How Do People Discover New Books And Authors?

Last month I put together a brief survey to find out how people discover new books and authors. One of the biggest challenges new authors are facing, is getting the word out about their work, regardless of whether they are self-published or going with a traditional publisher.  Increasingly, authors have to do a significant amount of legwork in terms of promotion as marketing and advertising budgets are widely slashed.

However, most self-published authors don’t have a particularly detailed understanding of their market. Either they haven’t thought to find out, or simply don’t know where to start. It’s understandable – we didn’t get into writing in order to become expert marketers – but it is something that we just have to get to grips with.  So I thought I’d start my own journey towards understanding by asking people where they find out about new books and authors.

Question 1: What genres of fiction do you enjoy reading?
The most popular genres were Science Fiction and Fantasy; the least popular were Western, Chick Lit, Romance, and Horror.

Question 2: Where do you find about new books and new authors?
The second question asked people to rate how frequently they found new books or authors via different methods. There’s bad news for self-publishers here: The most popular ways to find new authors remains word of mouth, browsing in a bricks and mortar bookshop, browsing in an online bookshop and newspaper reviews.

Now, my sample size was quite small, just 238 responses. But it echoes Verso Digital’s 2011Survey of Book-Buying Behavior, released last month, which polled 2,200 respondents. Verso Digital found that most of their respondents found new books through personal recommendation (49.2%), bookstore staff recommendations (30.8%), advertising (24.4%, and a source I forgot to add in), search engines (21.6% and ditto). 11.8% found new books through social networks and 12.1% via blogs. Book reviews accounted for 18.9%.

There are a lot more interesting nuggets in the report, so it’s well worth a flick through the slides. Conclusions: Personal recommendation most important for self-publishers

The results of this survey are a bit of a mixed bag for self-publishers. For most of us it’s impossible to get our books into prominent positions in bookshops either offline or on, and even harder to get newspaper reviews. The places where it’s easy for us to gain access, such as GoodReads, Twitter, LibraryThing, Facebook and on our own blog simply aren’t that influential. It’s disappointing, because these are places where authors can be very proactive.

So what are we left with? Both my graph and the Verso Digital figures show that self-published authors should focus on encouraging people to make personal recommendations for their work, as that is still the most important way that people find new authors and books. Simply telling your friends that you recently read a book and loved it appears to be the single most important thing one can do to help an author along.

By SUW, re-blogged, first published 24/02/2012
from http://chocolateandvodka.com/2012/02/24/how-do-people-discover-new-books-and-authors/

My Comment:
Roughly 12% social network, 12% blog and 16% Online algorithm recommendation makes up for over 40% of all books sales, which should convince to invest time into these marketing strategies as they are totally free, just the author’s time investment.  Plus: over 65% of avid readers are purchasing their books online.
The Verso Digital Survey also shows where former Border customers went: mostly to online retail stores, such as Amazon or Barnes&Noble.  Amazon makes it easy to send emails to your friends, acquaintances and family about recently purchased books with their form on their checkout page. Ask everyone who buys your book to fill out this window and send it to someone who might purchase your book too.

 

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Hyper Smash

 

Boost your web site: Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization Tips

 Leverage on words… Publishers, market research firms and other organizations that  produce content own tremendous marketing assets!  

 Companies that create content  already have phrases, ripe for search engine  marketing strategies. Yet most  publishers don’t realize the value of their unique and  valuable keyword-rich  environment.

 

Commerce Opportunities and Beyond
When successful search engine marketing programs direct Web users to an online store, there are a number of things that can happen:

• Generate one-time sales of targeted content. A consumer buys a report or a book with a credit card, driving immediate revenue for your company.

• Drive sales leads. Many search engine marketing programs deliver targeted traffic to a place where people can sign up for a free e-mail newsletter, register for a Web seminar or in-person event, or down load a white paper. As a way to build qualified leads for larger purchases or paid subscriptions, search engine marketing is very effective.

• Monetize traffic for advertising-supported sites. Often, the end goal for publishers is to drive as many qualified and relevant visitors as possible to a portal or content site that derives income from banner advertising, sponsorships and programs like Google AdSense.

• Build your organization’s reputation in the market. Content does more than just sell itself, a product, or an idea: it sells your brand.

Leveraging your specific content with highly targeted phrases gets fewer, but better clicks for each phrase. With many phrases optimized, you get more overall traffic than when you attempt to drive traffic by relying on generic search terms. If you set up thousands of individual search programs, each one won’t generate much as a stand-alone marketing campaign. But all of the individual campaigns will add up to much more traffic than targeting the broad, generic keywords and phrases.

In just a decade, Web search engines have fundamentally changed the way people look for information.  Ten years ago, we all still flipped through yellow pages and newspapers, or phoned reference librarians. Some people still do these things today. But for the vast majority of us – particularly businesspeople – research begins with the search.  How marvelous the convenience of finding what you need in a manner of seconds, from the comfort of your desk, or kitchen counter, or a table at Starbucks.

Better Search Marketing Programming

• Mine keywords from titles, descriptions, and metadata for large content sets.Use the words and phrases that your buyers do. Think about how the people you want to reach are searching and develop programs that include those words and phrases.  Don’t get trapped by your own jargon; think, speak, and write like your customers do.
• Use more than keywords. Use key phrases.
  And make sure they respond to your customers’ specific needs.
• Titles and subtitlesOften titles and subtitles are highly descriptive just the sort of detailed search that your buyers are entering into search engines right now.
• Author names
  As authors develop followings in the market, people often search on their names — you should make those names search engine friendly.
• Article or report descriptions
  It is critical to surface highly descriptive, keyword-rich summaries and abstracts so search engines can find them.
• Tables, charts, and graphs
  How many times have you searched for very specific number, trend, or statistic? By optimizing the descriptions of this key content, publishers capture the interest of people who are searching for it.
• Metadata
  Make metadata available for the search engines to find — for example, companies or people or industries mentioned in the article or report.
• Content at the article is ripe for keyword mining.  For many organizations, the keywords and phrases are already in the content descriptions.

Unlike companies that sell physical products that require creation of search terms for each item, publishers and authors live in a keyword-rich environment, they sell words – usable as keywords.

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Hyper Smash