1ROMANCE BUYER SURVEY

A STUDY BY NIELSEN FOR ROMANCE WRITERSOF AMERICA

THE ROMANCE BOOK BUYER

2 ROMANCE BUYER SURVEY

Background, Data Sources, and Methodology..................................... 3Executive Summary.................................................................. 5Section 1: Who is the Romance Buyer.............................................. 7Section 2: Reading and Buying Habits............................................ 12

Section 3: How Books are Acquired............................................... 31

Section 4: How Books are Discovered and Chosen............................... 42

Section 5: Formats and Price...................................................... 68

Section 6: EBooks, Devices, and Apps............................................ 84

Section 7: Media Consumption................................................... 93

Conclusions....................................................................... 100

CONTENTS

3ROMANCE BUYER SURVEY

BACKGROUND, DATA SOURCES, AND METHODOLOGY

Romance Writers of America (RWA) is trying to understand romance novel buyers, and in

particular what makes them “tick."

This report summarizes data from a survey fielding of American romance buyers in the Spring and

early Summer of 2014.

Nielsen Book closely collaborated with Romance Writers of America in designing the questions

and guiding the research. We are indebted to them for their unique perspectives of the market and

providing excellent suggestions and insights throughout the process.

Data Sources:

This report is drawn from a number of sources, with majority of the data coming from the Nielsen

Romance Buyer Survey for RWA:

• BookStats (BISG/AAP)

BookStats is an effort to provide the US Book publishing industry with a comprehensive

annual view of overall book sales in all formats, genres and channels. It was created by

a partnership of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), the Association of American

Publishers (AAP), and Nielsen Book.

• Nielsen Books & Consumer Monthly Tracker (B&C Tracker)This is Nielsen Book’s flagship consumer research service, where we track a nationally representative sample of 6,000 book buyers per month, capturing data about

their previous month book purchases, including who the buyers are, what books they

bought, where and how they bought them, why they bought them, and a host of other

questions. This database of book buyers became the source of sample of romance

buyers for the deep dive study conducted this year.

• Nielsen Romance Buyer Survey for RWA.

The primary data for the RWA Romance Report comes from this proprietary Deep Dive

Study. As noted, sample was drawn from the Books & Consumer Tracker. Respondents

qualified for the study if they reported having bought a romance book in last 6 months.

• Other Nielsen Sources.

Respondents to all Nielsen Books & Consumer surveys are coded on a household basis

to a “Prizm” code, which ties together attributes of households in a given neighborhood

(based on Zip+4). Based on the premise that “birds of a feather, flock together,” we can

determine unique consumption patterns, brand affinities, and media behaviors for each

Prizm code. We can therefore make some assumptions about how romance buyers

consume different media compared to national norms. Some interesting findings from

this analysis are included in this report.

Copyright © 2014 The Nielsen Company

4 ROMANCE BUYER SURVEY

Methodology

1) Targeting and Sampling: Using Nielsen Books & Consumer Tracker as a sample source, our

partner fieldwork agency, MetrixLab, targeted romance buyers from our tracker and guaranteed

a sample of 2,000 romance novel book buyers for this project. These romance book buyers were

recruited from the October 2013 through March 2014 waves of the monthly tracker. A small

number of romance buyers who do not read were filtered out, to obtain 2,000 readers. The sample

closely matches the demographics of romance book buyers in the B&C Tracker.

2) Survey Method: An online survey was administered to qualified respondents. They were

“e-vited” to participate, using “point” incentives that could be used towards redeeming products

and services. This online survey was fielded in May 2014.

3) Limitations:• Not representative of “off-line” populations

• We did not go after readers who don’t buy, though we receive data about readers

who read significantly more than they buy

• At a 95% confidence level, error margins are between +/- 2.0%.

Error margins, of course, are higher when looking at subsets of the sample

(i.e. mobile app users, where the data is more directional)