Written Word Media's Latest Reader Survey

It seems like only yesterday that Written Word Media published its last reader survey, but in fact, it's been almost a year---I checked. (Okay, how is this happening to me?) I prefer real data over something a marketing expert makes up, which most of them do, and thus I appreciate WWM's surveys. While this one only had 3,589 participants and they were comprised of subscribers to at least one of the company's newsletters, the results track. In fact, they're actually commonsensical (I know; that's not a word), but it's still helpful to have my conclusions validated. 

An example of that would be the response to how do readers discover books? There are a bunch of weirdo authors out there who avoid Amazon because of some made-up grievance they have with the company, but since 68% of book buyers discover books via Amazon, the writers who choose to pout in the corner are missing out on sales. I wish I could say that my books benefit from their absence, but that's not exactly how it works. The only surprise in this number is that it's not higher. I consider myself a "regular person", and if I'm looking for a book, I go to Amazon. It doesn't even occur to me to look elsewhere. For those who are too young to know, Amazon started out as a bookstore---just a bookstore. It began in 1994 under a different name, but by the next year it had rebranded as Amazon, and voila. So, for many, many people who read books, Amazon has been their go-to for more than thirty years. (It was kind of amazing back then that one could click on a book, add it to their cart, and it would show up in the mail. That sure beat going to the library or B. Dalton, which was my town's chain bookstore.)

There were some surprises in the results, however, at least for me. 46% of readers said they discover books through Goodreads. I'm thinking this was ranked voting, because all the numbers don't add up to 100%. Even 30% claimed to have discovered books via authors' websites. It takes a certain type of person to trust Goodreads---not saying a smart person or a dumb person---but Goodreads is not reliable, people! It's very skewed, even though Amazon owns it and Amazon is very strict about...well, everything.

What wasn't a surprise is that readers do not like AI-narrated audiobooks. Neither do I. That said, all but one of my books is AI-narrated, because it was free and why not? I wasn't expecting any sales, but one thing to know about me is, I never turn down anything that's free, whether it's useful or not. I probably should have listened to the playback, but I couldn't do so for free---well, I could have at the time I chose the voices, but I had a lot of books and not a lot of patience, so I have no idea how bad or not bad they are. The snippets I listened to were passable, but still clearly AI.

The biggest surprise, or at least the most unclear responses, were with regard to pricing. The fact that the majority of respondents spend less than $5.00 per book is no surprise, but I wish WWM had drilled down further. What's the sweet spot? Most promo sites won't feature any book priced over $1.99, so to me the sweet spot is from $0.00 - $1.99 (more likely $0.00 - $0.99). I've alternated between $2.99 and $3.99 for Running From Herself, but I won't go lower than $2.99 for a full novel. My novellas have always been priced at $1.99, so a dollar more for four times the content is more than reasonable. It's, in fact, a bargain. Trying to change a buyer's mindset is impossible, but I've never bought a book for less than five bucks (which is the low end), and people will gladly pay $7.00 for a retail coffee drink, but no more than two dollars for a book? Authors are undervaluing themselves, along with the "assistance" of book promotion sites. That's never going to change.

As for "fun" questions, I liked the one about what readers want to know about authors:

• Future projects (67%)
• Character/story insights (59%)
• Book/media/tool recs (59%)
• Author backstory (36%)
• Writing process (19%)

Okay, absolutely no idea what "tool recs" are. I would definitely recommend a screwdriver for most assembly tasks; perhaps a hammer for hanging pictures. I don't know if a tape measure is considered a tool, but I use one a lot, especially prior to ordering size-sensitive items online.

But seriously, folks. I would love it if anyone wanted any of those things from me (sans the tool recommendations). I've tried most of them and no one cares. Three of the five can be found on my author site, but nobody's read them, much less commented. I even fumbled through including them in my newsletters. That drove even less interest, if that's possible.

While this survey was interesting, it changes absolutely nothing for me in the way I conduct my publishing life.

Such as it is.