Free Tools for Book Club Voting and Ranking Polls
One of the best ways to maintain high engagement in your book club is to give members a say in picking the next book you’ll read. However, unless you’re prepared to move your entire club onto a purpose-built platform like Bookclubs.com, you’ll need to pick an off-the-shelf voting tool for the job.
The features you need are pretty simple, but there are a LOT of tools to pick between. All you really want is (1) a straightforward ranking or voting method, (2) the ability to ask some multiple-choice questions if needed, and (3) to get simple, actionable results that are ready to be shared with your members. Not too much to ask… right?
Personally, I think it’s important that we first mention the most common survey tools that book clubs try using but often give up on because they’re simply not suited for this kinda of project. Alternatively, feel free to skip ahead to the best voting tools for book clubs.
Voting Tools That Book Clubs Should Avoid 🚧
1. Doodle ❌
An old favourite used by millions, Doodle removed its text-based polling features in 2022 to focus on helping business teams pick meeting times that suit everyone’s calendar, leaving book club organizers pretty angry.
2. SurveyMonkey ❌
Everyone on the internet has completed a SurveyMonkey questionnaire at some point, so it’s a natural first choice for many, however SurveyMonkey only offers ranking questions on their premium tiers (starting at a minimum of $39/month).
3. Typeform ❌
Generally ruled out immediately because Typeform’s free tier only gives you 10 respondents per month across all your surveys.
4. Qualtrics ❌
Using Qualtrics for a quick voting poll is like bringing a bazooka to a knife fight. Unless you’re a professional researcher trained on using Qualtrics, you’ll likely be extremely overwhelmed by its endless maze of features and customizations.
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So now that we’ve eliminated the time wasters, let’s look at the free tools that are best suited for your book club members to vote on their next big read…
Best Free Voting Tools for Picking Your Next Book Club Read 📚
1. OpinionX
OpinionX is a free tool for creating stack ranking surveys. Thousands of teams use OpinionX to measure what matters most to their customers, colleagues and communities (including companies like Google, Mastercard and Salesforce).
OpinionX comes with a whole range of different voting methods all available on the free tier — from standard multiple-choice questions and drag-and-drop ranking to special ranking formats like pairwise comparison and consensus measurement.
All question types are free and there’s no limit on the number of questions you can ask or options you can rank. The free tier of OpinionX allows up to 50 respondents per survey. Create and launch a ranking survey in under 5 minutes on OpinionX.
2. Emoji reactions on a community platform like Slack
If you host your book club on a community platform like Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook Groups, etc., a quick and easy way for your members to vote is by using a emoji reactions. For more info, check out Lifewire’s guide: How to Create a Slack Poll Using Emoji Responses. Here’s a great example from a Slack workspace:
3. Goodreads Polls
If your book club members are already reviewing books they read on Goodreads, why not keep them there and use the built-in Goodreads Poll feature? You can put a quick one-vote selection survey together in minutes and share a link with your members or embed it on any webpage. Here’s an example poll I found on Goodreads:
4. Google Forms
While there are no ranking or voting methods available on Google Forms, it’s worth a quick mentioned considering it’s completely free. If you want to use Google Forms for book club your voting polls, the only question types you can use are the Multiple Choice format (pick one option) or the Checkboxes format (pick as many options as you want).
Single-choice voting like this isn’t a very good way to decide what everyone wants to read. A better approach would be to collect each person’s personal preferences and then calculate the overall best result for the whole group. While that sounds pretty complicated to do, OpinionX surveys come with comparative ranking methods like Order Rank and Pair Rank that automatically calculates this for you (all for free).
5. Miro Dot-Voting
If you want to get your book club members to all vote at the same time, an engaging approach would be to use a dot-voting platform like Miro. While this option will exclude any mobile-only participants, the countdown timer and colorful dot votes create a fun and exciting experience for those who are able to join all at the same time.
Example Book Club Members Poll
In our sample survey gallery on OpinionX, you can find our “Next Novel Vote” project as an example of what a book club members poll would look like. It includes a list of 7 potential books, a 1-5 star rating on the previous book, and a quick multiple-choice question for participants. You can access that sample survey for free in our sample survey gallery.
About the author:
Daniel Kyne is the co-founder and CEO of OpinionX, a research tool used by thousands of teams to stack ranking their customers’, colleagues’ and community’s top priorities. Give your book club members an engaging way to participate in book selection using a free OpinionX stack ranking survey.