Why Certain Series Are More Popular

Periodically, I give my site statistics, which is a way to assess which series are the most popular among collectors. This data shows visits to each section of my website for the last six months. I have only given the top 25 series.

1. Nancy Drew - 24,538

2. Sweet Valley High - 16,233
3. Trixie Belden - 5,735

4. Dana Girls - 3,451

5. Judy Bolton- 2,059

6. Beverly Gray - 1,508

7. Vicki Barr - 1,440

8. Cherry Ames - 1,246

9. Kay Tracey - 1,077

10. Ruth Fielding - 1,076

11. Penny Parker - 955

12. Outdoor Girls - 852

13. Moving Picture Girls - 790

14. Connie Blair - 772

15. Betty Gordon - 723

16. Shirley Flight - 715

17. Blythe Girls - 495

18. Sara Gay - 445

19. Sally Baxter - 431

20. Susan Sand - 380
21. Peggy Lane - 349

22. Billie Bradley - 325

23. Kit Hunter - 283

24. Melody Lane - 263

25. Riddle Club - 249

I changed the font color for some of the books to make certain patterns stand out. Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High are by far the most popular series. Trixie Belden is a distant third place but is far in front of the rest.  The Dana Girls is significantly more popular than Judy Bolton, which is just slightly more popular than Beverly Gray, Vicki Barr, and Cherry Ames. 

I used the same font color for Nancy Drew, the Dana Girls, Judy Bolton, Beverly Gray, Vicki Barr, and Cherry Ames because those series were all published by Grosset and Dunlap and were cross-promoted during the 1950s when baby boomers were reading series books.  Overall, those series are the most popular, and I have long had the opinion that those series are the most popular due to the cross-promotion and because they are the ones most remembered by current collectors. 

Additionally, the Dana Girls is much more popular than the other series books, and the strong cross-promotion with Nancy Drew is the probable explanation. The books were advertised as "By the author of the NANCY DREW BOOKS," and I have often seen the books sold on eBay in lots with Nancy Drew books, since many people see "Nancy Drew" on the covers and think the books are Nancy Drew books. I have also seen the books identified in antique shops as Nancy Drew books. Very likely, young readers and their parents made the same mistake decades ago.

Kay Tracey, Ruth Fielding, and Penny Parker have approximately the same popularity.  Those three series were published by Cupples and Leon during roughly the same years as each other and were cross-promoted.

The earlier Grosset and Dunlap series books such as the Outdoor Girls, the Moving Picture Girls, the Blythe Girls, and the Riddle Club do not have the same popularity as the later Grosset and Dunlap series books. This is most likely because these series were published long before current collectors were born.

Why Isn't My Favorite Series Listed?

I sometimes come upon a message thread somewhere on in the internet in which my site is mentioned. Invariably, one or more participants are dismayed and sometimes offended that their favorite series is not listed on my site, and they wonder why.

The answer is quite simple: My site represents what I collect and was never intended to be a complete list of all juvenile series books. I created it to supplement what was already out there, and in particular, I wanted to cover some favorite series that sadly had been ignored by others.

It was on July 31 that I encountered the most recent example of a mention of my site.

eBay Bookseller's Board

Of course it was immediately mentioned that I don't have the Betsy-Tacy series listed.

What caught my eye is that someone mentioned my site being on Metafilter, which was an unknown site to me. I then figured out that my site had a staggering number of hits on July 30, due to the mention on Metafilter. In fact, the main page of my site had 1,380 visits from the Metafilter link. Until that day, the main page of my site had never had more than 300 visits in a single day, so this was a very big exposure.

Metafilter discussion about my site

I always enjoy reading these types of discussions, because almost all participants are people from outside our collecting circle. They are people who remember reading the books as children but are not involved in collecting them. Not surprisingly, someone was surprised that Donna Parker is not listed on my site.

Someone else mentioned this hilarious Sweet Valley High blog. I really enjoyed the screen caps with captions from the Sweet Valley High television series. I have never seen any of those shows. I may have to buy the first season on DVD. It should be a riot!

By reading message threads like these, I end up on sites that I have never visited and end up finding some really neat stuff.

Popularity of Different Series

I haven't shared site stats in a very long time. Here are screen caps of the Google Analytics data for my website for the top 57 most-visited URLs on my website from early 2008 to the present.


#1 is the main page of the Nancy Drew section. #2 and #47 are the main page of the site. The Sweet Valley High page is #3. Trixie Belden is #4. Notice the steep drop in visitors between Sweet Valley High and Trixie Belden. By far, the most popular vintage series represented on my site is Nancy Drew, which is no surprise. The Nancy Drew section is more heavily visited than even the main page of the site.

The stats give a good idea of the popularity of the vintage series with respect to each other. Going by the number of visits, we have:

1. Nancy Drew
2. Trixie Belden
3. Dana Girls
4. Judy Bolton
5. Beverly Gray
6. Kay Tracey
7. Vicki Barr
8. Outdoor Girls
9. Sara Gay
10. Moving Picture Girls
11. Connie Blair
12. Penny Parker
13. Shirley Flight
14. Ruth Fielding
15. Betty Gordon
16. Blythe Girls
17. Sally Baxter

I noticed right off that Cherry Ames is missing. I realized that I must not have had the tracking code on the Cherry Ames page, so I fixed that problem.

I am encouraged by how high the Outdoor Girls is on the list since I love that series, but its placement is likely because the generic name probably causes it to show up in many unrelated Google searches. The Moving Picture Girls and Sara Gay are also a bit high, and this is most likely due to unrelated searches as well. Anything with the word "gay" in it pulls in a lot of people who are not looking for a vintage series book website. In fact, I checked, and many people who visit the Sara Gay page are looking for a "gay model" or for "gay modeling."

With those thoughts in mind, the stats do provide some useful information about how popular certain series are with respect to each other, but the information is flawed due to circumstances out of my control. The one obvious conclusion is that Nancy Drew is by far the most popular series. There can be no mistake about that.

Site Statistics

I like to look at the site statistics for my site, www.series-books.com, because I like to see which pages are of the most interest to site visitors. I signed up for a Google Analytics account at the start of February, so this data goes back to the first week in February. The pages are ranked from most hits to least hits. #1 and #28 both refer to the main page for the site. #27 is the file manager, which is only accessible to me. #2 is the main page of the Sweet Valley High section. It should be fairly easy to determine the pages to which most of the names refer. Here are the results:






The main page is just narrowly the most popular page, followed by the main page of the Sweet Valley High section and the main page of the Nancy Drew section. I never expected the Sweet Valley High section to be so popular. I am certain that most visitors to the Sweet Valley High section do not visit the rest of the site and that most of the rest of the site's visitors have little interest in the Sweet Valley High section. It is unusual for a subsection that does not appeal to most of the site's visitors to be more popular than the rest of the site.

It is apparent that Nancy Drew is by far the most popular of the vintage girls' series books. Trixie Belden is in second place but is far behind. The least popular pages are the pages for Dan Carter, Flash Evans, and some of Mildred Wirt Benson's other minor works.

I notice that the Betty Gordon section is receiving more hits than the Ruth Fielding section by a small margin. This interests me because I believe more people collect the Ruth Fielding books, and more people have voted for Ruth Fielding in the poll which is listed on the right side of this blog. I have some theories about Ruth Fielding and Betty Gordon, but I will save those for a later date, most likely after my poll closes.

I also notice that a few pages are missing from the list, so I still need to add the tracking code to the ones I missed back in February.

Which series are the most popular?

I have internal counters on my site that measure the number of visitors to each section of the site. It is interesting to see which sections get the most visitors. I already know which series are the most popular with collectors and which series tend to be ignored by most people. Even so, I find the data interesting since the results are not always what I expect. I have listed in order the most popular series sections followed by the number of visits to each section. This data is for the past month.

1. Sweet Valley High - 1,997 visits
2. Nancy Drew - 1, 716 visits
3. Dana Girls - 738 visits
4. Trixie Belden - 605 visits
5. Judy Bolton - 409 visits
6. Beverly Gray - 264 visits
7. Vicki Barr - 206 visits
8. Kay Tracey - 193 visits
9. Connie Blair - 190 visits
10. Outdoor Girls - 152 visits
11. Shirley Flight - 120 visits
12. Mildred Wirt - 118 visits
13. Penny Parker - 117 visits
14. Ruth Fielding - 94 visits
15. Blythe Girls - 85 visits