2012 NaNoWriMo Stats: Bigger and Better than Ever!

We’re back this year with another round of end-of-event stats! And boy are we impressed. 2012’s NaNoWriMo broke 300,000 participants, easy peasy and you, dear writer, helped make it happen. So without further ado, let me put on my glasses and whip out my laser pointer so we can get this looking professional!

General Stats Round Up!

For NaNoWriMo main:

341,375 participants, up a whopping 33% from 2011’s total of 256,618 writers.
We wrote a grand total of 3,288,976,325 words, up 7% from 2011’s 3,074,068,446.
This averaged out to 9364 words per person!
We had 38,438 winners, giving us a 11% win rate!

For NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program:

97,864 participants, up 21% from 2011’s total of 81,040. (Edited to correct an error in numbers!)
We wrote a total of 419,152,844 words up 14% from 2011’s collective word count of 368,143,078.
This averaged out to 5,077 words per person.
We had 18,531 winners, giving us a 22% win rate!

This November, we also had 37,120,542 pageviews, and a total of 5,939,711 visits: up 10% from 2011’s 5,384,040 visits!

Top 50 NaNoWriMo Cities (according to Google Analytics, based on number of November visits from these fine places)

London 118,030
New York 90,055
(not set) 72,912

Seattle 58,670
Toronto 52,686
Sydney 51,498
Chicago 49,290
Melbourne 44,689
Los Angeles 43,511
Denver 41,574
Portland 36,905
San Francisco 35,593
Brisbane 32,118
Washington 31,301
Houston 27,971
Minneapolis 26,119
Austin 25,388
Calgary 23,588
Salt Lake City 23,383
San Diego 23,279
Phoenix 21,766
Edmonton 21,520
Ottawa 21,133
Boston 20,478
Helsinki 20,330
Philadelphia 19,016
Vancouver 18,548
Aukland 18,153
Albuquerque 18,067
Perth 18,027
San Jose 17,776
Singapore 17,036
San Antonio 16,916
Montreal 16,396
Dallas 16,110
Adelaide 15,943
Columbus 15,664
Dublin 15,272
St. Louis 14,999
Colorado Springs 14,856
Tuscson 14,791
Sacramento 13,858
Manchester 13,270
Edinburgh 13,221
Paris 12,878
Birmingham 12,685
Grand Rapids 12,653
Madison 12,548
Glasgow 12,521
Indianapolis 12,500
Stockholm 12,380

Top 50 NaNoWriMo Countries (according to Google Analytics, based on number of November visits from these fine places)

United States 3,904,119
United Kingdom 553,604 
Canada 418,974 
Australia 185,007
Germany 116,429
Netherlands 70,603
France 56,038

Finland 52,825
(not set) 47,825

Sweden 44,534
New Zealand 37,132     

Ireland 26,051
Norway 22,409 
Spain 19,975
Philippines 19,523

Japan 19,509
Brazil 17,880
Denmark 17,796
Singapore 17,185
Belgium 16,550
South Africa 15,421
Austria 15,350
India 15,080
Poland 13,857
Mexico 13,507
Italy 12,346
Malaysia 10,724
Switzerland 10,466
Portugal 10,091
South Korea 9,119
Indonesia 8,806
Croatia 8,144
Israel 5,919
Latvia 5,882
Hungary 5,689
China 5,616
Russia 5,531
Romania 4,953
Hong Kong 4,914
Czech Republic 4,788
United Arab Emirates 4,578
Greece 4,349
Thailand 4,232
Taiwan 3,708
Argentina 3,506
Turkey 3,204
Puerto Rico 3,041
Estonia 2,569
Egypt 2,474
Chile 2,282
Pakistan 2,221

If this was your first NaNoWriMo, awesome! We think you’re incredible for dipping your toes into this! How did you do? What did you run into that you weren’t expecting? And if you’re a NaNo veteran, how did this NaNoWriMo feel different from previous years? Was the site easy to navigate? Did you make new friends at he write-ins? We would love to know what you thought of this year’s NaNoWriMo!

– Ari