Reading Habits Poll Results

I was very happy so many people decided to participate in the polls I ran last week. A few more would give a better basis for analysis, but there were some minor hiccups such as no one being able to vote for part of the first day.  I'm still not sure why that was. But the results are in and I have gleaned a few interesting facts given the amount of data I have to work with. First the raw data.

How often do you read outside of SFF?

Nearly every other book    31    (41%)
Once every couple of months    32    (43%)
Once or twice a year    9    (12%)
Never    2    (2%)
Voters: 74

So more than 80% of poll takers do vary their reading quite regularly, which is quite a bit than I expected.  Only a few people rarely step outside the genre. My earlier theory that most speculative fiction readers keep to their own is totally blown out of the water by this. Now on to what exactly are we reading other than SF/F.

Besides SFF what other kinds of books do you read?

Thriller 36 (53%)
Mystery 42 (62%)
General Literature 45 (67%)
Science 22 (32%)
History 39 (58%)
Travel 9 (13%)
Humor 15 (22%)
Bio/Memoirs 15 (22%)
Romance 9 (13%)
They publish books outside of SFF? 3 (4%)

Votes: 67

There's quite a bit of interesting data to glean here. First, a large portion of voters are Mystery and Thriller fans. Not too much of a surprise given the popularity of the genres.  Secondly, more than half of voters are avid History readers.  That makes a lot of sense as much of Fantasy and Science Fiction is steeped in History by some stroke whether borrowing from cultural stylings, actual events such as battles, or royal dealings. The lack of Romance readers took me a back a little. I'm not sure if this is indicative of a low female readership here or simply that the ladies stopping by are more Urban Fantasy fans nowadays.  Sales numbers of UF books would certainly show a large slope going that way.

This section of the poll also makes me want to review more Travel Narratives here as I think speculative fans are missing out of some real life adventures.  Travel books often have a sense of hyper-reality about them anyway and most show a good journey for those Epic fans out there.

Is there anything I missed about the results?


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