 32 books in total had a combination of male, female, and non-binary protagonists.
- 20% of books had protagonists of color.
- 44% of books had some LBGTQ+ characters.
Goodreads Ratings
I tend to rate books based on how they made me feel and how they were executed as a secondary, so my ratings tend to be a little on the higher side. Even so I was a bit surprised by my goodreads ratings this year.
- I had ZERO 1-star reads and only ONE 2-star read.
- The vast majority of my books were 4-star reads (106)
I think one of the things that made my ratings so high is that goodreads doesn’t have half-stars (argh, when are you implementing that, goodreads?!). So, I rated quite a few books here on my blog with half stars but over on goodreads I always just round up. So 3.5 becomes a 4 and so forth. It’s not really an accurate picture, but I guess it’ll do. Maybe next year I should track by the half star and the goodreads rating in my spreadsheet….hmm.
If you want to check out what my absolute top reads of 2018 were you can see my post on that here.
In Summary
Well, that was A LOT. If you read all that and stuck it out til the end, my thanks and you are very patient. 😀 Overall 2018 was a great year in books and I’m very much looking forward to 2019’s reading!
Huge differences from last year:
- read 55 more books than last year!
- HUGE increase in ebook consumption!
- read less library books 😦
- read slightly more diverse books and authors
- had an insane reading binge in December!
Do any of you have any reading stats to share? I’d love to see what others track, or interesting challenges people do. Leave a note in the comments, looking forward to hearing from you!
Way Too Fantasy 
Love these comprehensive stats, Lisa. It looks like 2018 was a wonderful year in reading! I didn’t compile any stats other than what Goodreads does for me. I need to take a better look at those!
Thank you! I’ve been tracking my reading stats by spreadsheet for 3 years now and it’s pretty interesting. 🙂
That’s a really good way to break down your reading stats…..very interesting.
Thanks, Cathy!
I’m starting a spreadsheet this year, so hopefully I’ll be able to pull more stats next year. I love how many female writers you read!
Yay, spreadsheets! I’ve always read more female authors for some reason, I just gravitate toward them, even within speculative fiction. This year will be interesting to see depending on how many Discworld books I get through and if that skews things.
All the stats ❤ ❤ ❤ 😀 Seriously though, love how you broke down all your reading. And was shocked to see that you reading nearly doubled during December! Personally, it cuts down by nearly 1/4 during the holidays for me.
Thank you! Well, December was an outlier month for me because I was reading like crazy to make a year end goal of 200 books at the last minute. 🙂
I love how detailed this is!
I am with you on the difficulties of putting books into their correct subgenres – I usually go with general “SF/F/SpecFic” because it gets so difficult otherwise.
Thanks! Yeah, subgenres are so tricky.
I love your stats! It’s given me ideas for mine next year!
Here’s mine for 2018
Thanks, I will check yours out!
Good job! Cool to see.
Thanks, Paul!
I LOVE YOUR STATS SOOOOO MUCH!!!! What a fantastic reading year. I want to be like you when I grow up. Lol. I’m kidding, but I definitely want to read more adult than YA this year. I can’t believe you read 36 books in December. I couldn’t find the energy to even read 3 with the holidays. Fantastic!
Thank you!!! ❤
It helped that a lot of my December reads were novellas and such, but it was a whirlwind month lol.
I did a stats round up, myself! Go you. [pretty charts!]
As a note, many libraries have e-book lending — which is just as easy as buying a new book for the kindle app.
Oh, I have borrowed some ebooks in the past, I think last year one or two. Part of it is that I forget to check, a lot of times I’m buying an ebook and diving right into it and if the price isn’t bad and it’s self published, well I like to support. 🙂 The other thing is I pick a lot of stuff up on sale. :D. Thanks for the reminder though! I will have to try and remember to check my library more often for ebooks this year!
Also, yay stats!
I totally understand. If the e-book is under five bucks I often don’t hesitate either. Yay supporting Indie authors! Yay supporting all authors
Yay! I am glad you made your goal of 200! That is awesome! And good luck with your 255 next year!! (Personally I think you are crazy, my goal is only 75 haha) I love your charts and stuff! I really liked the series placement stats and congrats on finishing 22 series 🙂 I hope you have a great 2019!
255?! Did I mistype something? Haha. 😅 I’ve only set my goal at 100 for next year, but who knows, maybe I could get to 255!
Haha you said “read 55 more books than last year” so I thought that was your goal for this year? And since you read 200 thats how I got 55? But 100 seems much more reasonable!!!
Oh. I’ll have to look where I said that. I probably meant I read 55 books more this past year than the previous year, lol! Yes, 100 is much more realistic 😀
You said it right haha I was confused 🤦🤦 I thought it was a list of goals not a list of differences from last year 🤦
Ah, ok. Phew! I was afraid I messed something up, I spent half the day on New Year’s writing this up and was going a bit batty from all the numbers by the end so I could have easily done that lol!
The amount of work that you put into this is amazing! Also, nerdy numbers like this give me life lol!
Thanks! Yeah, it took me half a day just to write the post lol. Glad you enjoyed looking at it! 😀
I love seeing reading stats! Will share mine later, but I think it’s awesome that you completed so many series! I keep starting and not finishing.
Thanks, looking forward to seeing yours! I’m glad I finished a lot of series too. I hope to finish even more this year. The reason I have so many ongoing is because I tend to do the same thing. I bounce around a lot in my reading.
Nice stats! My library loan numbers remained high this year, if for no other reason because I borrow a lot of audio versions of my print books so I can tag team listening/reading whenever things get busy. I also noticed there were a lot more standalones/series starters in my stats this year. Used to be I would go through my last three pages of “read” books on Goodreads, and all up and down would be nothing but sequels!
Most of the books I wanted to read had long wait times, even a couple of the Dresden files I had to pick up from audible in the end because of timing. I think we’re on the same library system for digital, unless you have a card elsewhere (I was thinking about getting one for the NYC Brooklyn library to access their elibrary).
I am really hoping to start slightly less series next year so I can catch up on some of the ones I’m currently reading but…well, OH SHINY! 😉
Yep, I use the Maryland Overdrive Consortium or whatever it’s called, and I have access to the Brooklyn Overdrive as well (let me just say, the annual fee is SO worth it…their collection is so much bigger than ours!) My brother is also from Toronto and he lets me use his card number for their Overdrive which is nice, because they have an excellent SFF digital collection both ebook and audio.
Ok, you’ve convinced me, I’ll sign up for a Brooklyn card. 🙂
These are some impressive stats. Well done to you – I hope your 2019 is as productive and wish you all the best for a Happy New Year.
Lynn 😀
Thank you, Lynn!
Whoa… This was a seriously impressive statistics.. And the graph and the diagram… Had I understood and done something like this during my exams, I would have topped.
Hats off at your hard work and your book reading. Extremely impressive and informative
Thank you! ❤
This post full of stats sent my heart aflutter! ALL THE CHARTS AND DATA! I love it and you had an amazing reading year, and I hope 2019 is even more awesome!
Thanks! I have fun making these posts because I love charts! Hope your 2019 is awesome too!
Wow loved looking at your stats! That’s such an amazing number of books read as well- well done!! And that’s phenomenal that you read so many books in december- wow! Brilliant that so many of the books were fantasy as well 🙂
Thanks! It was my biggest year in reading so far!