Ranker Spotlight: The Lord of the Rings

Originally intended as a children’s book, a follow-up to his previous work,The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings quickly developed into a massive and rich work of literature, eventually taking the form of a trilogy of novels: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Written over the course of more than a decade, Tolkien’s epic fantasy books would eventually become one of the bestselling series of all time, with 150 million copies of The Fellowship of the Ring sold. The series also has famously been adapted into Oscar-winning films. Now, Amazon is expanding Tolkien’s fantasy world with a story of its own — but don’t call it an adaptation.

Set in an era long before the events of the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Amazon Prime Video’s new TV series, The Rings of Power, is the first take on Tolkien’s work from a major studio that doesn’t directly adapt one of his novels. Rings of Power builds on details in Tolkien’s appendices to tell the story of how the eponymous rings were first forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, as well as how Sauron first came to power.

With such an ambitious project, Amazon is hoping to get buy-in from die-hard Tolkien fans. Let’s use Ranker data to take a look at the fanbase of the original novels. What can we learn? And how might Amazon and other stakeholders use this information to maximize their reach among LOTR superfans?

How The Lord of the Rings Ranks on Ranker

Though The Lord of the Rings comprises three separate books, our voters view the trilogy as a single, awe-inspiring work of fiction. The Lord of the Rings is ranked #1 on our list of The Best Fantasy Book Series (203K votes), ahead of the massively popular Harry Potter series, as well as Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic Dune. The fact that it was originally intended to be a children’s novel no doubt contributes in part to the series’ #5 ranking on The Best Books For Teens (15K votes), one spot ahead of Tolkien’s contemporary and friend C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia.

The trilogy as a whole is ranked #9 on The Best Novels Ever Written, a comprehensive list of fiction books with almost half a million votes. As if that feat weren’t impressive enough, The Fellowship of the Ring is ranked #2, making it the de facto second greatest novel ever written in the eyes of Ranker readership — The Return of the King is ranked #4. Clearly, the series’ fan base is among the broadest of any novel’s, having attracted thousands of fans passionate to vote up the series on this list over the last nine years (the list was first published in 2013). Given the series’ strong ranking on lists like The Best Books For Teens, it seems the fan base includes plenty of young people. That theory is affirmed by the fact that The Lord of The Rings is #3 on the list of Best Novels among millennials, six spots higher than it is on the list among voters overall.

All this praise aside, the book also has a prime spot on a less prestigious list: The Lord of the Rings is ranked #31 on the list of Books You’ll Never Finish Reading (1.3M votes), alongside celebrated literary behemoths like James Joyce’s Ulysses, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Amazon might see this as an opportunity, however — with so many fans of the series not thoroughly familiar with Tolkien’s highly detailed work, they have the opportunity to show fans sides of his fictional universe they otherwise might never have seen.

What Do Lord of the Rings Fans Love?

Hundreds of thousands of votes have been cast for The Lord of the Rings on some of Ranker’s most popular literature lists. What and who else do those fans vote for? Ranker Insights can tell us more about the likes and dislikes of LOTR’s biggest fans.

Other Novels

Unsurprisingly, fans of Tolkien’s epic fantasy works are drawn to similarly celebrated fantasy/sci-fi novels. That includes science fiction epics Dune and Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, both of which are 6X more likely to be beloved by Tolkien fans, as are fantasy greats like Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Those who love Tolkien’s series on Middle Earth are also 5X more likely to love his set of stories The Silmarillion, as well as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Movies

There’s a marked taste among fans of the book series for Peter Jackson’s trilogy of movies, which is a positive sign for Amazon — this fan base clearly isn’t averse to screen adaptations. In fact, when it comes to film, Lord of the Rings fans gravitate toward epic franchises, whether they are based on other fiction series, like the Harry Potter franchise, or original stories, like the first three Star Wars films. This audience is also drawn to Marvel Cinematic Universe hits like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Avengers, as well as the Indiana Jones movies.

TV

The television shows Lord of the Rings fans are most likely to love are, like their favorite novels, cerebral, imaginative, and embedded in nerd culture. At the top of their watchlist is Sherlock, the BBC update on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic character starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, who happened to co-star in one of Jackson’s adaptations of The Hobbit. They’re also partial to pop culture phenomena Star Trek: The Next Generation and Stranger Things. Finally, they tend to be fans of Game of Thrones — since HBO is putting out a prequel series of its own, that means Amazon will have to fight hard to win over fantasy TV fans. The fact that HBO got mixed reviews for its conclusion of the series (without the help of George R.R. Martin’s novels) might leave fans gravitating elsewhere for their fantasy fix.

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com, or email us at insights@ranker.com.

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