Over at A Writer of History I have been working hard to publish information about the historical fiction survey I conducted. When I began this process, I had no idea of the amount of effort required to sift through results and draw meaningful information for readers, writers and others. For example, how long do you think it might take to analyze 567 written responses to a question about favourite digital sites for recommendations or 602 responses to another question on favourite authors?

Here’s the journey so far:

• The first post considered the locations of those who responded. Although dominated by individuals from the US, the survey drew a mixed crowd from all around the world. How the survey travelled from North America to Europe and Asia is somewhat of a mystery to me.
• The second post – Readers Share their Perspectives – offered a range of results from reading habits and preferred historical time periods to methods of purchase and the print versus ebook question.
• Other posts followed: Reasons not to Read Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction would be Better If, Where Readers Find Recommendations in the non-digital realm and Connecting Readers and Writers in the digital realm.
• Top Authors went up in two different posts last week because I had to make a correction (check here and here), and this week I posted She Says, He Says highlighting male and female differences.

With the business of writing in mind, I now need to consider two questions: what have I learned and what will I do with the information.

No answers yet  but I’ll be back.