2021 by the Numbers
but not charts
Hey friends!
If you’re a subscriber, get ready for my CHARTS POST on Thursday!!! I am so excited. Why? I love charts!!!!!! (I mean, I do represent Michelle Rial, so it makes sense.) This is what it looked like in 2019, and 2020, and way back before I even had a Substack, I did it on my website.
Why do I do this? Because I am a Capricorn (rising) and this is how I bring order to chaos. I like the process of organizing data into spreadsheets and also (letting a computer to the work of) visualizing it. It’s fun to me, but it’s also useful. And I hope it’s useful for you, too.
This year, I’m going to share some of the raw numbers that go into those pretty charts. Not all of them, and not all the analysis, but numbers. No, I’m not going to tell you the amount of my largest deal, or my total income, or anything like that, because it’s none of your business, even though I know those are the sexy numbers. Here are the less sexy but still interesting numbers, for this newsletter, my agenting life, and my personal reading life.
Newsletter Numbers:
Number of posts this year: 95 (49 free, 46 paid)
Increase in total subscribers: +66%
Increase in paid subscribers: +58%
Highest number of total views for a post (free): 17,283
Highest number of total views for a post (paid): 1,716
Average total views per post (free): 8,304
Average total views per post (paid): 939
Post with the highest open rate1 (free): 57%
Post with the highest open rate (paid): 69%
Average open rate (free): 42%
Average open rate (paid): 58%
Takeaway: You are all amazing readers and I love writing this newsletter.
Agency Numbers:
Number of new books sold (including multi-book deals): 52 (4 pending)
Number of Subrights2 Deals: 18
Number of books released this year: 30
Tune in tomorrow for an even bigger breakdown of the genres I sold, how these deals paid out, and royalty vs advance income!
Reading numbers:
Total books read this year: 75
Most frequent format read: audiobook
Most frequent place I obtained said format: library (these last two are connected!)
Most unusual combination: I read two books this year where I started the ebook and then downloaded the audio (one from the library, one from Libro.fm) to finish it. I don’t think these formats should always be bundled, but it was a fun experience!
Number of books I read for my long running bookclub (17 years!!!): 8
Tune in tomorrow for the complete list of books I read this year (minus the secret client ones you can’t know about yet).
I’m taking next week off from newslettering, and I hope you are able to take some rest as well. Thank you for reading and supporting this endeavor. It’s truly rewarding to me, and I hope the same is true for you.
Happy holidays. Here’s to better days ahead,
Kate
Substack defines this as the number of unique people who open the email, divided by total email recipients.
Including licensing, foreign, audio, film/tv, made in conjunction with our co-agents
.