After sharing my reading stats for 2015 and 2014, I started considering the question in the title. After all, I read 67 books published by HarperCollins and their imprints in 2014 and 63 HarperCollins and imprints' books in 2015. Both were the largest numbers of their respective years.
But then I recalled that those numbers are huge because HarperCollins and Imprints publish a heck of a lot of books. Like, what I read was probably only 40-60% of what they published in middle grade and young adult fiction, and that's not even taking into consideration their adult books. So that means it's not numbers (i.e., how many of their books I read) alone that make me favor one publisher over another.
Then I wondered if my ratings for one publisher were higher than the others. So I spent an evening during my Christmas break figuring that out. It was towards the end of break. I was getting rather bored.
(These results are based only on my 2015 reads. Including my 2014 reads would've taken me two nights because I had to go through all the books I read in 2015 and record their rating and publisher. Also, I included publishers of whom I'd read less than 10 books in the "other" category. In addition, I didn't factor in any DNFs - I had 19 total of those this year.)
Average rating by publisher
Bloomsbury: 3.6 stars
Disney-Hyperion: 3.3 stars
HarperCollins: 3.4 stars
Little, Brown & Co.: 3.5 stars
Macmillan: 3.7 stars
Penguin: 3.4 stars
Random House: 3.25 stars
Scholastic: 3.8 stars
Simon & Schuster: 3.1 stars
Sourcebooks: 3 stars
Other (includes Harlequin, HMH, SHP, and American Girl among others): 2.9 stars
What can I say?
I probably could've guessed (I definitely hoped) Bloomsbury would be in the top three. They publish fewer books than HarperCollins, but I only gave two of their books that I read in 2015 less than 3 stars. I'm not surprised about Macmillan's rating, either. I generally like their imprints' books, and I seem to be quite good at not reading the ones I won't like when it comes to them. (Watch that change in 2016 just because I said that.)
I'm quite surprised Scholastic took the top spot just because they don't immediately come to mind when I think "fave publisher." BUT they are publishing Ally Carter's latest series, and they're the publisher for The Game of Love and Death and Anything Could Happen, which I quite liked. I do hope Disney-Hyperion's and Simon & Schuster's ratings will be higher in 2016. They have published some of my favorites. Finally, HarperCollins's solidly middle rating proves quantity doesn't always equal quality. But I also resolve to be more selective when it comes to their books in 2016.
If this post interested you, I'll be including my average rating per publisher in my yearly reading stats posts from now on. I've even started putting publishers in my reading spreadsheet to make this easier to figure out!
Anyways, I guess I could've stated that I thought I liked Bloomsbury and Macmillan the best, but I wanted the data to back it up. Plus, I got the surprise of seeing how much I enjoy Scholastic's books, too.
I can definitely relate - I think there are certain publishers I prefer over others. For me, I tend to like Penguin books. More of these types of stats would be lovely :) (they're actually pretty interesting)
ReplyDeleteAHAHA this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when you're bored...after all, not only is it interesting, but super informative, RIGHT??? :D
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post - you definitely should include it in your yearly posts - it's something that people don't really think about! :)