Weekend Update: Alphabet Soup Book Club Winners!
Wow, how late is this? I knew I was in for it when I'd decided that there would be a giveaway for Alphabet Soup based on participation, because that meant assigning points, which meant tracking points, and all kinds of other things. So despite my giving you all a deadline of February to get your polls answered and comments in, it took a LONG TIME for me to tally up these figures and decide how I would handle the giveaway for Alphabet Soup. Don't think I've done nothing but stress about numbers though: the spreadsheets were printed and have been sitting on my desk for a while. I've just decided to bite the bullet and get it over with.
Before we get to the Alphabet Soup Winners, I wanted to really look at the Alphabet Soup book club as a whole, to determine how successful it was or wasn't. I did this in 2011 for Year One, and I thought it was fascinating. It also helps me determine what kinds of books to consider for future challenges. So let's see how 2011's Alphabet Soup shaped up, shall we?
Most Readers: Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, the month with the highest number of readers was the very first, when we read Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion with 42 readers. I think there's lots of different reasons for that: for starters, Chalion is something of a classic, so a lot of people had read it. Second, because it was the very first month of Alphabet Soup, everyone was really excited about the book club and ready to participate. We all know how that goes, right? As the year goes on, the commitment to book clubs tends the wane, and that's okay. :) Further proving this theory are the second and third place finishers: Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go with 35.5 readers in March, and Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling with 29.5 readers in February.
So either we simply had EXCELLENT picks for the start of the year and/or people were more excited to participate at the start of the year than they were as the year progressed. :)
Fewest Readers: We had a tie for the fewest readers for a challenge, and that tie occurred two months in a row, in August and September (perhaps people were overwhelmed with going back to school?). The poor books were Nicola Griffith's Ammonite in August and Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain in September, both with 16.5 readers. Between my theory that participants were probably distracted, especially if they were students, it's interesting to note that both books are considered soft science fiction, and both books would've been right at home on the Women of Science Fiction book club list. Which saddens me. I don't know if the titles just weren't that interesting, or if people were just too busy to read them. In third place with fewest readers was in July, with Max Brooks' World War Z with 17 readers, which really shocked me, because I thought it was a popular book, and that more people had read it and would've commented, whether or not they'd read it for the challenge.
Most Readers for a Challenge Period: this was a stat that, in 2009-2010, yielded a different result than most readers, because this stat focused on readers who actually read the books during the challenge period, instead of reading the book before or after the challenge period. However, in 2011, the stats remain the same as "Most Readers." First place is January, with Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion (37 readers), second place is March, with Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go (31 readers), and third place is February, with Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling (29.5 readers). By contrast, the lowest "read for challenge period" month was September's Beggars in Spain (12 readers, ouch!), then July's World War Z (13 readers), and then third place, on a really strange note, was December's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente (15 readers, and here I suspect the holidays caught up with people and ate their reading time).
Most Comments: Tracking comments isn't an exact science, because people can sometimes go off on tangents. That being said, the results varied a bit more here. First place, with no surprise, was The Curse of Chalion, which generated 131 comments. But second place was October's Graveminder by Melissa Marr, which generated 97 comments, and notably the least favorite pick out there, if I recall. Third place was Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which generated 90 comments, and that's not surprising because the book is a classic and plenty of people wanted to talk about it and why I didn't finish the damn thing. :)
And as a whole, even the lowest stats for comments is still pretty awesome: November yielded 51 comments, and that was for Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Comment-wise, I'm really happy with the book club, because for me, discussion is where it's at, and usually, my book club reviews are what generates the most discussion (aka the most comments), and no blogger would say no to that!
Calico's Dares: This was a new feature in 2011 (and on hiatus in 2012), but I thought I'd see if there were any interesting stats to be gained from the Dares. One thing I noticed was that if people didn't participate in the actual challenge, they would participate in the dare, which is cool. I think the appeal of the dare, too, was for readers to read something they already knew I liked, rather than chancing something they weren't sure about, you know? The most popular dares were, in first place, February, where I dared you to read Gregory Frost's Shadow Bridge, which is actually a misleading stat, because if you read that, you kind of had to rush out and read the conclusion, Lord Tophet, so there was the chance to get double points for the dare that month! At any rate, we had 13 readers. In second place was in May with Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief with 12 readers, and in third was in April, with M.K. Hobson's The Native Star with 11.5 readers. The month with the fewest readers? December only had 4 readers for Karen Traviss' City of Pearl (which is sad, because again, women writing SF isn't getting any love!), followed by November and June with 4.5 readers each for Karin Lowachee's Gaslight Dogs and Kim Wilkins' The Veil of Gold respectively (also sad, because Lowachee has a criminally small fanbase, and Wilkins' book was just absolutely lovely, but I fear contrary comments about the author in the dare announcement may have scared off some readers who would've otherwise tried it).
Overall Points and What I Learned: overall points tallies up voters, number of people who participated, number of people who read for the challenge, number of people who left comments, etc, so it should come as no surprise that January won the year with The Curse of Chalion (93 points), March came in second with The Knife of Never Letting Go (79.5 points), and February came in third with Fledgling (74.5 points). I should also note that because sign-ups were done on a year-long basis (rather than signing up each month you thought you would participate), we had an unusually high number of people signing up: the highest month had 79 people who'd say they'd participate, and that was in the summer, but then the year ended with 78 people on the sign-up list.
What did I learn from all of this craziness? For starters, if you want a lot of people to just sign-up, let them know that the only way they'll be eligible for a giveaway is to sign up! I kid you not: last year, I posted my stats and giveaway winners back in March, and in March, my sign-ups shot up. Of course, it's easy to sign up for a book club challenge, because no one does so without having every intention of participating at least some of the time. But life does get in the way, or sometimes the selections aren't as interesting as you'd hoped. Out of those 78 people who were still on the list by the end of the year, only 19 people did not participate in the slightest, which means they didn't read, they didn't discuss, and they didn't bother with the dares. Everyone else managed to sneak in one or two points at minimum.
I also learned that while Calico's Dares were interesting, I probably won't do them in conjunction with a book club challenge. A lot of people mentioned they felt like it was an additional book club. They knew they didn't have to read the dare, but knowing I was tracking participation was a huge draw, so people had double the books on their plate. And in a lot of cases, people read the dares over the challenge book, which -- while I knew would happen -- makes me think they would've tried harder to read the challenge book if the dare hadn't been on the table. After all, if you read the dare, you participated that month, right? Right. While I was thrilled to bring in a few new readers to some old favorites of mine, I would've rather had more participation in the book club discussions.
Another note: before the book club kicked off, I stressed over whether or not I should allow myself to DNF a challenge read. In the end, I decided it was okay, and gave into that temptation in May with Snow Crash. I regret that. As the book club leader, I set the example and the tone for the rest of the book club, and if I don't finish something, that gives you, the reader, even more of an excuse to lay something aside. It might seem like a small thing, but I did see more DNFs from readers after my own DNF, and I think it's a subconscious thing: you knew that there was a chance I wouldn't finish reading something; therefore, it was okay if you didn't either. I think for some of those DNFs, if those readers had known I was going to finish the book come hell or high water, a greater effort might have been made to finish? Maybe I'm kidding myself, but regardless, I pledge to finish EVERY book club selection from here on out, regardless of whether or not it puts me to sleep.
As a whole, I have to be honest: I wasn't overly thrilled with the book club selections. The theme, Alphabet Soup, was cool on paper: the idea was to tackle my TBR pile and knock some stuff out of the way. However, I cheated a bit and added newer titles that I'd bought but hadn't read yet. Also, I didn't realize that just because a book was in my TBR didn't mean I wanted to read it right away. In other words, I could've waited to read the Heinlein, the Stephenson, and the Brooks. There were a lot of selections I ended up not looking forward to, and that's a shame.
Part of that's my fault: as an incentive to sign up, I told book clubbers they could nominate the books that would end up on the poll we'd vote on. Usually, I took the books with the most nominations, and it seemed the books with the most nominations were not always the books everyone else wanted to read the most. For example: Heinlein and Stephenson: I swear those books were nominated (and subsequently voted for) because book clubbers had already read them and knew they could have a free month, in which they would discuss but not have to read anything. Having two hard SF classics two months in a row taught me to be a wee bit more careful in what books I put in the poll thereafter, but it was hard to keep the book club exciting and fresh with books that were just languishing in the TBR pile. We didn't get a whole lot of variety during the year, and while I'm glad some of the selections made your year-end favorite lists, very few of them made mine. I've learned my lesson, and while we definitely did have some great reads, the Alphabet Soup Theme is definitely retired.
However, I should note: the stats for this year, in terms of number of people reading for the challenge period, are pretty on par for the stats from Year One (which covered 2009-2010, a total of 16 months). In fact, in Year One, we had far lower lows, which just goes to show you that theme means everything, and if people aren't interested in the theme, people won't participate no matter what the incentive. We actually had MORE people participating on a monthly basis for Alphabet Soup than we did for Year One, so really, despite my own personal feelings that it wasn't as successful a book club, if you look at the stats, Alphabet Soup was actually more successful than Year One. More readers, more comments, and more voters, which is awesome since I'm comparing Alphabet Soup's 12 months to Year One's 16.
But of course, knowing you could win prizes for Alphabet Soup made all the difference, I'm betting!
Alphabet Soup Winners: And now, after all my pontificating, the moment you've been waiting for! The winners from 2011's Alphabet Soup Book Club! It's been a long-time coming, eh?
For Year One, nobody really knew I was tracking participation, so I was able to create categories of winners based on the stats I was tracking. For example, person who read the most months in a row, or person with the most participation points (which includes reading, commenting, reviewing, and the dare). For 2011, I couldn't do that: you knew I was tracking participation, which meant we had a whopping total of four people who participated every month. And by participated, I mean they read the challenge book, during the challenge period, with or without the dare. So rather than dividing everything into neat categories, I tallied up the points and took the top five. These top five will receive emails detailing what I'd like to send them, so please, if you name is in the top five, stay tuned for an email!
The top five participants for your 2011 Alphabet Soup Challenge are:
intoyourlungs with a whopping 49 points, who participated 12 months in a row! A special note: 49 points is the highest number of points you could earn last year, so that means intoyourlungs did EVERYTHING you could possibly do for the Alphabet Soup Book Club, and she deserves a special round of applause just for that!
The rest played out as follows:
A Bookseller Recommends with 37 points, who participated 12 months in a row!
kellicat with 31.5 points, who participated 12 months in a row!
denelian with 30 points, who participated 12 months in a row!
temporaryworlds with 28.5 points, who participated 11 months, but not in a row. :)
If your name is on the above list, please keep an eye on your email to learn about what you've won!
Lastly, I'd like to list some honorable mentions, simply because while not everyone could participate EVERY month, many made quite a valiant effort, and deserve to be recognized. Without all of you, the book club would have been nothing. So thank you. :)
bardiphouka
burgandyice
celestialgldfsh
eurystomus ***
maibyers
mectech
outcomewolves
phoenixreads
rocalisa
shel99
spiffikins ***
starmetal_oak
stfg ***
teiira
Tethyan Books
*** = these three should keep an eye on email too! While not high on points totals, they did participate 10+ months of the challenge, and deserve recognition too!
And that's it! As you all well know, 2012's Theme Park Book Club is well under way. No, I'm not tracking participation this year. Last year was WAY too complex and WAY too hard to keep up with. That doesn't mean there won't be surprise giveaways though, but you won't be eligible if you don't participate! How does that work if I'm not tracking points? Well, I can't reveal all of my secrets. :) But it's not to late to participate. April's selection is In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield, and May is C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station. As always, I'm looking forward to your discussion!
Sign up for monthly book club REMINDERS: enter your email addy here.
Happy Reading, Congrats to the Winners, and a big fat THANK YOU to every single person who participated in 2011. Whether you participated one time or every month, the book club wouldn't have been the same without you.