1. The timing was great for me, but I don't do NaNo.

2. Personally I like the anon feature of exchanges, and I don't spend a lot of time in Shakespeare fandom, so I would like it if there was one in a future exchange, but I'm not picky.

3. I think most people are used to 1k wordcount requirements, and personally I think it's a good size for an exchange, but you if you think lowering it to, say, 500 or 750 words would get more people involved, I'd still participate.

4. I pretty much just wrote my letter in my sign-up form, but I think perhaps others thought there would be a letter post? I would appreciate if there were a letters post. In lieu of that, maybe encouragement to put some prompts in the sign-up form? I don't think characters/pairings needs to be mandatory, because some people really are okay with just anything, but even like 'I like romance but not scary things' or 'Don't change the ending!' are very helpful.

5. Considering the small size of the fest, and the difficulties in creating art for book fandoms, I wouldn't create an actual section of the fest for it (i.e., registering as an artist v writer, option for requesting art specifically), but you could just say that anyone who wants to do art can do so, copy-paste som art requirements from other fests, and let participants know that matching will be opt-out for art rather than opt-in. Low key is best, I'd think.

I didn't see anything wrong with the way you ran this fest! I had a lot of fun :D Thank you for your hard work!