Some interesting facts -Crime/Mystery Books in the UK

[Pauline Rowson]

Crime/Mystery Books

•In the 52 weeks to 13th September 2009 consumers
purchased an estimated 20.5 million crime/mystery books.

•6% of these books were bought as Christmas gifts.

•Retired people accounted for 23% of crime/mystery purchases.

•The average price paid for a crime/mystery hardback was £9.92.

•12% of crime/mystery books were bought online.

Source: BML's Books and Consumers survey.
For more information on this and other genres, contact BML on: [phone].

Make what you will from this, just thought I'd share it with you all.

[I. J. Parker]

Good. One needs to know as much as possible about this business. Large Print is expensive, but library sales are good for those.

[Pauline Rowson]

Yes, it would be interesting to see figures for the USA and I suspect that on line sales are a much higher percentage. Retired people are always a good target market for my novels as they enjoy crime/mystery novels, have more money and time to read, and Large Print and Audio are growth areas! I wonder though who else accounts for the 77% of crime/mystery purchases. If BML reveal more detail of the report I'll post it here.

[I. J. Parker]

Interesting. Wonder what that is like in the U.S.A. Online sales (Amazon) used to be about where yours are, but I have the impression that Amazon's have increased considerably over the past 5 or 6 years.