At All About Romance, we’ve built our reputation on honest, thoughtful engagement with the genre, but that only matters if we’re meeting the needs of the people who come here. Romance has changed, and so have readers. This survey is our way of finding out whether we’re keeping pace with that change. We want to know what draws you to the site, what you skip over, what you wish we covered, and how we might do a better job of making AAR a place worth returning to. If you have five minutes and a few opinions, we’d be grateful.
Similar Posts
the ask@AAR: Are we reviewing what you’d like us to?
According to PowerSearch, thus far in 2023, we’ve reviewed 361 books. Of these, 291 were published this year. 120 were DIKs. I broke these reviews into categories–and, remember, there’s lots of overlap. Category Number of reviews Number of DIKS Contemporary Romance 139 39 Historical Romance 72 29 Male/Male/Queer Romance 59 23 Romances with POC leads…
the ask@AAR: Does anyone still read short stories?
I’m on my annual large family vacation–there are three generations here, ages 17 to 85. In a conversation about choices with a few of my nephews, I referenced The Gift of the Magi. They looked at me blankly. I explained–briefly–the plot which I have always found depressing and asked what short stories they liked. Again,…
the ask@AAR: What do AAR readers owe the authors we read?
This year, I have gotten more emails from authors and publishers unhappy about negative reviews and/or comment threads here at AAR than I have in the previous five years. It’s not a huge number but we’ve typically gotten one a year in earlier times. AAR will, as it always has, continue to publish unbiased reviews….
the ask@AAR: What should AAR’s sensuality ratings look like in 2020?
For as long as AAR’s been reviewing, we’ve rated romances for how spicy/sexy/hot or not a love story is. (Our current sensuality ratings may be found here.) Currently, our standards are: Kisses: Kisses only. Many of these books are quite simply “sweet.
the ask@AAR: Do you read self-help books?
Peeps–I’ve been a bit blue lately. I’m on crutches for six weeks–months after that with a cane–due to a soft tissue hip repair. Covid continues to threaten so many things. I have a neighbor who is as nasty as he can be and that just bums me out. My lovely sister-in-law suggested I read one…
the ask@AAR: How do you feel about multiple reviews?
An ongoing consideration at AAR is whether or not it’s worth doing more than one review per book. Typically, we have a list of books reviewers can choose from and one reviewer picks a book and reviews it. Sometimes, if there’s a lot of interest in a release, we do a Pandora’s Box where reviewers…

I’d like more Blogs please.
More reviews, of a greater variety. This site keeps missing major releases on the historical and contemporary romance side of things and I’m interested in what your reviewers have to say on them. Less posts with AI nonsense on them. More opinion blogs, as long as they’re not blatant clickbait.
I’d be happy to fill out a survey but not one that requires me to create a Google account. FYI
You can fill out a Google Form without a Google account.
I tried to do that and it told me I had to have a Google account. I used a sock to answer the quiz because of that.
Ugh. You guys are right–it’s because I set it to one answer per person and, if the form has that limit, you have to have a Google address. When I’ve used SurveyMonkey, they use I.P. addresses. I have changed that setting and now others should be able to do it without signing up.
Sorry and thanks!
I appreciate your efforts to accommodate me but just FYI I’m still being asked to create a Google account – even to fill out the survey as a “guest”.
AAR is my go to place for romance reading first because it is a great site; but also because it is a website and I don’t have to be an app user or social media user to access it. I very reluctantly have kept FB and GR accounts that I created years ago, but I rarely access them (maybe 2 or 3 times a year?), I never post to them, and I make absolutely sure I am logged out of them before I close my browser windows (same for Amazon) because they don’t actually log me out when I leave them, the sneaky *holes. I stopped using Google products for the same reason. I refuse to give corporations any more information about me than I absolutely have to.
If you can, I’d try taking the survey from another browser — I was able to fill it out just now without logging in.
Great suggestion. Thank you! Interesting that Foxfire worked when Edge did not. The good news is that I didn’t have to use Chrome – which is what I expected to find.
After I did the survey, I thought of something. I wish people would make use of the Agora for discussions, thoughts, etc. that aren’t necessarily responses to the blog. A place to chat.
Thanks. I think the site design isn’t super helpful for the Agora and that’s on me.
I am not sure why the Agora is neglected by members. I’ve put a few things on there over the years but there were either one or two short replies or none at all. It seems to have degenerated into a frequent update about kindle points and that would appear, at a glance, to be its sole function as nothing else ever appears. Maybe the kindle updates could have a different place?
In the past I’ve commented on Agora posts, but like you say, they don’t seem to go anywhere any more. I’m interested, but I forget to check these days. Perhaps the Kindle points updates could go with the daily book sales updates? And perhaps a small change in layout would help boost the visibility of Agora, although I now see it is linked at the top of the page, and I’ve just skimmed over that before.
In my case, I tried to register an account but never got an approval email back.