Question: What is the impact on the popularity of a book after the release of its film adaptation? If the book and film adaptation are part of a series, what is the impact on the sequels or prequels?
As a pilot, I decided to work on 'The Hunger Games' by Suzanne Collins and 'The Twilight Saga' by Stephenie Meyer. I chose these two texts because of the timeline constraints of the database. 'The Hunger Games Trilogy' were published in 2008, which makes it possible to track the record of transactions in the database since its publication. The corresponding movies however, do not fit in the timeline of the database (the second movie was released in November 2013 and the last of the series is still under production). In the case of 'The Twilight Saga', the first book was published a year before the database begins, but the subsequent books and the corresponding films have all been released around the timeline of the database. Both these texts are comparable as artifacts of popular culture. A comparison of the popularity of the these two book series and their corresponding films, taken together, can circumvent the constraints of timelines in the database.
Based on the Seattle Public Library's database, it is possible to obtain a record of the number of transactions of the books since their time of publication (from the library). A comparison of the release dates of the films (which are easily available) and the transactions of the books over time can give a clue as to whether the film adaptation has impacted (and whether the impact is positive,negative; positive impact is manifest as an increase in readership of the book and negative impact is a decrease in readership) the popularity of the book or not.
MySQL query:
Select title, year(cout), month(cout), count(*), SUM(CASE WHEN itemtype ='accd' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) CD, SUM(CASE WHEN itemtype ='acdvd' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) DVD, SUM(CASE WHEN itemtype ='acbk' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) Book from inraw where date (cout)!='1970-01-01' and year (cout)>='2006' and year (cout)<='2014'and title like 'Twilight' group by year(cout), Month (cout) order by cout ASC;
Explanation:
The query is to display in ascending order of check out time, the number of transactions of each title (in this case it is 'Twilight') and to divide the transactions based on the type of item (as books, CDs or DVDs) and to display each of those and the corresponding transactions in separate columns.
Processing Time:
About 70 secs for each query.
Observations, Comments and Analysis:
In the case of the first book in the series (Twilight, 2005) there is an increase in the number of transactions even before the release of the movie (on Nov 21, 2008) and the popularity of the book reaches its peak in the early months of 2009. After that, the release of subsequent films of the sequel does not seem to have raised the popularity of the book. In fact, the number of transactions steadily drop.
The popularity of the second book (New Moon, 2006)) in the series also seems to increase around the same time (November 2008 onwards), reaching an all-time high of 377 transactions around May 2009. There is another peak in its popularity around November 2009, which is the release date of its corresponding movie (though this number does not exceed the first peak in 2008) and after that, the popularity slowly fades. The release of the subsequent movies does not correspond with an increased transaction.
The third book (Eclipse, 2007) also shows an increase in the number of transactions around the date of release of the first movie in November 2008, but as in the previous cases, the peak is in early months of 2009. There is an increase in the popularity around the time of release of its corresponding movie (in June 2010), but its peak seems to be in January 2011 (and this is marginally lower than its first peak in May 2009). After this, its popularity steadily declines. The release of the last movie in 2011 and 12 do not correspond with increased transactions (at least not in the scale previously observed).
The last book (Breaking Dawn, 2008) is more popular than the prequels at the time of their release and its popularity is highest in early months of 2009 (as in the case of other books). The release of subsequent movies does not correspond with an increased popularity. Infact, the number of transactions are quite low at the time of release of its corresponding movie.
Though it is impossible to establish a cause and effect relationship between the increase in number of transactions of each book and the release of the film adaptation, the data shows interesting peaks in their popularity around the time of release. It provokes research into the nature and timeline of publicity and advertising strategy of the books and movies.
It is important to note that the number of transactions is not necessarily an accurate marker of the popularity or demand of the book since the database does not record the number of ‘requests’ submitted by users when all the books are in circulation. A dataset that maps the increase (if any) in the acquisition of the books would be a useful supplement to mark the popularity of the book. Also, it does not reflect the number of books that could have been bought or read online as ebooks or kindle editions, which are also important markers of popularity of a text. The data set should be further supplemented with sales or popularity charts of the book from online and physical bookstores (likewise, pre-orders of sequels should also be taken into account).
The first novel of the ‘Twilight’ Series was released a year before the start of the database. There is no way to compare the popularity of the series at the time of its publication with its popularity at the time of release of the movie. This may or may not be a serious lack, depending on how the book was received. This makes inclusion of data outside the library database even more crucial for analysis. If we think of ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘The Twilight Saga’ as comparable artifacts, then we can offset the lack of data after the publication of the book by using that of ‘The Hunger Games’. As is obvious from the data, the book was quite popular on its release (after the first three months atleast) and its popularity only increases steadily till the release of its film adaptation. The month after the release of the movie The Hunger Games (March, 2012), the number of transactions peaks to more than 400 and stays there for a few months. Though the popularity of the book does not fade away completely, the release of the second movie in November 2013 does not increase the number of transactions as drastically as the first film. All of this data should of course, be supplemented with an evaluation of each of the films on their own merit and with data about the popularity of each film and how well it was received, to be conclusive.
Lastly, it is crucial to note that the data obtained is noisy. The book ‘Eclipse’ for example, was released only in 2007. The data however, shows transactions under that name from the year 2006. The query in this case is not sharply defined to include only the exact novels by Stephanie Meyer. The marketing strategy of the book could probably be responsible for some amount of the noise. Since the release of the first movie ‘Twilight’, the entire series was dubbed ‘The Twilight Saga’. So independent titles such as ‘Eclipse’ could be dubbed under ‘Twilight Saga’, blurring categories based on titles, which could make this particular query, quite noisy.
Although the data shows interesting peaks of correspondence, one should be careful not to base any definite conclusions about the relationship between books and film adaptations based on this dataset alone. This dataset merely offers interesting points of entry into the analysis of different media objects and their co-existence. It can be a useful starting point to study strategies of marketing and advertisement for film adaptations of books.
I was unable to upload the csv files as attachments to this page. Here are the links to view the files.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B87clQ ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B87clQ ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B87clQ ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B87clQ ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B87clQ ... sp=sharing