2024 Reader Survey Results

We can’t thank you enough for taking the time to complete the survey and share your thoughts, opinions, and preferences with us. We’ve spent the past few weeks poring over the results of our 2024 Reader Survey, and we thought that you might also be interested to see some of the data.

Table of Contents

• Reader Demographics
• Reading Habits
• Favorite Genre
• Reading Format
• Reading Challenges
• Improvements We’ve Made Based On the 2023 Survey Results

Full Table of ContentsShow Less

We value the time you spend taking our survey each year, and your input absolutely informs our decision-making as we plan for the future of The Book Girls’ Guide. Below the highlights from the 2024 survey results, we’ve included a list of some of the improvements that we’ve made over the last twelve months based on your feedback from the summer of 2023 survey.

Reader Demographics

A total of 1,432 of you filled out the 2024 Reader Survey (that’s 500 more than last year!). While 95% of respondents currently live in the United States, readers from 12 other countries also completed the survey.

Our group has a pretty even mix of age ranges, bookended by 1 teenager and 1 nonagenarian who filled out the survey.

Reading Habits

It can feel like everyone else has more time to read than you do, especially when you see those end-of-month collages with tons of book covers in the Facebook group. But the truth is that reading habits vary widely, and no matter where you fall, you’re in good company.

Eleven percent of you report reading 0-2 books per month, 45% read 3-5 books a month, 23% read 6-8 books a month, and 22% regularly read 9 or more.

Favorite Genre

We asked you to tell us your three favorite book genres:

1. Historical Fiction 1900s & Later – 51% of survey respondents listed 20th-century historical fiction as one of their three favorite genres.
2. Contemporary Fiction – 50% of survey respondents love contemporary fiction stories that could happen to real people in real settings, and that take place in the same time period the reader is living in.
3. Thriller/Suspense – 33% of survey respondents listed thriller/suspense novels among their top three genres.

We also asked you to tell us all of the genres you enjoy reading regularly in addition to your top three. Here’s the breakdown of the responses:

Reading Format

We asked you to tell us all of the book formats that you use. We’re glad to see that paper books still get so much love! Seventy-nine percent of you say you hold a physical book in your hands on a regular basis. But of course, you can’t beat the convenience of eBooks, and audiobooks allow many of us to multitask and enjoy far more titles than we could otherwise. We discovered that most of you utilize more than one book format in your reading.

Reading Challenges

Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents said they are excited about a new challenge theme in 2025. And 71% are looking forward to participating in one of our existing challenges next year. 

Good news! There will definitely be a new challenge theme for 2025! Our lips are sealed for now, but we’re very excited about the plan we’ve come up with for next year, and we think our fellow book lovers will be, as well! 

Like all of our previous challenges, the 2025 theme will still allow flexibility for you to read within your favorite genres while inviting you to step outside your comfort zone. Mark your calendars for Friday, November 22nd for the official announcement of next year’s challenge theme and all the details.

You’ll also continue to have access to past challenges in 2025. No matter which challenge(s) you choose next year, you’ll be in good company with many other readers joining you. We were also thrilled to see that many of you (39%)  are also looking forward to participating in at least one of our mini-challenges in 2025. This year, our mini-challenges have focused on seasonal reading, but we have been brainstorming some other fun themes for next year that we think you’ll love!

Improvements We’ve Made Based On the 2023 Survey Results

We are already brainstorming many new ideas based on your 2024 Reader Survey feedback. You may see some ideas implemented very soon, while others may take a while to make a reality. In the meantime, we thought it would be fun to highlight some of the many improvements we’ve made to The Book Girls’ Guide over the past 12 months based on the 2023 Reader’s Survey results.

• BOOK GENRES. Learning which book genres are your favorites helps us brainstorm new book lists and improve our existing lists. In the 2023 challenge, many of you noted Magical Realism as a genre you enjoy that we had not previously written any lists for. Since that time, we’ve written several magical realism book lists, and we’ve planned more. We’ve also made sure to include books from this genre throughout our reading challenge lists each month.
  • Similarly, in the 2022 survey, you asked for more mystery and thriller book recommendations, as well as historical fiction going back to the 1800s, so we’ve been working to include more of these genres each time we write a new list, as well as when we update our existing lists.
• BRAND NEW WEBSITE. Last year, we invested major time and money to completely redesign our website to improve the user experience. To be more specific, we added the following features in response to the feedback we received from our readers:
  • Challenge Lists Linked at Top of the Home Page. Challenge participants can now find links to the two most recent book lists for Read Around the USA, Decades, and Book Voyage on the home page (bookgirlsguide.com) right under each challenge image. In the 2024 survey, 62% of you reported that you’ve used and enjoyed this new website feature over the past 9 months.
  • More Details About Each Book. Many of you told us that you wanted to know the publication date for each book on our lists and that it would be helpful to have the genre of each book called out more clearly. We now have a custom-designed book block that allows you to quickly see all of the relevant information for every book, including genre, publication date, series details, Kindle Unlimited status, and more.
  • Supporting Independent Bookstores. We’ve heard from many of you that you prefer to support independent bookstores whenever possible, as do we! To this end, our book lists now include links to Bookshop.org in addition to Amazon. Bookshop.org allows you to choose your favorite independent bookstore to receive the full profit from your online book purchases.
  • Browse by Genre, Location, or Time Setting. Also on the home page, immediately below the challenge section, we added three drop-down menus to find book recommendations by Genre, Location Setting, or Time Setting.
  • Improved Book List Page. We also added another easy way to find our book recommendations. Click on Book Lists in the main menu from the top of any page. The Book List page displays every book list we’ve written from newest to oldest OR you can use the pink buttons to filter down to your specific interests.
  • BFF Login Link. Buy Me a Coffee (BMAC) BFF members can now access the BMAC login screen directly from our website. On a computer, hover over ABOUT in the main menu at the top of every screen, then select BFF Member login. On your phone or tablet, click the blue triangle next to ABOUT to expand the menu, and then you’ll see the BFF Member login option.
  • Reduced Ads on Mobile. Standard ad layouts for most websites you visit include not just one, but two annoying ads at the bottom of the screen that cover some of the content you’re trying to see on your mobile phone. Unfortunately, those two ad positions are by far the highest-paying. The lowest-paying of the two was responsible for nearly 20% of our ad income. But, this year, we turned off one of those ad spaces to make it easier for you to see more of each book description on your phone screen at one time. We’re hoping a more positive experience on the website will lead to more BMAC members and make up for the reduced ad revenue!
• READING CHALLENGE IMPROVEMENTS
  • ICYMI Challenge. We designed our 2024 In Case You Missed It Reading Challenge specifically to address many of the concerns that we heard in the reader survey. You told us that you often feel overwhelmed by your TBR (to be read) list and add books faster than you can read them. You told us that you wish you had more time to read the books you already own. And you told us that library waitlists often make it hard to keep up with the monthly challenge themes. The ICMYI Challenge encourages you to read books already on your TBR list, and maybe even already on your bookshelf. Because this challenge focuses on backlist titles, many of these books also have shorter or no library waitlists.
  • Timing of New Book Lists & Book Logs. The new reading challenge book lists now come out on the third Friday of each month (instead of the 20th). This keeps things more consistent and limits the times you get more than one email a week from us. Additionally, we now send out the Crossover list as well as the Buy Me a Coffee reading challenge bonuses on the same day, rather than a few days later. And the book logs are now available beginning the first Friday of each month, ensuring that you can log your challenge reads as soon as you finish them.
  • All 50 States Option for Read Around the USA. We heard from many of you that, after reading one book from each region of the USA, you wanted to continue with the Read Around the USA challenge until you had read a book from every state. With that in mind, we offered a self-paced version of this challenge in 2024 and provided a new 50-state version of the reading tracker.
  • Book Lists for Individual US States. Throughout this year, we’ve begun creating expanded book lists for the individual states to provide you with more reading recommendations. This is a work in progress that will continue into 2025.
  • Supplemental Book Lists for Other Challenges. Many of you have been reading with us for years, and we received feedback that you’d love even more fresh book recommendations. With that in mind, we’ve been writing a supplemental book list for one of the challenges each month. For example, in addition to the January Decades Challenge book list (books set in the 1880s and 1890s), we also curated a new list of books about the Gilded Age. And in addition to our July Book Voyage List book list (books set throughout Southern Asia), we also curated a new list of books set in India.
  • New Challenge Perk for Our Buy Me a Coffee BFFs. Our BMAC BFFs now receive printable versions of the challenge book lists each month for easy reference as they select their challenge reads.

We’re excited to use all of your comments from the 2024 survey to improve throughout the next year. Additionally, in September, we’ll conduct another survey specific to our Buy Me a Coffee BFF program. Our BFF members make everything we do possible, and we love providing them with new perks each year!