How Often are Librivox Books Listened To?

[TedL]

Section A. Websites that offer Librivox books to their visitors.
In addition to the collections at Librivox, the Internet Archive, and the Librivox YouTube page, many 'classic' Librivox books are offered at third-party websites. Below I've listed a number of sites I found that offer Librivox books.

Group 1. These sites appear to have downloaded the Librivox books they offer to their own servers, so the number of views is NOT included in the statistics of Librivox, or at the Internet Archive Librivox collection. See Section B below for some examples of traffic on the four YouTube sites.

youtube.com/@Audio-Books
youtube.com/@audiobooksyoutubefree3310
youtube.com/@GreatestAudioBooks
youtube.com/@Audiobooksdotcom
Digitalbook.io
openculture.com
LearnOutLoud.com
Loyalbooks.com
Audiobook Treasury.com
Outstanding AudioBooks.com

Group 2. These sites below have links to Librivox book pages, so views should be counted by Librivox in their statistics. Librivox does not show these statistics on their website, but Ubersuggest, an SEO website, indicates that there are about 1.7 million views of pages at Librivox per month. The Librivox collection at Internet Archive averages 15 to 20 million views per month, according to their site (https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio?tab=about)

Pocketcasts.com
angelfire.com/ca5/yourturf3/KilroysFiresideLibrary.htm
player.fm/
isfdb.org/
castro.fm/podcast/
podcastrepublic.net/
online-litterature.com/
librivox.bookdesign.biz/


Section B. Samples of Views of Librivox books at four YouTube sites
For unknown reasons, these YouTube sites below all stopped counting views several years ago. However, all the books are still available, and the comments indicate that people are still listening to them.

Audiobooks.com
youtube.com/@Audiobooksdotcom

Pride and Prejudice had 409,000 views 5 years ago. 383 comments. (read by Elizabeth Klett)
The Power of Concentration by Dumont. 299,000 views 4 years ago. 386 comments. (read by Andrea Fiore)
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. 5,000 views 4 years ago. 0 comments.
Plus a few more Librivox books.

Greatest AudioBooks
youtube.com/@GreatestAudioBooks

Pride & Prejudice. 6.2 million views 11 years ago. 3,600 comments. (read by Karen Savage)
Anna Karenina Part 1. 544,000 views 10 years ago. 414 comments. (read by Mary Ann Spiegel)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had 267,000 views 11 years ago. 57 comments. (read by Mike Vendetti?)
Oliver Twist had 345,000 views 10 years ago. 240 comments. (read by T. Hines)
The Odyssey by Homer. 260,000 views 11 years ago. 221 comments. (read by Various)
The Iliad by Homer 510,00 views 11 years ago. 396 comments. (read by Various)
Plus many more Librivox books.

Audio Books
youtube.com/@Audio-Books/featured

A Doll's House by Ibsen - 500,000 views 10 years ago. 620 comments.
Mansfield Park - 865,000 views 10 years ago. 600 comments. (read by Karen Savage)
The Art of Money Getting by P.T. Barnum - 2.9 million views 10 years ago. 2,000 comments. (read by Ruth Golding)
The Idiot by Dostoyevsky - 1.1 million views 10 years ago. 1,055 comments. (read by Martin Geeson)
Stories of Old Greece and Rome - 1 million views 9 years ago. 750 comments.(read by Kevin Green)
Walden by Thoreau - 711,000 views 8 years ago. 850 comments. (read by Gordon Mackenzie)
See this page for many other popular Librivox books at Audio-Books: youtube.com/channel/UCA8Bg-tQKShZRZhe610SC-Q/videos

Audio Books Youtube Free
youtube.com/@audiobooksyoutubefree3310

The Kybalion by Hermes Trismegistus. 311,000 views 5 years ago. 653 comments. (read by Algy Pug)
Answers to Prayer by Muller. 165,000 views 5 years ago. 147 comments.
The Easter Egg by Saki. 3,900 views 5 years ago. 6 comments. (read by Peter Yearsley)
History of France by Yonge. 2,300 views 5 years ago. 1 comment. (read by Adele Pooley)
Bernice Bobs Her Hair by Fitzgerald. 22,000 views 5 years ago. 15 comments. (read by Lori Ann Walden)
The Diary of a Nobody by Grossmith. 3,400 views 5 years ago. 2 comments. (read by Martin Clifton)
Plus many more Librivox books.


Checking all the sites I've listed above for traffic statistics is too much work for me, but maybe others would like to check them and follow up with their own posts. There are also more sites than I have listed.

I believe that about 1 to 2% of Librivox's 19,000 books are extremely popular. I hope to address the other 98% in a future post.

I'd certainly appreciate feedback on this post. Were volunteers aware of the number of people who listen? Or is this 'old news'?

[lightcrystal]

What is also interesting is: do they keep the LIbrivox introductions and reader names? They seem to.

Interesting note on the Civic Action site: [might be wise to remove the link]

From that site:

An Important Note When Listening to
LibriVox Book Recordings:

Please *Download* the Sound File(s) to Your Own Computer. Avoid Extended
Listening Directly from the LibriVox Site, Which Causes Excessive
Bandwidth Usage and Exorbitant Costs for Librivox.
Your Cooperation Will Be Greatly Appreciated !!

[annise]

I hope all the links you are posting are not being paid per click - we are not here to advertise people who are making money out of our volunteer work?
We wage a continual war against spammers, we need members to be careful . Otherwise there will be even more from the "You too can earn an income from home .

Anne

[TriciaG]

What is also interesting is: do they keep the LIbrivox introductions and reader names? They seem to.

Interesting note on the Civic Action site:

From that site:

An Important Note When Listening to
LibriVox Book Recordings:

Please *Download* the Sound File(s) to Your Own Computer. Avoid Extended
Listening Directly from the LibriVox Site, Which Causes Excessive
Bandwidth Usage and Exorbitant Costs for Librivox.
Your Cooperation Will Be Greatly Appreciated !!

Huh! That's kinda funny. The way I understand the internet, downloading to a drive vs. streaming has the same bandwidth usage. So that note is totally misguided. We don't want people listening to in-progress projects, but that's not what is being asked for here.

Of course, it doesn't look like the site has been updated in ages. The latest "latest releases" are from April 2011.

[TedL]

I hope all the links you are posting are not being paid per click - we are not here to advertise people who are making money out of our volunteer work?
We wage a continual war against spammers, we need members to be careful . Otherwise there will be even more from the "You too can earn an income from home .

Anne

I don't understand the issue you're raising. Could you elaborate?

Ted Lienhart

[annise]

You have posted clickable links. Which means you are suggesting people may click them. Many sites receive income for each visit.

And I am not going to explain the various ways they attempt to add them nor where we have found them because I don't feel you were part of the spammers but you can make your points without using links.

Anne

[TedL]

I see. Thanks.

[annise]

Thank you both

Anne

[TedL]

Reader Traffic on Classic Books

Readers or Book Coordinators in Librivox sometimes decide to record a book again that is already available in Librivox. I looked at a couple of books that had multiple versions, to see how users find and use the later versions. I also wondered how "classic" titles get so much more traffic than unknown titles, and found an answer to that.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the 2nd most popular book in the Internet Archive collection of Librivox books, has 8 versions of the full book, one 'dramatic reading' and 3 versions of the abridged version. (According to a title search on the Librivox website.)

History of Versions - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The first version of the full book was put on Librivox in 2006 with multiple readers, Version 2 in 2010 by Kara Shallenberg, Version 3 in 2007 by Peter Yearsley, Version 4 in 2010 by Eric Leach, Version 5 is missing from the search results, Version 6 in 2019 by StudioMike, Version 7 in 2020 by Craig Franklin, and Version 8 in 2021 by Vin Cramer. (I don't see any explanation for why Version 3 was put in the catalog three years before Version 2).

The Dramatic Reading was done by a large cast in 2011. The first abridged version was done in 2007 by Kirsten Ferreri, Version 2 in 2012 by ashleighjane, and Version 3 in 2013 by Phil Chenevert.


Finding Versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
With all these more recent, and presumably improved, versions of the book, I tried to see to what extent audience traffic has shifted to the newer versions.

Internet Archive page: When I went to the Librivox page in Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio?sort=-downloads , sorted by 'All-time Views', it shows Alice's Adventures as the 2nd book in the collection, with 23 million views. Clicking on that entry takes me to the 2006 original version of the full book with multiple readers. There is no indication on that page that other versions are available. Neither does it mention the Dramatic Reading or the Abridged versions.

Searches on the Internet. I searched for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland free audiobook" in Google and Bing. Both searches produced the original 2006 version near the top of search results. The Google search provided the Kara Shallenberg Version 2 as an Internet Archive audiobook, and Version 3 as a Librivox book in the 14th position.

How do people find the different versions? There are numerous 'Backlinks' from other websites to these pages. This probably accounts for a large portion of traffic to all the versions. Also, carrying out a title search either in Librivox or the Internet Archive Librivox page will turn up all versions of the titles. However, the most important source of views for popular classic books seem to be other websites that provide Librivox recordings. See "Search Engine Results" under "Pride and Prejudice" below for details.


User Traffic on the Different Versions
Internet Archive provides the number of total views on each book page. I used that number in the table below. Librivox also has a page for each of these versions that you can use for listening, but Librivox does not provide any information about traffic volume on its pages.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Total Page Views, as of February 2024
Version Year Internet Archive page

Original Full Book 2006 22.6 Million
Full Book Version 2 2010 4.9 Million
Full Book Version 3 2007 1.7 Million
Full Book Version 4 2010 889,000
Full Book Version 5 Missing
Full Book Version 6 2019 244,000
Full Book Version 7 2020 156,000
Full Book Version 8 2021 123,000
Abridged Original 2007 468,000
Abridged Version 2 2012 124,000
Abridged Version 3 2013 770,000
Dramatic Reading 2011 2 Million


"Pride and Prejudice", by Jane Austen, is another popular classic book on Librivox, with multiple versions. Here is the traffic for different versions.

Pride and Prejudice
Total Page Views, as of February 2024
Version Year Internet Archive page

Original 2006 9.6 Million
Version 2 2006 5.8 Million
Version 3 2007 6.9 Million
Version 4 2010 4.8 Million
Version 5 2011 640,000
Version 6 (Dramatic) 2011 484,000

Search Engine Results:

A Google search for the term "pride and prejudice free audiobook" showed:

1st position, a YouTube 'video' of "Pride and Prejudice (Librivox version 3) at the site Greatest Audiobooks.com.
Also near the top was a YouTube video from Audiobooks.com that was Librivox version 4.
The 3rd entry was for Audiobook Treasury.com, which was Librivox version 3.
The next search result was for Open Culture.com, which provided links to audiobooks at Spotify and Librivox.
Next entry was Librivox, with a link to the version 3 recording.
Next entry was for an Outstanding AudioBooks.com youtube video; Librivox version 3.
Two positions after that was a YouTube video for Librivox version 3.
Next position is Learn Out Loud.com, featuring the Librivox version 3.

A Bing search for "pride and prejudice free audiobook" had results similar to Google's, with a number of commercial sites featuring the Librivox recordings, plus the Librivox and Internet Archive sites.

Conclusion: I wondered how these classic books, and their different versions, could get hundreds of thousands or even millions of page views. The biggest reason seems to be that a number of commercial websites feature Librivox recordings of classic books, sometimes choosing to use different versions.

[TedL]

Standardized Subject Headings for All Books

I'd like to suggest a project to standardize the subject headings in all 19,000+ Librivox books. That would make it possible to easily find all the books in the collection on a particular topic. The collection is simply too big to find books of interest by browsing, and the 'Genre/Subject' list is inadequate. If books could be easily found through a subject search, many more people would use Librivox books.

Here's an example of one problem. I was looking on the Internet Archive's Librivox page for books about World War I, but subject searches don't work because volunteers have used many ways to refer to World War I. Here are variations I found:

WWI
World War I
Great War
First World War
WW1
World War 1
World War One
World War
WW I
ww-I
1st world war

Besides the lack of standardization, many books lack sufficient subject headings to turn up in a search.

I suggest that we could do much better by using Library of Congress subject headings, and by ensuring that appropriate broad and narrow subject headings are used for every book. The approach used at the Internet Archive for adding "Topics" to their "Books to Borrow" could be the model. You can easily click a topic of a book at the Internet Archive to open a list of all their books that fit that topic.

The Library of Congress online catalog would be a big help in determining what subject headings are needed for each book. If we look up the books there, we can use the subject headings found in their entry. We would not need a team of librarians to classify all the books.

I wonder if librarians and people familiar with the structure of the Librivox website think this is feasible?

Internet Archive Books to Borrow: https://archive.org/details/inlibrary
Library of Congress Online Catalog: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchBrowse


Feb 25 Update

I have found since writing the above that there is a faster way to find subject headings. Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) a longstanding collection of public domain books, where most of the books on Librivox originated, now has a set of subject headings on most of its books. A simple book title search will reveal the subject headings and one or two "LOC Classes" (Library of Congress broad categories) for most of its books.

I also found a second site that's very helpful. A book title search on Open Library (openlibrary.org), which is part of the Internet Archive, provides links to the main locations of the book all in one place. Open the first title that is available in the library (many entries are not available), and scroll down to "ID Numbers" inside the box of "Book Details". Internet Archive, LCCN (Library of Congress) and OCLC Worldcat links for that book title are there.

Ted Lienhart

[redrun]

These last two look like re-posts of your other recent threads. Those already got some responses there - are you hoping to merge them all together here?

[TedL]

These last two look like re-posts of your other recent threads. Those already got some responses there - are you hoping to merge them all together here?

Merging them is exactly what I was hoping to do. It occurred to me today that it is wrong for me to start a new thread with each message, when these are all related, so I was trying to move two messages into the third thread. It didn't work out so well, as I couldn't close the thread of the message that had replies. Do you know how to fix it?

[redrun]

Gotcha. I'm able to merge threads, but I'm not sure what order all the comments would come in.

Perhaps another admin has more experience with that. I can give it a try myself if nobody else does.

[TedL]

The Discouraging Metrics of Librivox Traffic

I have been analyzing the number of page views of Librivox books at the Internet Archive over time, to the extent that I can. Why, you might ask, would I look at traffic on Internet Archive (IA) rather than at the Librivox site? Because the Librivox collection at IA gets nearly 20 million views per month, compared to about 1.7 million views per month at Librivox. However, I've also provided further below some useful metrics from the Librivox.org site.

https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio

Unfortunately I have not found a way to look at the number of views of the same books at different points of time. So instead I calculated the average number of views for books that had been in the collection for varying periods.* Here were the results:

Average number of Views per book in 1st month 19,700
No. of Views after 3 months 26,500
No. of Views after 6 months 27,300
No. of Views after 1 year 40,700
No. of Views after 2 years 34,400
No. of Views after 3 years 46,200
No. of Views after 4 years 31,600

There are some obvious statistical anomalies here due to the method used*. For example, a book that was available for 4 years could not have fewer total views than it had after 3 years. However, the general trend stands out clearly: Most views of books take place within a couple of months after their release. After that, the great majority of Librivox audiobooks are rarely heard again.

Why are most of IA's Librivox books 'lost' or 'forgotten' after a few months? I suspect that most users sort the IA collection either to see the newest books (sort by "Date Published"), or to see the most popular books (sort by "Weekly Views" or "All-Time Views"). In either case, the user is confronted with 19,000 book covers. They only look through a couple of hundred at the top.

Users would do 'Subject Searches' to find all the books in the collection that fit their subject, but that is very difficult. I'll explain why in my next post.

Exceptions to the two types of browsing are when the user searches for a particular title or author. However, because our audiobooks are more than 100 years old, users are familiar with very few titles or authors.


Here are some more troubling statistics about the use of the collection at Internet Archive:

The number of Librivox books increased 54% in the five years from January 2018 to January 2023 (11,500 to 17,700). (Great job Librivox volunteers!) The collection has this year grown to 19,100.

Did traffic also increase by 54%? Not at all. The total number of views from 2018 to 2023 went down by 2%. (230 million views in 2018, 224 million views in 2023). As we increased the number of audiobooks available in the collection, the number of views for each book (on average) has decreased 37%.


The Librivox site

As mentioned above, Librivox gets 1.7 million visits per month, compared to nearly 20 million per month at the Librivox collection at Internet Archive.

Librivox.org

Here are some metrics on visits to Librivox.org, and visits to the book pages within the site. I used my subscription to Ubersuggest at https://app.neilpatel.com/ to get these metrics, because Librivox does not put them on its website. Hypestat estimates monthly Librivox.org traffic at 1.5 million, SEMrush at 1.56 million, and SimilarWeb at 1.45 million.

The most popular page at Librivox.org is The Great Gatsby, currently getting 1,963 visits per month.
2nd is Great Expectations, with 687 visits per month.
The 50th most popular book is Pride and Prejudice (version 3), with 51 visits.
100th is Les Miserables, Volume 1, with 26 visits.
200th is The Scarlet Pimpernel, with 11 visits.
600th is The Little Colonel Series, with 3 visits.

92% of books on Librivox are getting less than 1 visit per month.


Fiction vs Nonfiction among the most popular books

Nonfiction books don't fare well at Librivox.org. These are all the nonfiction titles within the most popular 100 book pages:

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - 114 visits per month
The Book of Jasher by Anonymous - 98 visits
The Book of Mormon - 87 visits
Bible [KJV] - 72 visits
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - 51 visits
Up from Slavery - 35 visits
Bible (Reina Valera) - 33 visits
Book of Jubilees - 33 visits
Our Island Story, Part 1, (kids' history of Great Britain) - 32 visits
Summa Theologica by Saint Thomas Aquinas - 27 visits

Among the books ranking from 101 to 200 in popularity, there are only 16 nonfiction titles; 7 of them religious books.

Is there anything that we can do to ensure that audiobooks we record continue to be used for years afterward?

I think the solution is to improve visitors' access to the full body of the collection, so they aren't limited to browsing through the most recent or the most popular books. I suggest that making subject searches work the same way within the Librivox collection as they now work within the Internet Archive ''Books to Borrow" collection would be a solution. I'll cover this in more detail in a future post.

https://archive.org/details/inlibrary?sort=creator

I'd love to see readers' thoughts about this.


* My method: For each of the following months I added up the number of views of 35 books, starting with those published on the 18th day of the month and working backward. Then I calculated the average views per book. I recognize that when a visitor "views" a book, that doesn't necessarily mean they are reading it, but "views" is the only user metric we have.
Jan 2024
Nov 2023
Aug 2023
Feb 2023
Feb 2022
Feb 2021
Feb 2020.

[TriciaG]

I think the solution is to improve visitors' access to the full body of the collection, so they aren't limited to browsing through the most recent or the most popular books. I suggest that making subject searches work the same way within the Librivox collection as they now work within the Internet Archive ''Books to Borrow" collection would be a solution. I'll cover this in more detail in a future post.

Keep in mind that any changes to the back end (how things like searches are done) is highly dependent on getting volunteer programmers to develop and do the work. And those volunteers are very few and far between - not only do they need to have the time and inclination, they need to be able to work through and understand our "flaming pile of ----" (as one developer close to me colourfully called the code) to change it. We've got a couple people who are currently working on some of the low-hanging fruit, but we've got dozens of changes we'd like to see done (some of higher priority than others). Feel free to make your proposals, but keep in mind that the chances of them being implemented - especially in a timely manner - are not high.