Via a piece in Forbes, I ran across some fascinating survey numbers from bestselling author Marie Force. In case you've spent the last few years imprisoned in the Big Brother House and aren't familiar with her work, I can tell you one thing that will tell you that she's a great author. Ready? Her current book, "Lethal Attraction: Against The Rules\Fatal Affair" is a collaboration with LINDA HOWARD, no less, put together by Harlequin's HQN. If your writing can keep up in that company, then it's pretty danged fabulous. Marie's most recent solo effort is "Time for Love" and since that one's self-pubbed - (all Marie and nothing but Marie/ like mine are all Mary Anne and nothing but Mary Anne), I bet she'd appreciate your checking it out as well.
But I digressed - as usual. Okay, I'm boogling back to the point now. The point is an oh-so-interesting survey that Marie conducted recently via Survey Monkey with about 2,951 people replying to questions put together by Marie and "about a dozen other authors." The questions covered a number of areas, including preferred genre, preferred reading format, shopping preferences, and discovery tools. The Forbes article is "Reader Surveys Provide Insight, But How Much?" The title tells us that Forbes is going to disagree with Marie's numbers - and it does. It compares and contrasts them with a 2012 survey done by RWA (Romance Writers of America).
The first thing that caught my eye was the big ole' important place where the two survey numbers agree - although Forbes wishes to quibble. Both surveys agree that romance is the "King of Kings" - it dominates other genres in terms of sales. In Marie's poll, 81% of readers listed romance as their favorite genre with mystery coming in second, with only 5%of reader preferences. That jives with the RWA numbers which showed that romance was the best-performing genre on bestseller lists in 2012 and generated $1.438 billion in sales in 2012 alone. To me, those numbers mean that far more people prefer to read about love and desire than fear and pain. It also proves that readers want more from a book's ending than a "resolution" or a "solution" - they want a happy ending.
As to format, Marie's survey found that readers prefer ebooks - 77% to 52%, although there was some crossover with some people buying books in both formats. I agree with that result and expect it will climb. The availability, the convenience and the portability of ebooks are features paperbacks will never be able to claim. About 58% of the readers haven't visited a physical bookstore more than twice in the last year. For ebooks and paperbacks, most people buy from Amazon (80%). All of that is also true for me - I'll visit a bookstore about twice a year - and then only because my youngest son got assigned to read a book and I heard not word one about the assignment until the night before he needed the book. (Love you Sam, but organization isn't your thing...)
And yes, Amazon is - to me - more than a shopping venue. It's a magical Kingdom where almost any book I want to read is available, whenever I want it. If I'm up at 2 am, perched on my couch in my nightgown because I'm worried about something, I can pick up a hot new release to help me wile away the time by one stroke of a button on my Kindle Fire or my PC. Then, magical fire faeries will whisk the title right onto my ereader.
Where my numbers and Marie's disagree is on the subgenre. Marie says contemporary beat historical romance 28 to 23%. Hands down, across the board, my historicals way outsell my contemporaries. I'm always split about that. I'm presently writing a historical and a contemporary, but recently I've been working almost exclusively on my historical. It'll be the first of a trilogy and all that bodes well for sales, but I'd love to see my contemporaries jump up and give my historicals a run for their money.
What interested me on a deeper level, and caught the attention of Forbes as well, was Marie's conclusion that Facebook and author web sites are the best ways for writers to connect with readers. Her survey also found that readers are more likely to "like" an author on Facebook than they are to follow her on Twitter. Marie suggests that if an author only has time for 1 social media site, she should choose Facebook over Twitter. Marie says as follows:
- If an author only has time for one social media platform, choose Facebook. It’s where the readers are and it’s where they’re looking for their favorite authors. They are not looking for their favorite authors on Twitter, which didn’t surprise me all that much. I’ve long suspected that Twitter was more about “preaching to the choir” whereas Facebook is about connecting with actual readers. That doesn’t mean there are NO readers on Twitter. To the contrary. However, there are more of them looking for authors on Facebook.
The survey and conclusions from it have a lot of grist for the mill, and I'll grind some of the rest of it in my next blog post. But in this one, I'm wondering if Marie may be right and I may not be focusing enough on Quacking Alone's Facebook Page. Forbes points out that the RWA survey finds that most readers seek information about what to read by going to the bookstore. I don't find that terribly surprising because RWA is just now truly embracing self-published authors. The organization has traditionally had the slant that if you're not published by a "real" publisher with your books in a "real" bookstore, then you don't count. Also, I think Marie was addressing a slightly different issue. In terms of marketing, the online sites/Amazon, etc. probably do the best job. But Marie was talking about connecting -- and while it shares some of the same elements, overall it's quite different than marketing.
I still have a day job (practicing law as a "scrivener" - a lawyer who writes and researches). While it's rewarding in many ways, I live for the day when I can write full time. My husband also has a day job so his plate is also pretty full. Mr. Duck handles this website, but he told me early on that I had to figure out and handle Facebook alone. I didn't much know what I was doing, and finally began using the Quacking Alone Facebook site as a place to post various links of interest to readers. I try to keep a marketing note, or information about a book or this website pinned to the top, but my theory was that with Facebook's new hashtag feature, I might generate more reader interest and draw more views to this blog, where all my book information and links appear.
As you can see, my Facebook page is quite different than Marie's author Facebook page. I like my links because my mind is a many-splintered place. However, my links aren't the "chalkboard" that Marie's page provides. Also, her FB page has great visuals of all of her book covers, which is an excellent marketing tool. So, I'm wondering if I may need to reconsider Facebook, and turn my page into a true "author page."
It would take courage to make FB a "chalkboard" site with great graphics of all my books - Mr. Duck does great covers now, doesn't he? Even readers who HATE my work have to agree that Mr. Duck's graphics are the real deal. Now, I'm pondering.....
I'm not sure what conclusion I'll reach about our Facebook page, but if you haven't liked us yet, please boogle over and click the "like" button. Perhaps you might even leave me a note on Facebook letting me know what you'd like to see there. Would y'all like a place to interact? A venue to post how greatly insane I am? A virtual fence post around which to gather and find other readers quackers enough to enjoy the view of love from over the top?
While I'm pondering, I have to say a big THANK YOU to Marie Force and all the authors responsible for the work of this survey. Like I said above, there's a lot more to dissect -- so that's my "coming attraction" for the next blog post. Same quack channel -- but it could appear at any quacking time..... so you'd better pop by often!