Reaching your Readers Part 3 – New Authors

In Part 2 of this series, http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/reaching-your-readers-part-2.html, I asked my Facebook fans and readers how they found out about their favourite authors' next books.


I also asked my fans what factors led them to choose a new author. There were 66 replies. The most important factors in the decision to choose a new author's book were:

• The cover, back cover and blurb, and first few pages (by far the most important)
• Recommendations from people they know (a lot of people said this)
• Recommendations from people in bookshops (a few people said this)
• Online forums, blogs, Twitter or book sites (a few people said this)
• Print book reviews (one person said this)
• Book shows on radio (one person said this).

No one mentioned book advertising or other promotional materials. No one mentioned author websites, author newsletters, author blogs, author tweets or social media sites either, though that may have been due to the way I framed the question. 

Interestingly, though, people find out about new authors in a different way than they discover new books by their favourite authors. Presumably because fans actively seek out new books by their favourite authors, while discovering new authors by a more random process.

Here's the data (it sums to more than 100% because many people listed several factors, often in order of importance).

New Author Chosen From                                                % of Responses

Book Cover/title/blurb/first few pages                                        64%

Friend/family recommendations                                                  33%

Reviews/blog reviews/internet                                                    7.5%

NOT from reviews                                                                       7.5%

Bookshop recommendations                                                         6%

Author recommendations on cover of the book                             6%

Radio interviews                                                                        1.5%

Short stories by the author                                                         1.5%

Library                                                                                      1.5%

For two-thirds of responders, the book was chosen (or partly chosen) based on the book cover either physically or online (which induced them to read the back of the book), the title and blurb, and, for some people, after reading a few pages of the book. Recommendations from family and friends, including online friends, were also hugely important.

All other means were relatively minor.

Thanks very much to all those people who kindly gave detailed answers to the question. Part 1 can be found here: http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/reaching-your-readers.html

• For more about me and my books: http://www.ian-irvine.com/
• To say Hi or talk to me about books and writing:http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author
• To follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ianirvineauthor
• My blog about the novels I write, and the writing life: http://ian-irvine.blogspot.com/

Reaching your Readers Part 2 – Reaching Your Fans

Following on from Part 1 of this post, http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/reaching-your-readers.html, I asked this question on my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author.

How do you find out about your favourite author’s next book? Bookshops? Personal recommendations? Book reviews? Author's web site? Author's social media presence, on Facebook or blogs or Twitter or GoodReads? Author newsletters? Publisher's sites? Advertising?

There have been 50 responses so far (note, people usually gave more than one answer so the sum is more than 100%).

Author’s Website                                                                             44%

Physical bookshops (but often as a last resort)                                   26%

Wikipedia                                                                                       22%

Author’s social media/Facebook/blog/Twitter                                  22%
(mainly Facebook)

Search engines                                                                                16%

Online bookshops/Amazon                                                               14%

Email newsletters from authors/publishers                                       10%

Recommendations from friends and fans of other authors                   8%
(other authors they like)

‘Internet’                                                                                        8%

Publisher’s website                                                                          4%

GoodReads and similar sites                                                             4%

Authors’ recommendations (of other authors)                                    2%

Reviews (online or print)                                                                 2%

Facebook ads                                                                                  2%


There are some important lessons here:

1. Fans get the vast majority of their info via the net (no surprise there).
2. The author's website is by far the most important source of information about their books, yet  many author websites are either out of date, or all show and no substance, or don't provide the information and detail readers and fans are looking for. 
3. Wikipedia is one of the top three sources of information, yet many authors haven't corrected their Wikipedia entries or supplemented them with the right level of detail about their books, particularly new books.
4. Social media (particularly Facebook) are as important as Wikipedia, yet few authors have a fan page on Facebook, and of those that do, many don't use it effectively. Most personal Facebook pages are useless for communicating with fans. For info on using Facebook effectively, http://ripping-ozzie-reads.com/2011/07/30/ian-irvines-adventures-using-facebook/
5. Search engines and online bookshops are important sources of information and places to buy immediately. Authors should make sure their information is easily found by search engines, and that the details on online bookshops and other places on the net are correct – they often aren't!
6. Email newsletters to people who have subscribed are a simple but effective way to market your books to your existing readers.  

Thanks very much to all those people who kindly gave detailed answers to the question. Part 3 of this post, which deals with reaching new readers, can be found here: http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/reaching-your-readers-part-3.html

• For more about me and my books: http://www.ian-irvine.com/
• To say Hi or talk to me about books and writing:http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author
• To follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ianirvineauthor
• My blog about the novels I write, and the writing life: http://ian-irvine.blogspot.com/

Reaching your Readers Part 1

How does one reach one's readers and fans to tell them about a new book? I've been a full-time novelist for 12 years now, and this is one of the questions that most vexes me.

It's easy for readers to contact me. My email address is in all my books and on my website, and can be googled in an instant. I also have a huge, frequently updated website, two blogs, a very active Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, and presences in various other places on the net. But not many people do contact me.

How many?

Some years ago, when email was still king, I divided the number of books I'd sold (a million) by the number of different people who had emailed me about them (a little over 3,000). I was being contacted by roughly 1 individual for every 300 books sold. But many of my readers had bought lots of my books, so the real question was, what proportion of my readers were communicating with me?

For that matter, how many readers do I have? To work that out, I've used actual sales data from my royalty statements, plus some educated guesses, thus:

• My biggest selling book, A Shadow on the Glass, has been published in 11 countries and has net sales of around 190,000 copies. But I've written a lot of other books, some of which appeal to different audiences where there's little crossover – my eco-thrillers, for instance, and my kids' books. 
• Adding a proportion of these in, my best guess is that around 250,000 different people in the world have bought at least one of my books. 
• To estimate the number of unique readers, I multiplied the above number by 2. I think that's probably conservative, since many people share books, some end up in second-hand bookshops, and I've a lot of books in libraries – more than 25,000 copies in Australia alone. 
• That calculation gives me half a million readers, most of whom are in Australia, the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa.

Dividing my email numbers into half a million readers, one reader out of every 170 has contacted me – 0.6%. But readers don't use email much any more – most contact comes via social media, for those writers who have a presence there.

I currently have 3,370 members of my Facebook fan page, http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author. That is, one in 150 of my readers has joined my page – 0.67%. Actually it would be less than that, since many people have fanned my page due to advertising targeted at fantasy readers. Using the Facebook ad creator and published data for various big-name authors' sales, I discovered that their figures are similar to mine – less than 1% of their estimated readers have expressed interest in them on Facebook.

My website, http://www.ian-irvine.com/, gets more traffic than my Facebook page – so far this year it's had over 10,000 unique visitors. My blogs, Twitter and other sites on the net add more contacts. Even so, the total number of people who have visited one or more of my sites can't possibly be more than 15,000, ie 3% of my readers.

Even assuming that half of those 500,000 readers are no longer interested, it still leaves 250,000 – yet only 6% are seeking me or my sites out in a year. How do I contact the remaining 94% of my readers to tell them about my new book?

As far as I can tell, the only way for me to get through to them is:

• By writing an absolute cracker of a book, one so good that they'll hear about it by word of mouth. 
• Making sure that the first few pages grab them by the throat and don't let go.
• Then, crafting a fantastic, engaging blurb.

But I'd be doing all that anyway, wouldn't I?


Thanks very much to all the people who answered my question on Facebook.

Part 2 of this post, which deals with reaching your fans, can be found here: http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/reaching-your-readers-part-2.html.

And Part 3, Reaching New Readers, here: http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/reaching-your-readers-part-3.html.

• For more about me and my books: http://www.ian-irvine.com/
• To say Hi or talk to me about books and writing:http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author
• To follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ianirvineauthor
• My blog about the novels I write, and the writing life: http://ian-irvine.blogspot.com/