Popularity of Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew

This is an old post from 2008.  I made it private a long time ago because it upset some Trixie Belden fans.  I edited the beginning of the post so as to avoid that happening again.  Here is the post mostly as it was written.

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There are some Nancy Drew fans who do not like Trixie Belden just as there are some fans of Trixie Belden who do not like Nancy Drew. Nothing is wrong with a person liking one series exclusively. We have to accept the fact that some people will not like some of the series books that are important to us, and there is nothing we can do about it.

In particular, the people we know personally outside of the internet are not likely to enjoy the same books we do. Not all books appeal to everybody, no matter how good they are.

I have always gotten the idea that there are some Trixie Belden fans who feel like there is some type of competition between Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. A few years ago when the Trixie Belden books were reissued by Random House, I recall a Trixie Belden fan making a comment about how happy she was about the reprints and that "if only Nancy Drew would just go away." I'm sure I don't have the exact quote, but that is the general idea.

I am not sure why someone would be happier if Nancy Drew went out of print. It actually is beneficial to series book collectors that as many of the older series remain in print as is possible. Each older series that is in print makes it less likely that our favorite series books will be forgotten.

It is good that Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys remain in print, that the entire Judy Bolton series is being reprinted, and that the Cherry Ames books have been reprinted. The more books that are in print, the more likely that there will be new fans of the other older series books which are now nearly forgotten.

In a Trixie Belden discussion forum, one post is about Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden.  All of the people there like Trixie Belden, and most of them like Trixie Belden better than Nancy Drew. After all, the comments are on a Trixie Belden fan site. There are a number of comments in which people admit that they did enjoy reading Nancy Drew.

I have had a poll about Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew running for the last few months, and it has now ended. I created the poll to see whether I was right in my belief that fans of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden are not as polarized as some people think. The results came out just as I expected.

Far more people like both series than just one of the two series. There are a number of people who only like Nancy Drew, while there are others who only like Trixie Belden. This is to be expected, but those people are greatly outnumbered by the people who like both series equally or who like both series but one series slightly more. I have long suspected that many Trixie Belden fans do not realize just how many people like both series a lot.

Out of 90 votes:

21 people like only Nancy Drew — 23.3 %
10 people like only Trixie Belden — 11.1 %
21 people like both series but Nancy Drew better — 23.3 %
19 people like both series but Trixie Belden better — 21.1 %
19 people like both series equally — 21.1 %

It is not surprising that more people selected only Nancy Drew than only Trixie Belden. Nancy Drew has been in print longer and has been printed in far higher quantities. On any given day on eBay, far more Nancy Drew books are up for sale than Trixie Belden books. The Nancy Drew books are more abundant, so more people are fans of Nancy Drew.

Combining all of the results in which people indicated liking both series, the results stand as follows:

21 people like only Nancy Drew — 23.3%
10 people like only Trixie Belden — 11.1 %
59 people like both series — 65.6%

Approximately two-thirds of the respondents like both series. The data can be analyzed in other ways, but what is apparent is that most people like both series. Trixie Belden fans can be pleased that Trixie Belden is popular among series book fans.