A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community

google formsAuthor newsletters have been a topic of conversation here before. These newsletters let you communicate with readers, telling them about upcoming books, sales or appearances, and a variety of other fun topics you choose. However, your newsletter doesn’t have to be a one-way street. You can use it to ask readers questions that help you learn more about them, help them feel useful, and help you hone your author business.

So, what types of things should you ask your readers and how? There are generally two categories of questions to ask your readers: ones that help you get to know them better and opinion questions that help make readers feel more part of the process (and also help your author business). Continue reading “A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community”

Data Analytics in eBooks: How Readers Read

reading ebooksThe eBook has been with us for nearly two decades. Without it, we would not have seen the explosion of self-published authors as we have. In fact, many of us wouldn’t be reading this right now if it weren’t for eBooks. While eBooks have become ubiquitous in our society, we don’t really know much about the behavior of eBook readers.

The New York Times published an interesting article the other day regarding the habits of eBook readers. A reader analytics company, Jellybooks, provided the data from thousands of readers to determine some basic characteristics of how we consume our eBooks. Continue reading “Data Analytics in eBooks: How Readers Read”

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Earlier this month Stephen Hise gave his take on a survey of readers coordinated by bestselling author Marie Force. On the subject of reviews, Hise summarized a few of the survey’s findings with these words:

Reviews are important, but readers pay far more attention to other reader reviews on retail sites than to reviews from publications and review sites.

This seemed like a fair summary of the six survey questions related to reviews and their impact although I did have one nit to pick, which we’ll get to shortly. In the comments I saw this exchange between Hise and IU contributor Lin Robinson. Continue reading “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”