Gay Romance Readers Survey: Demographics and Buying Habits

I'm teaching a three-hour class on LGBT Romance at the upcoming residency for the Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction MFA program and while preparing my lecture I realized I didn't have much in the way of verifiable demographic information about readers of gay romance. Searching the internet I found lots of conjecture, but apart from Jessewave's diverse and informative polls, very little in the way of hard data.

So I decided to conduct a survey of the members of the GoodReads M/M Romance Group. The response was sensational. In less than a month I got over 1500 responses. I am deeply grateful to everyone who took the time to answer the survey. Your help has been instrumental in preparing the very best class on our genre that I can present.

Below are the results of the survey, but first, a note about wording, in particular, my choice of the word "purchase" in several of the questions.  Many readers have pointed out that through libraries, giveaways, and free fiction offerings, they read many more gay romance books than they buy. I appreciate that distinction and in fact, it is something I gave quite a bit of thought to when I put the survey together. Ultimately, because the class I'm teaching is for a commercial fiction writing program, I decided to go with information regarding books readers are buying, as opposed to reading. That said, I think a followup survey looking into gay romance reading habits would be a fascinating project.

Finally, if you have any obsevations or questions regarding the survey, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Now on to the survey:

  The day after I posted the survey, I realized I had forgotten to add BDSM as a subgenre. It got a whopping 43 write in responses. Other write-in subcategories included humor, young adult (12 responses), characters of color, urban fantasy, horror, gay for you (8), non- and dub-con, rockers/musicians (5), steampunk (6), transgender, yaoi, and sports.

 

Question 5 detail: 

Answer Options			Rating Average
Cover art			2.01
Recommendation from someone you know			2.33
Reader reviews			2.43
Professional reviews			1.90
Book blurb			2.67
Sales rank (the book appears on bestseller lists, etc.)			1.33
You enjoyed other books by the same author			2.80
The book is offered at a discount			1.97
The book is in a subgenre you enjoy			2.53
Author blog tour			1.27
Positive interaction with author at a public event (convention, etc.)			1.54
Positive reaction to author web presence (social media, blog, website, etc.)			1.76
Promotional item given out at a public event (postcards, pens, etc.)			1.20

 

Of the 17.27 percent listed above as other, Smashwords had 52 write-ins, Kobo had 33, Apple had 27, and Bookstrand had 19. Many, many respondents mentioned individual publishers, indicating that large-scale distribution has not entirely wiped out publisher-brand loyalty among gay romance readers. Comments also indicate that respondants are aware authors earn a higher royalty on publisher site sales, and make an effort to support their favorite authors accordingly.

 

 

I'd love feedback on this survey from our community of readers and authors. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment or question to this post. 

Comments

[Charley Descoteaux]

Thanks for posting the results, Jessica! I'm a member of the GR MM group and was curious to see how this survey came out.

The big surprise for me is the breakdown of readers by how they identify regarding orientation. I never would've expected us bisexuals to outnumber gay men!

Now I'm curious whether the low rating for multicultural is due to a lack of interest or a lack of selection. I'd definitely like to see more published in that genre.

[Ceciliatan]

Fantastic! Some great data here.

My main takeaway is that readers of M/M are voracious readers overall. It's also interesting to see that it looks like many readers are just discovering this genre...?

I'd love to see the results correlated against romance as a whole and/or "mainstream" romance to see if the demographics are the same or how they differ.

[Jessica Freely]

Sorry for not responding here sooner. Life's been a mad whirl.

Charley, ditto about multicultural. Lately I've been very aware of how few gay romance books there are with African American heroes. I don't know what's up with that but I too would like to see more and I don't think we're the only ones.

Cecila -- thanks! Yeah, it would be fascinating to compare this with a mainstream romance readership. I noticed that straight romance had the second largest response in the favorite other genre question. I wonder if these responses are indicative of romance readers in general, or if not how they differ.

Hmm. The Goodreads M/M Romance group made this so easy for me. I wonder where the best place to survey mainstream romance readers would be?

[Ceciliatan]

Hm, I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't some surveys already out there to be compared, but for a direct comparison, I wonder if a site like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books could be interested in running one?

[Jessica Freely]

Argh! I just found your comment in my spam folder, Cecilia. Grr, Typepad.

Anyway, yeah, that's a great idea!

[Jessica Freely]

Hey, I found a survey of general romance readers on the RWA site: http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=582

There does appear to be a fair amount of overlap in some areas.

[A. Catherine Noon]

Thank you for such a thorough survey! As an author of M/M romance, I found it particularly useful.

And, my brother-in-law Ken Clothier teaches in the drama department at Seton Hill! Small world, jeez. :)

If you ever need/want author input for these kinds of studies, my coauthor and I are very interested in your work and would love to participate in whatever way you need/want.

Have a great weekend!

[Jessica]

Hi Catherine, thanks for the feedback! I will definitely keep you guys in mind for future projects. I'd love to do another one of these surveys, expanded, but I have a lot of other irons in the fire at the moment, and Survey Monkey cost me $25/mo when I was doing this one. Still hoping to get back to this at some point, though.