As always happens, another year came and went. This means it’s time for a 2022 book blog statistics post! This was my first full year as a hobbyist book blogger. And it was the first year I felt like I found my groove in this community. I found a core group of book bloggers with whom I enjoy interacting and that made a world of difference. I don’t want to risk forgetting someone, but you know who you are.
With respect to my personal, non-bookish life, 2022 was a pretty good year. COVID-19 is still here and I finally caught it after holding out all this time. I also had a couple other frustrating but temporary and minor health setbacks. But that aside, we traveled internationally for the first time since February 2020. We typically use our vacation time each year to travel abroad, so it was nice to be able to do that again. We were fortunate to visit family and continued to improve our new home. I had a record year for home-grown jalapenos. I tandem cycled across New York with my husband. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but those are the highlights!
Now, back to bookish content. I made a list of bookish goals for 2022, so I’ll start by recapping those to see how I did. Then I’ll jump into various types of blog and reading statistics. Onward to the 2022 book blog statistics!
Bookish Goals for 2022 Wrap-Up
- Read 52 books: COMPLETED. I read a total of 69 books, a couple of which were short stories.
- Increase blog followers: COMPLETED. My goal was to reach 100 blog followers and you lovely people made it happen. I currently have 114 followers.
- Increase NetGalley review percentage: COMPLETED. My goal was to increase my NG review percentage to 50%. I’m happy to say I’m sitting at 79%!
- #BeatTheBacklog: FAILED. I set a goal for 50% of my reads to be backlog ones. That definitely didn’t happen. I think most months I had at least one backlog read, but there were definitely a handful of months during which I read no backlog books.
- Join StoryGraph: COMPLETED.
- Post negative reviews: COMPLETED. Thankfully I didn’t read many books this year that I rated less than 3 stars. But I’m satisfied with my decision to share any “negative” thoughts I had about a book. Ultimately, I want to be truthful and aid other readers in their book selections.
I thought I had a goal about finishing the His Dark Materials trilogy, but apparently I don’t. Which is great because I didn’t finish it!
Blog Statistics for 2022
Summary Statistics
I think Google Analytics is more accurate, but the statistics page on WordPress is easier to deal with. I’ll present the data from these two tools side by side. Either way, both tools point to an increase in all categories compared to 2021, when I was still figuring out this whole gig.
| Statistic | Google Analytics (2021) | WordPress (2021) | Google Analytics (2022) | WordPress (2022) |
| Total Posts | — | 73 | — | 196 |
| Total Views | 1,408 | 1,005 | 8,591 | 9,491 |
| Unique Views | 1,301 | — | 7,076 | — |
| Visitors | 444 | 400 | 2,209 | 3,398 |
| Likes | — | 116 | — | 1,426 |
| Comments | — | 26 | — | 468 |
Traffic Sources
Most of my traffic views come from Twitter, then WordPress Reader, and Search Engines place third.
The top five countries from which my visitors hail is the United States (~6,600), the United Kingdom (~1,000), Germany (~360), Canada (~200), and France (~200).
Most Read Posts
In my monthly wrap-up posts I like to post these types of stats based on unique page views. But it seems that, anecdotally, most other book bloggers look at total page views. So, I’ll follow suit. The comparison between Google Analytics and WordPress statistics is fairly similar, though there is jostling of the fourth place post. These are from the WordPress stats.
- Book Review: To Bleed A Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker
- Book Review: Gild by Raven Kennedy
- New Blog Theme
- Book Review: The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah
- ARC Review: A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland
- How To Make Book Blog Friends and Grow Your Audience (tied)
Reading Statistics for 2022
Now that I’ve rediscovered the joy of reading for a full year, I’m back in action! My goal was 52 books, or one per week. I read a total of 69 books. Two of these were short stories and one was a children’s book.
Reading Format and Book Length
Most of the books I read were in digital format followed by print. Audio was a distant third place. Most of my reads (65%) were between 300-499 pages, 23% were less than 300 pages, and 12% were longer than 500 pages.
Genres and Moods
To no one’s surprise, most of my reads fell within the fantasy genre. In second place is romance, likely because a lot of my fantasy reads have at least a romantic subplot. I don’t know why Young Adult is considered a genre on StoryGraph, so let’s ignore that. Same comment for LGBTQIA+, but I thought it was still cool to see I read 10 books that fall within this category. (Is LGBTQIA+ now considered a genre?)
I’m not sure how I feel about the Mood pie chart on StoryGraph because it’s an incredibly subjective feature. That said, I think it broadly captures moods of the books I read.
Ratings
I don’t have the StoryGraph statistics to definitely say this, but anecdotally I think I had a better reading year than 2021 with respect to ratings. I think this is partially do to requesting ARCs on NetGalley that I was pretty confident I’d enjoy. Whereas in 2021 I was trying to establish a rating on NG, so I started with “Read Now” books, which I unfortunately ended up not enjoying so much. The unrated books are mostly my audio reads, since my attention span waxes and wanes with that format, as well as nonfiction books I didn’t feel comfortable rating.
Lastly, here are my five-star reads of 2022! I really love that StoryGraph allows users to rate books by quarter stars. So I think it more accurately reflects my rating preferences than Goodreads. The eight books in this list are:
- TO BLEED A CRYSTAL BLOOM by Sarah A. Parker
- THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEWOMEN WITCHES by India Holton
- FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
- GLEAM by Raven Kennedy
- HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS by J.K. Rowling
- THE DARK QUEENS by Shelley Puhak
- EJACULATE RESPONSIBLY by Gabrielle Blair
- ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER by Olivie Blake
Technically, THE ATLAS SIX should be in this list, but I forgot to update my rating in the app before generating this graphic. And I’m too lazy to update the graphic because formatting these types of posts takes forever. So be it.
If you have a 2022 book blog statistics post, drop your link in the comments so I can check it out!
Well done on increasing your number of blog followers and your net galley review score. Have a great 2023.
Thanks, Janette!
It was awesome reading this and seeing all of your achievements throughout the last year, both with blogging and reading. I absolutely love StoryGraph, so it thrills me that you utilize it to track your own reading habits! Here’s to another wonderful year. I can’t wait to see what you accomplish in 2023 🙂
Thanks, Stephanie! This was my first year using StoryGraph. I’m sure I could import (or manually input) my 2021 reads from Goodreads, but I don’t want to spend my time doing that. BUT I will continue to use it and it’ll be neat to see how 2023 compares to 2022 when I get there. Have a great reading year! 🙂
Wow, you really increased your blog traffic by a lot this year! And it looks like you had a great reading year as well. I loved seeing how you break things down on your yearly review, and definitely look forward to seeing your blog (and audience) grow even more in 2023!
I know, I’m really happy about the increased traffic! I hope that continues this year and helps convert some visitors to blog followers. Thanks for stopping by! ^_^
It looks as if you had a pretty good year! I hope 2023 is even better for you!
I think I am going to try Storygraph this year, but I am just going to start over and not import my Goodreads data because every website that says it will do that never does it right, and then I have to debate whether I should waste time fixing it or just leave it wrong!
Thanks–2021 was good, but 2022 was even better! More books read, better blog stats, and great interaction with fellow bookish people. 🙂
If you like stats, then I think you’ll find StoryGraph interesting. I think some of their categories are quite subjective, but overall it gives a better insight into your reading than from what I know about Goodreads. I do want to try Kal’s spreadsheet this year, though, and see if I can keep up with it.
Congrats on a great year! Your views weren’t too far behind mine after three years, I barely cleared 12.5 this year and have stagnated on followers too 🤣
Assuming numbers increase each year, you’ll boom next year!
Yay, thank you! Oh gosh, that’d be awesome if my numbers keep increasing as it’s nice to know I’m “talking” to more people. I don’t care about popularity, but I like the community feel.
It looks like you had a great year of reading and blogging! I’ve seen The Dark Queens on so many wrap-up posts and added it to my TBR last week after seeing countless people talk about it. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction but this sounds too good to pass up. Congrats on growing your blog so much! I hope you have an amazing year of reading and blogging in 2023 🙂
Yesssss The Dark Queens is a great read. I first saw it on Pages Unbound’s (via Briana) blog (or maybe Twitter? idk) and thought I’d give it a go. Definitely a good choice. I like it because it’s not your typical western nonfiction history book. It’s western history, yes, but during a time when not much was recorded, which makes it harder to piece together.
You did so great on all your goals this year! I look forward to seeing all the things you accomplish in 2023. 🙂
Thanks, Chris! Let’s hope I can read a decent amount of backlist/backlog books, haha.
Ha, I am pretty sure I up’d the views from Germany.
It looks like a really successful first full year. Congratulations 🎉
May 2023 will get even better.
RoXXie
That’s fantastic! Slowly, but surely! If it’s your goal, I hope you’re able to continue to up you Germany views in 2023! 🙂
Only saw this one now. As it turns out you beat me on views… by 1! Except I wrote 411 posts to get there rather than 196, so nice work. Interesting that twitter was a better referrer to you, it lagged me a long way behind wordpress reader for me. Looks like that’s an area to target for me.
Thanks, Peat! I went back and checked and the difference between Twitter and WP referrals for 2022 was about 800. So not insignificant. It’ll be interesting to see if that changes this year because I started blog hopping more the last half of 2022 and I plan to do that all of 2023.
I’m not quite sure what gets me views from Twitter, so I don’t have an definitive advice. But I suppose use hashtags in tweets where you link to your blog (if you don’t already). RT your tweets to refresh them in the feed. And I find that if I RT others’ posts that I enjoy then they’ll sometimes return the favor…because community. 🙂