Romance Reading Survey by Maya Rodale

This isn't a review of the book Dangerous Books for Girls: the bad reputation of romance novels, explained by romance author Maya Rodale, though I'm really looking forward to reading it. This post is about the survey Rodale conducted.

Before Rodale wrote her book, she ran a long survey among various fiction readers about their reading habits and demographics. According to Rodale, "There were over 800 survey respondents and the participants were mainly via word of mouth [and] Twitter, but shared by many authors/editors/bloggers, so it's not just my audience. Most but not all findings match up with the [Romance Writers of America's reader stats].

Here are Rodale's romance reading survey results: Romance Readers and Non-Romance Readers. It is interesting to compare Rodale's results with RWA's results. Far fewer romance-reading men responded to her survey, so the results are skewed a bit.

The following infographic is based on Rodale's survey.

[click to enlarge]


The following infographic is based on RWA, Nielsens Books and Consumer Tracker, and Rodale's survey.

[click to enlarge]