Survey results and decision time for me!

Alright participants! As you know I put up a survey to be taken by those of you who participated in the BBF last month. I've gotten some interesting results and I'm going to share them with you and explain how they influenced my decisions.

First, let's get a little info about who took the survey. (Not specifically of course, just an overview) For the BBF the participants were about 1/3 second timers and 2/3 first timers. That's not a surprise since this BBF was much bigger than the first and it's only the second one. Let's see the ratio of people who took the survey:

Pretty darn close to 1/3 first time and 2/3 second time, so I'm pretty happy with this.

Let's move on to question #2 Would you like to participate in the next BBF?

Most of you said yes, other said maybe, so I'm pretty happy with the fact that no one said "no." Let's look at why there were "maybe" answers in there. For the most part, the ones who said "maybe to this question, said "no" to the next one. Did you see any positive results from the fair?

Now, a few people said "no" and does not make me happy. I will say that BBF is not a guarantee that you will sell books. It is merely a means to get your name and the title of your book out there. The road to sales is paved with the possibility of discovery. How will you get discovered by your potential readers? That is the goal here. There is no proven method of selling books. That being said, I still want to work to get this number up. I want everyone saying "yes" to this question next time around. I'm working to streamline things a bit and we'll talk more on that soon.

The next question is: How did you feel about the 4 day length of the BBF? Here are the results:

Only one person said it was too long. I have a feeling that it may be due to the complexity and the email chaos that made this person feel this way. It could also be that not everyone wants to blog everyday, but I do not require that you blog everyday of the BBF. I only require two posts from you for the duration of the fair. If you'd like to do more, you can. That is up to you. Six of you said it was too short and twelve said it was just right. This has lead me to extend the BBF to five days instead of four. As for the days of the week it will be on . . . well, look at these results:

At first glance it looks like the results are all over the place. No one is agreeing. That's somewhat true. four of you said you were apathetic about the days of the week, so I'm going to assume you're down for anything. Those of you who said "other" had explanations that ranged from starting it on Wednesday to starting it on a Friday. Since it seems so divided, I made an executive decision after doing some research. My research pointed out that the most click-throughs (clicks on links posted to twitter) happen Monday through Friday. Therefore, in the interest of getting the most click-throughs, the BBF will be Monday through Friday.

On to the next controversial subject. How do you feel about being paired with authors by the organizer according to genre? Here are the results:

I was pretty astounded that 73% of you were willing to let me pair you up manually. I honestly though the results would be more of a 50/50 split. I'm still a little uncomfortable with the 21% who said they would not want to be automatically paired up. This is where I have to make a hard decision. 

For the next BBF I will be assigning partners based on genre and other factors. During sign ups, you will be asked how many spots you will open up to individual promotion on your blog during the BBF. That number will also represent the number of times you will be featured on a blog in an individual post. (There will be more opportunities to be featured through book bloggers and events open to all participants) There will be a spot on the sign up form where you can REQUEST to work with certain authors. I will try my best to meet all requests, but there may be times that I can't fulfill all of them. This is a trial and if it goes well, I'll be assigning partners for all future BBF's and if it doesn't, I'll have to come up with something else.

What I'm trying to do is cut down on the crazy email so that we can focus on creating interesting and remarkable content for the BBF. Please give this system a chance and you might be pleasantly surprised.