The OF Blog: Interesting poll results, viewership patterns

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Interesting poll results, viewership patterns

The results of the China Miéville/PSS poll question asked both here and at wotmania were quite illuminating. First the results of the poll here, with 95 people voting over the past week:

What is your opinion of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station?

Loved it - seminal work of the New Weird
46 (48%)
Liked it - good book
16 (16%)
OK - decent, but could have been better
4 (4%)
Meh - not the worst, but far from great
10 (10%)
Blech - I'd rather read you-know-who
1 (1%)
Haven't read it yet, but might
12 (12%)
Absolutely refuse to read it
1 (1%)
Hadn't heard of it before now
5 (5%)

Of the people who had read it (83% of those responding), those who loved PSS were a distinct majority (46 out of 77), with few who haven't read it yet and (thankfully) very few who have been living under a rock the past 8 years. Now for the results from wotmania's poll asking the same question, with a sample size of 185 votes:

Loved it - seminal work of the New Weird (20.00%)
Liked it - good book (11.89%)
OK - decent, but could have been better (2.70%)
Meh - not the worst, but far from great (2.16%)
Blech - I'd rather read you-know-who (1.62%)
Haven't read it yet, but might (23.78%)
Absolutely refuse to read it (3.78%)
Hadn't heard of it before now (34.05%)


We see at this site created originally as a fansite for a bestselling epic fantasy author, Robert Jordan, that the readership is nowhere near as aware of Miéville's first Bas-Lag novel. While there is still a majority of those who've read the work who loved the book, the number of those who haven't even heard of the book before the poll question is disconcerting. But even more interesting was the realization (again, this is from another wotmania Quickpoll question for its Other Fantasy section) that even though I and Jake are the two main mods there and are the two main posters here at the OF Blog, the readership there overlaps very little with the readership here:

How often do you check the OF Blog (http://ofblog.blogspot.com)? (184 Votes)
Asked from 2/4/2008 to 2/16/2008

Almost daily (4.35%)
A couple of times a week (5.43%)
A few times a month (8.70%)
Maybe once in a blue moon (21.20%)
I just read it for the first time now (3.80%)
Never/haven't heard of it (29.35%)
You're such a shameless pimp (27.17%)

So it shall be quite interesting to see what differences, if any, shall arise from the question I'll now pose in the Blog Poll. Another mod (who incidentally has his own blog here) wrote this excellent question based on a discussion elsewhere and I'm curious to see what the answers will be:

What do you think of maps included in epic fantasy books?

I'll post the comparisons next week sometime.


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