BWW By The Numbers
We’ve known anecdotally that the Burlington Writers Workshop has grown quickly this year. Here are some numbers that demonstrate this growth.
Since January 1, 2013, we’ve added 206 members to the BWW on Meetup.com. This is not the total number of members who have joined. We’ve lost members, too. Most people don’t tell me why they leave, but when they do, it’s usually because they move away from Vermont.
Since January 1, 2013, 135 people have attended BWW meetings. Meetup.com claims 150 people have attended meetings in 2013, but some people claim to have attended a meeting when they haven’t, so I’ve marked that number down 10% to better reflect reality.
Who has attended the most meetings? Aside from yours truly (174), the second most-frequent BWW attendee has 64 meetings to her credit.
Total membership as of August 25, 2013: 343
Total number of members who have attended meetings: 184 (53%)
Total number of members who have attended only one meeting: 57. This means that 31% of people who attend a meeting have not returned, which means more than two-thirds of folks who attend meetings come back.
Web traffic. See photo. Can you hear me now? Good!
Where do people come from? Burlington (249), South Burlington (12), Essex Junction (8), Montpelier (7), and Winooski (5) are the best represented cities/towns. Note that not all members identify their hometowns.
How many copies of The Best of the Burlington Writers Workshop 2013 have sold so far? We’ve sold 134 books through our website and local bookstores and at our readings. We’ve also sold 6 ebooks through Amazon.com. We’ve also given away 60 books to folks who donated through Kickstarter.com to bring the book to life. And then there were press/review copies I’ve sent out.
How many meetings have we held? As it turns out, the 200th meeting of the BWW will be at the Burlington Book Festival on Saturday, September 21st. It’s important to note that it took us 2.5 years to reach our 100th meeting, but only one year and eight months to reach our 200th meeting.
All these numbers are interesting without being very important. What matters most in this workshop are the people who make it such an energetic and supportive community of writers. For the first few years, the BWW was a core group of about a dozen people. We did just fine then, and we’re doing just fine now. So long as we focus on our mission—to provide thoughtful feedback to our peers—we’ll be around for a long, long time.
