Reader survey results!

We recently opened a reader survey. We’ve received 71 responses so far, which I think is pretty good. The survey can still be completed here.

This post will undoubtedly be a little dry, but since the results are collectively yours, I’d like to share them with you and offer a few musings:

Most readers heard about New Escapologist via The Idler or Early Retirement Extreme. Looks like a good reference is significantly more valuable than dicking around with Twitter or Facebook.

Most readers rate the printed magazine ‘Good’ (4/5) or ‘Brilliant’ (5/5), which is quite a complement. The main suggestions for improvement were ‘more articles about practicalities’ and ‘more esoteric, historical or philosophical pieces’, with very few people lusting after fiction or poetry. This suggests we’re largely doing the right thing and you can expect more of the same in future issues.

Most readers rate the blog as ‘Good’ (4/5). Most (30) advise we change nothing about the blog, but significant minorities want longer (10) and more frequent entries (14). Four people suggested we ‘kill the blog’, which is fair enough.

The majority of readers (53) agree that the price of the magazine is right. Very few suggest that it is too expensive (6) and fewer still too cheap (2).

A surprising 50% of participants said they wouldn’t be against seeing advertising in New Escapologist. This won’t happen, but I was surprised to see that half of people don’t mind the presence of ads.

Many people would attend a New Escapologist event in their local area, the most popular formats being ‘a talk from one of the writers’ (53) or ‘a talk from a special guest’ (40). We’ll see what we can do.

Most readers (47) report that a New Escapologist newsletter would be welcome in their email inboxes, though a small but significant minority were against it (17). As a result, we’ve already launched an irregular newsletter but offer an unsubscribe option for those who don’t want it.

Most readers (43) are happy with two magazines per year. A small but significant minority (17) would like to see more frequent releases. At present, we consider our release schedule to be ‘irregular’, with a twice-yearly release being the natural output so far. Let’s remain open to the possibility of upsizing to three releases in 2011.

The average reader is an educated young male with a full- or part-time white-collar job and a rented, mortgaged or owned home. There are significant numbers of readers who do not share this profile (most significantly the 27 female readers who completed the survey). Your favourite activities are music, reading and libraries, cinema, and walking.

Most of our readers are in the UK, but there are significant numbers in the USA and Canada and small numbers elsewhere in the world.

Thanks again for taking part, if you did. The survey is still open and can be completed here