Unpacking Popularity and Quality in Literature

From J.K. Rowling to memoirs, what drives our love for books? A data-driven analysis.

Portals to New Worlds - Source: Pixabay

Introduction

What makes an author truly great?

Is it their popularity, their ratings, or some combination of both? A while back, I came across a Goodreads dataset on Kaggle ¹ that gave me an opportunity to explore these questions. After diving into thousands of book ratings and scores, I uncovered some interesting patterns about book authors.

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Insight Summary:

1. J.K. Rowling dominates in sheer popularity, with ratings numbers that eclipse even other bestselling authors.

2. Quality isn’t as straightforward as looking at average scores—percentiles help reveal some potential hidden gems and unexpected excellence.

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The Popularity Contest

Let’s start with raw popularity, as defined by the total number of user ratings.

• 🥇 J.K. Rowling: The Harry Potter creator stands out as the most popular, doubling the ratings of the second-place author.

• 🥈 Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games made her a household name in the Young Adult category from the 2010s (you just had to be there)

• 🥉 Stephenie Meyer: The Twilight series brought her massive acclaim that appears to keep her relevant

Here’s a visualization of the top 10 authors by number of ratings:

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The Score Game

Popularity is a good measure, but what about quality? In order for this analysis to make sense I couldn’t simply grab the top 10 highest scores because this doesn't tell the whole story. For example, there were cases in which a book was rated a 5/5 but it's got a single rating so in my opinion it’s not fair to call it a masterpiece based off a single user's opinion.

The following is an extract of an incomplete analysis:

scores = books.groupby('Author')['Score'].mean().reset_index()

Data can often be misinterpreted

To fix this, I categorized the data using percentiles:

• 25th Percentile: Authors with the fewest ratings—a mix of niche or newer authors.

• 50th Percentile: Mid-tier in terms of popularity but perhaps hiding some underrated gems.

• 75th Percentile: The more popular authors with a large base of ratings.

• 90th Percentile: The established names with the highest number of ratings overall.

Observations

• Although there seems to be a decent variety of genres scattered throughout the category from fantasy to comic strips, this category is dominated by Romance novels.

Note: The top 6th author on the plot corresponds to Mohamed Aboul Gheit

• We start seeing some big names like Sarah Maas, Pierce Brown, and surprisingly BTS

• This category also covers diverse genres such as science fiction and crime novels

• I find it funny that Goodreads credits “Anonymous” to the authors of historically relevant works such as The Bible, The Upanishads, The Epic of Gilgamesh, etc.

• We start seeing some non-fiction categories, more specifically memoirs in the powerful works of Viola Davis and Chanel Miller

• I was surprised by the fact that none of the most popular authors appear in this category

• We see an even stronger presence of memoirs with authors such as Michelle Obama, Jennette McCurdy, Trevor Noah, and Tara Westover

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Conclusion

This analysis highlights the contrasting relationship between popularity and quality in the literary world. While authors like J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and Stephenie Meyer dominate in sheer popularity, the highest-rated works often reflect a different trend. The data shows a skewed preference for the personal and emotional impact of memoirs and other powerful stories rather than technical literary mastery.

Memoirs, in particular, seem to evoke a greater response from readers. I think this makes sense as these works allow us to connect deeply with the experiences of people we admire, making their stories relatable and impactful.

At the end of the day however, greatness is very relative. To me, it’s about the ability to tell stories that inspire me and that I can connect to at a more personal level, which is why I often enjoy self-help books and memoirs.

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Join the Conversation

What about you? What have you been reading lately, and what kinds of stories do you enjoy most? Are you more of an epic fantasy person? Heartfelt memoirs? or something entirely different? I’d love to hear your experiences! Share your recent reads and favorite genres in the comments!

Tools used: Python - Pandas, Seaborn

1. It appears the original dataset has been modified by the creator, but I think my original findings are still applicable.