Since this blog is fairly data-rich, I will repeat the summary remarks here at the beginning, for those of you who are in a hurry. But it the subject of what age is the "best age" for writers interests you, you should read the whole blog.
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Summing up, when it comes to the average age of writers in the Amazon Top 100, we can say:
· Their average age was 52.3 years, though there was a wide spread of ages in the data, from a low of 33 to a high of 86. So, writing success is possible at any age, though it appears to be an activity where success builds over time.
· Female writers were significantly younger than male writers, on average, about 51 years of ages versus 56 years of age.
· There was no strong tendency as to writers being older or younger by sales rank decile or quartile - average ages were about the same throughout the top 100 when broken out in these groupings.
· Indies were significantly younger than Trads, at about 45 years old versus 55 years old.
· Younger writers tended to sell at lower prince points than older writers.
· The Romance category had the youngest writers (46), on average. The Thriller category had the oldest writers (62), on average. The other genres were somewhere in the middle.
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Now, to the blog in its entirety:
In a series of recent blogs, I have performed some analyses on Amazon’s Top 100 Kindle eBooks of 2013. These blogs have looked at that data in various ways – specifically, the demographic and publishing characteristics of writers in the top 100, as well as their average Amazon ratings and imputed numbers of book sales and dollar revenues. Among the factors examined were:
1.
Gender (sex) of writer
2.
Relative position within the top 100 (by decile
and quartile)
3.
Publisher
4.
Indie vs Trad status
5.
Price Range
6.
Genre
Many people, especially writers and publishers, are bound to
be curious about just what is the age at which writers’ have their greatest
success. So to this very interesting
list, we will now add age of writer (as of 2013, calculated as 2013 minus Birth
Year).
First, a quick note on data sources and reliability. About 62% of the writers in the Top 100 had
Wiki entries that included explicit birth year information, about 4% had
newspaper articles or other sources that indicated age reliably, and the
remaining 34% had to be estimated from author bio information that didn’t
mention age – basically that meant estimating from photographs or vague
cultural references (e.g. read Sweet Valley High books as a teen). Though the photos for this latter group
seemed fairly up-to-date, one can never be sure, so it will be noted which
groups had to have many of their ages estimated when we look at the data. That will give the reader a chance to judge
for himself or herself, whether that fact seems likely to have influenced the
conclusions significantly. Now to the
data.
Overall Age Distribution
First off, the table below shows the overall age
distribution of writers in the Amazon Top 100 for the year 2013. I should note that if a particular writer had
more than one book in the top 100, he or she will be counted more than once in
the data below. That seems fair to me, since
it effectively gives more successful writers more weight in the data, and it
makes the math easy (the counts also happen to be percentages of the total,
since there are 100 titles in the dataset).|
Writer
Age Range
| ||||||
|
|
34
or Less
|
35-44
|
45-54
|
55
- 64
|
65
Plus
|
Total
|
|
Writer Count
|
3
|
21
|
36
|
18
|
22
|
100
|
As we can see, the majority of writers were in the 45-54 age
range, followed by the 65 plus range.
Few writers were under 35. This
yielded an average age of 52.3, with a standard deviation of 11.3 years. The latter figure gives a numeric value for
the “spread” of the data. Roughly
speaking, you can think of this as meaning that two thirds of the writers were
within 11 years of the average age of 52
(or two-thirds of the writers were between 41 and 63).
It is important to note that there was a substantial
difference between the writers whose age was given on Wiki (56) versus those
for whom I had to impute age (46). So
the writers whose age had to be imputed from photos were significantly younger
than the others – it turns out that these were mostly female romance
writers. Given the possible implications
of age stereotypes on romance writers, they may well have been a bit reluctant
to be pinned down on the subject.
Nonetheless, I think the estimate is fairly accurate.
We will make a few more comments on the possible implications
of this graph later in the blog, after detailing more of the key results of the
analysis.
Age Distribution by gender
Females tended to be considerably younger than males, with
the most common age for female writers being 45-55, while the most common age
for males was 65 plus. The average age
for females was 50.8, whereas for males it was 55.9, a not inconsiderable
difference of about 5 years.
Writer Count
|
Writer
Age Range
|
|||||
Gender
|
34
or Less
|
35-44
|
45-54
|
55
- 64
|
65
Plus
|
Total
|
Female
|
3
|
16
|
28
|
10
|
13
|
70
|
Male
|
5
|
8
|
8
|
9
|
30
|
|
Grand Total
|
3
|
21
|
36
|
18
|
22
|
100
|
In the case of both males and females, the average age of
writers whose age had to be imputed was younger (about 45) than those for whom
age was easily available on wiki (about 56).
However only about 3% of males required age imputation, while 53% of
females did, so there was quite a strong gender effect in that respect.
Age Distribution by Sales Decile and Quartile
First, a refresher on what these terms mean. A decile is one tenth of the dataset, while a
quartile is one quarter of the dataset.
So, Decile 1 is the group whose sales ranked first to tenth, Decile 2 is
the group in 11th to 20th, and so on. Similarly, Quartile 1 is the group whose
sales ranked first to twenty-fifth, and so on.
Note that because there are 100 books in the dataset, the math is easy.
All that being said, there was very little difference in
writer ages by quartile of sales rank (Q1=52.5, Q2=52.4, Q3=52.3,
Q4=52.0). The same was true for deciles
– almost all had average writer ages between 50 and 55.
It should be noted that writers whose age had to be imputed
were somewhat more likely to be found in the second and third sales quartiles
than the first and fourth. As for deciles, the most interesting finding
was that no writers in the first sales decile had to have their age imputed.
Age Distribution by Publisher
The table below shows the average age of writers, by
publisher. There appears to be no
particularly strong trend, other than the observation that Indies are younger
than the others, on average. More on
that in the next section.
Publisher2
|
Avg Age
|
Doubleday
|
58.0
|
Hachette
|
54.7
|
Harlequin
|
61.5
|
Harper Collins
|
46.8
|
Indie
|
45.2
|
MacMillan
|
64.0
|
Penguin
|
57.2
|
Random House
|
56.5
|
Simon & Schuster
|
49.0
|
William Morrow
|
49.0
|
Age Distribution by Indie vs Trad Status
A quick definition is in order. Indie books are those that were
self-published or published by very small publishers, while Trad books were
published by one of the (usually larger) publishing corporations, such as
Penguin or Random House (see above for a list).
This comparison is always interesting. As we see in the table below, Indies tend to
be substantially younger than Trads.
Indeed, the majority of Indies are under 55 (20 were under 55 versus
only 4 that were older than that), while there are almost as many Trads 55 and over
(36), as under 55 (40). This gives an
average age for Indies of 45.2 versus an average age for Trads of 54.6, a
difference of just shy of ten years, quite a pronounced contrast.
|
Writer Count
|
Writer
Age Range
| |||||
|
Indie vs Trad
|
34 or Less
|
35-44
|
45-54
|
55 - 64
|
65 Plus
|
Total
|
|
Indie
|
|
10
|
10
|
2
|
2
|
24
|
|
Trad
|
3
|
11
|
26
|
16
|
20
|
76
|
|
Grand Total
|
3
|
21
|
36
|
18
|
22
|
100
|
Again, a definition is needed to put this data into
context. Low priced books are defined as being under
$4.00, moderately priced books are between $4.00 and $7.99 and high priced
books are $8.00 and up.
When we look at the data, we see that there is a clear
distinction between books written by younger writers as opposed to those
written by older writers. The former
tended to dominate the lower price range, while the latter dominated the higher
price ranges. In fact, the average age
for writers of lower priced books was 48.3, while for higher priced books it
was 60.8. The average age for writers of
moderately priced books was intermediate, at 51.7 years.
|
Writer Count
|
Writer
Age Range
| |||||
|
Price2
|
34 or Less
|
35-44
|
45-54
|
55 - 64
|
65 Plus
|
Total
|
|
1-Low
|
1
|
10
|
10
|
4
|
5
|
30
|
|
2-Mod
|
2
|
10
|
21
|
8
|
11
|
52
|
|
3-High
|
|
1
|
5
|
6
|
6
|
18
|
|
Grand Total
|
3
|
21
|
36
|
18
|
22
|
100
|
Once more we should note the trend with writers whose age
had to be imputed from photos versus those whose age was given on Wiki. The former had all of their books in the low
and moderate categories; the latter had
books in all price ranges, but they were primarily in the moderate and high
price ranges.
Age Distribution by Genre
The genre categories are fairly standard breakdowns. The most obvious tendency in the data is that
Romance writers tended to skew younger (mostly in the 35-44 and 45-54 ranges),
though older writers also wrote their share of books in that genre. Conversely, writers in the
Thriller/Suspense/Crime genre tended to skew older (with half in the 65 Plus
age range), though a few younger writers also wrote in that genre. The remaining genres didn’t seem to show any
clear age related trends.
In terms of average
age, in ascending order, the figures were: Romance (46.0), Science Fiction and
Fantasy (52.1), Literary Fiction (53.0),
Other (54.4) and Thriller/Suspense/Crime (62.1).
Writer Count
|
Writer
Age Range
|
|||||
Genre2
|
34
or Less
|
35-44
|
45-54
|
55
- 64
|
65
Plus
|
Total
|
LitFic
|
8.0
|
1.0
|
2.0
|
11.0
|
||
Other
|
2.0
|
5.0
|
7.0
|
|||
Romance
|
3.0
|
16.0
|
20.0
|
3.0
|
5.0
|
47.0
|
SFF
|
2.0
|
2.0
|
2.0
|
1.0
|
7.0
|
|
Thriller/Suspense/Crime
|
1.0
|
6.0
|
7.0
|
14.0
|
28.0
|
|
Grand Total
|
3.0
|
21.0
|
36.0
|
18.0
|
22.0
|
100.0
|
Again, it is worthwhile to note that the group of writers
whose age had to be imputed from photos were mostly in the Romance genre.
Summary
Summing up, when it comes to the average age of writers in
the Amazon Top 100, we can say:
·
Their average age was 52.3 years, though there
was a wide spread of ages in the data, from a low of 33 to a high of 86. So, writing success is possible at any age,
though it appears to be an activity where success builds over time.
·
Female writers were significantly younger than male
writers, on average, about 51 years of ages versus 56 years of age.
·
There was no strong tendency as to writers being
older or younger by sales rank decile or quartile - average ages were about the
same throughout the top 100 when broken out in these groupings.
·
Indies were significantly younger than Trads, at
about 45 years old versus 55 years old.
·
Younger writers tended to sell at lower prince
points than older writers.
·
The Romance category had the youngest writers
(46), on average. The Thriller category
had the oldest writers (62), on average.
The other genres were somewhere in the middle.
Going back to the graph with the solid blue and speckled red
bars, it is interesting to speculate about the observation that most of the
people that made up the red speckled bars were young female Romance writers
(the actual breakdown is shown below).
About half of those were Indies.
Were these Indie writers being blocked from publishing by
“gatekeepers”? Were the Trad writers in
this group being mostly ignored in sales rank lists, previous to the Amazon
ebook revolution, due to the assumed less serious nature of their work? If gatekeepers were excluding/ignoring a
major portion of the writing population, we might expect the artificial looking
step function that we observed with the blue bars to be replaced by the more
natural looking normally distributed
function, once the “missing” writers were added back in. After all, the latter function is generally
what we seen in most natural situations, so it would make sense if it
re-asserted itself once gatekeeper effects
were diminished.
Other = 2 females, average age 56
Romance = 34 females, average age 45
SFF = 1 male, age 45
Thriller = 1 female, age 47
Later blogs will look at reader satisfaction by age, sales
(as estimated from number of reviews) by age, and revenue (as estimated by
sales and book price) by age. We will
also look at how much the writers themselves earned in royalties by age. At the end of the process, we hope to be able
to see what the sweet spots for financial success are - i.e. age, gender,
genre.
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