Every year for the past five years, we’ve done a reader survey in August to take the temperature of the blog. Thanks so much to those of you who participated! Your responses are so helpful, as well as entertaining and funny. I always feel like I’m among kindred spirits when I’m reading through them.
So who’s actually reading this blog? Let’s take a look.
The basics:
As far as age is concerned, MMD readers are all over the map. The average age of the MMD reader has gotten older over the past five years. I think my mom (aka Blog Evangelist Extraordinaire) might be responsible for this. Thanks, Mom!
80% of MMD readers are married or partnered (also an increase over years past). 56% of you have children living at home. About three-quarters of you are parents.
I didn’t even bother asking your gender this year. Year after year, 95% of MMD readers are female.
How you read the blog: 
Just over half of you prefer to get your new blog posts by email, but that leaves plenty of you who get info on new posts in your favorite feed reader, on social media, or by going straight to the blog.
All about the books
We do book talk around here, but I’ve never asked you how—and how much—you all read.
The answer: you read a lot. Those end-of-the-world statistics about how many adults never read a book after college? That’s not you. 88% of you read at least one book every month.
(Your comments on this question cracked me up. You’re right, if we do this again, I should ask how many of you read more than 50, 75, 100, or even more books per year!)
While just over 10% of you prefer to read ebooks, the vast majority of you prefer to read paper books or a healthy mix of paper and ebooks.
Based on 5+ years of blog comments around here, I wasn’t surprised to see that nearly 55% of you most often get your books from the library. We have a lot of heavy library users, employees, and librarians reading this blog.
When you do buy books, Amazon is your favorite place to get them. This surprised me. MMD readers also love to get their books from local indie bookstores, local chain bookstores, and used bookstores. (Because you could choose more than one option, these numbers don’t add up to 100%.)
The fun stuff
I asked you to answer the questions, “What’s saving your life right now?” and “What’s killing you these days?” It was so interesting to see which responses came up over and over again.
Frequent mentions as current life-savers:
• Books and reading
• Coffee (with a smaller but vocal contingent leaning on hot and iced tea)
• Cooking/meal planning
• Audiobooks
• The library
• Your bullet journal
Unusual and interesting life-savers:
• Air conditioning
• Summer
• Early mornings
• Fresh flowers, in the garden and in bouquets
• Almond/coconut milk
• September Vogue is almost here!
What’s killing you? These answers also clustered:
• Heat/humidity
• Work
• Time management/busy-ness/tough schedules
• Kids/toddlers
• Politics/News
Unusual/unique responses to what’s killing you:
• Trying to pick audiobooks for my upcoming move/road trip across the country
• Mosquitos
• Vegetables (specifically, getting them into our dinners)
• Cell phone battery
• Job hunting in the humanities and arts fields
What you want
Several of you pointed out to me that in the past, surveys have said you wanted a podcast … and now there is one! And that you wanted a book club … and now there is one! Now that these things are reality, I’d forgotten these were things you’d been asking for for years. I pay attention to these responses!
These were oft-mentioned responses:
• More “Anne”—more about my life, my clothes, my family, especially my kids. I was a little surprised at how many of you specifically said you loved the What I Learned and What I’m Into posts, and that you actually notice if I sit out a month on these! (Should I tell you now the clothes part is unlikely and the kids part isn’t happening, but I appreciate your interest? Also, if you’re new around here, there’s a whole blog category called My Life.)
• Podcast transcripts. (I hear you on this; that would be nice. The big barrier is getting transcripts is crazy expensive.)
• For the podcast, many of you wanted much more information about every book in the show notes, while others wanted me to eliminate the list of books from the show notes because it feels “spoiler-ish” to you.
• More personality posts, fewer personality posts. More posts about faith/religious stuff, fewer posts about faith/religious stuff. More posts about literary fiction, fewer posts about literary fiction. More and less of pretty much everything.
• Resoundingly: more bullet journal stuff, and more Tieks! (I’ve been working on a review page for ages. It is coming. In the meantime, the closest thing I have to a Tieks review is right here.)
Of interest
• I learned a new acronym: FOMOOAGB. Fear of missing out on a good book. Y’all are my people, obviously.
• I love how often the phrase “kindred spirit” comes up in these results every year.
• Many of you expressed the sentiment that this reader captured so nicely about the impact this blog has had on your reading life: Modern Mrs Darcy “mirrors my tastes while introducing me to books and authors I might not otherwise have read.”
That’s it for 2016. Thanks again for reading, and for helping me make this a happier corner of the internet. xoxo -Anne