I hope that you will indulge me this post. I spent some of my evening going through the analytics for this blog and thought I might share some of the results.

In the last month traffic to the site has come from:

UK - 32.4%

US & Canada - 25.8%

Rest of Europe - 19%

Brazil - 6.3%

Australia - 3%

Rest of World - 13.5%

If we reflect this back to the early months of the blog, the UK accounted for 60+% and US & Canada approximately 16% and the Rest of Europe 8%. Brazil generated less than 1% of traffic until this last month leaping to over 6%.

Does this tell us anything about the book trade? Yes, I think it tells us lots of things we already know. Namely, Amazon is heading to Brazil. I assume Mr Bezos isn't the only one with R$ signs in their eyes rushing to Rio. And the next wave of digital transformation of the book, penetration of ebooks, ereaders and tablets is now well underway in the massively populated countries of BRIC.

Also I think the growth of traffic from the US & Canada indicates that the American market, being further down the digital path, is now looking externally for opportunities and insight.

Europe is also moving at pace. The main drivers of traffic from Europe are Spain, the Netherlands, France and Germany (in that order, Spain being the largest). Again, probably what we'd anticipate. 

What excites me most about all of this is that FutureBook is a blog with a global audience. In my experience, it isn't easy to create something relevant to lots of different countries. But also as the digital transformation takes hold in new markets, we can see a truly global publishing industry emerging. 

It also tells me that we need bloggers covering the new markets. So if you happen to work in publishing in Brazil, Russia, India, Japan, China and would like to be involved with FutureBook, please get in touch: sam.missingham@bookseller.co.uk (always open to suggestions from all countries.)