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I’m an author, journalist and one of the UK’s social media pioneers. Here I write about publishing, self-publishing and crowdfunding. I am also the author of Argleton, a novelette about a mysterious town that appears on digital maps but doesn’t exist in reality. I self-published via Kickstarter and Amazon Kindle, and am negotiating my way through the publishing world and exploring new business models for entrepreneurial authors along the way. As a freelance journalist, I have written about social media and technology for FirstPost.com, The Guardian, CIO Magazine and Computer Weekly.

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Business 1,226 views

Reader Surveys Provide Insight, But How Much?

Read More by Starzyia, on Flickr

Read More by Starzyia, on Flickr

I was reading a blog post by Marie Force about a reader survey she’d done to find out more about what readers like and their book buying behaviour. The results are quite interesting and very much worth a read, but the analysis is a little bit problematic in places.

Force got responses from 2,951 people who replied to most of the 44 questions in the survey. That’s a really good response rate and speaks to the depth of her community. The vast majority — 81 percent — of readers said that Romance was their favourite genre. In second place came Mystery with just 5 percent of the responses.

This immediately indicates that this survey is one of Romance readers, not of general readers. Although for many of the questions that may not matter, we cannot definitively say it doesn’t matter because we don’t know if Romance readers have different behaviour sets to readers of other genres.

One area where I think it really does matter is in the question about where readers get information about their favourite authors (sadly, questions were not numbered, but it’s the ninth bullet point):

Facebook (62 percent) and Author Websites (63 percent) were virtually tied for first when readers were asked where they get their information about their favorite authors. (This was a “choose all that apply” question.) Author newsletters were a distant second at 36 percent. Goodreads scored 27 percent and Twitter 19 percent. Retail sites were next at 18 percent. It’s probably safe to conclude from these results that if you have limited time, it’s best spent on Facebook and keeping up your website.

And then, much further down in the conclusions:

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.

If you are a Romance writer, then it’s probably safe to conclude that Facebook and your own websites are important places for you to connect with your fans. But the data does not support the statement that Facebook is, in general, better than Twitter for connecting to readers. The trouble is that different social networks have different demographics, so Twitter’s demographic is different to Facebook’s. For example, a Pingdom study in 2012 found that 55 percent of Twitter users are 35 or older, but it’s 65 percent for Facebook and the average age of a Twitter user is 37.3 years old, but for Facebook it is 40.5.

Just to complicate things further, those demographics are not necessarily stable over time. In 2011, Facebook’s ad demographics showed an average age of 28, with most users aged between 13 and 29. By August 2012, Pingdom showed that the average age of a Facebook user had increased to 40.5, with 65 percent of Facebook users over 35. Now we could conclude that the change is down to analytical/methodological differences, or that Facebook’s demographic has changed, or that it’s a bit of both. But in 2009, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook was women over 55, so it wouldn’t be rational to dismiss the changes as purely a methodological anomaly.

In 2012, Romance Writers of America carried out some research into the demographics of Romance readers. They found that the average American Romance reader is aged between 30 and 54 years old. When they seek information on what to read, they are going to bookstores (45 percent), their family (41 percent), Facebook (32 percent), other online sources (31 percent), plus some other sources.

The discrepancy in the importance of Facebook in these two surveys is almost certainly down to the fact that Force’s online survey is skewed towards online information sources because those who aren’t online and don’t use online sources are simply not represented. The RWA used Bowker to do their research, and they are undoubtedly able to reach a broader swathe of readers.

Now these methodological and analytical issues do not devalue Force’s survey at all. There are many Romance writers whose only available promotional avenues are online, and this tells them where they should focus their efforts. What it doesn’t tell us is where authors in other genres should spend most of their social media time — I am sure that there are other genres for whom the main fan community is not on Facebook but on Twitter.

These sorts of reader surveys are incredibly useful, but we do have to remember that they always come with caveats. If we are looking at a skewed sample, in this case skewed towards Romance readers, then we have to compare that segment with other segments and see whether we get different results. We also have to remember results for opt-in surveys are not indicative of the general readership, just those people whom we can reach with our survey.

It’s very, very easy to forget this, and I myself have been guilty of not fully disclaiming survey results when using them as a basis for a blog post. Though when I do research for clients, the first thing I do is go through the limitations of the survey methodology, so I really have no excuse. Mea culpa.

Force and I can take some comfort, however, in realising that we are not the only ones to struggle with the issues raised by opt-in surveys. Academics, who are most certainly more familiar with statistical analysis than most authors are, also have problems properly compensating for the bias created by opt-in surveys.

Sadly, I suspect neither Force nor I are going to turn into statisticians overnight, and authors need actual information on reader’s habits and preferences now more than ever, so we’re going to just have to keep doing our own surveys and trying to improve our understanding of how best to analyse and interpret them. Of course, if there are any friendly statisticians reading, do feel free to get in touch!

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  • Pete Nikolai Pete Nikolai 1 year ago

    Good point that “results for opt-in surveys are not indicative of the general readership, just those people whom we can reach with our survey.” A recent survey by Digital Book World DBW had similar bias (romance and science fiction authors) but did not seem to call it out, perhaps because they wanted to sell more copies of the report. http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/creative-control-ease-of-publishing-and-money-pushing-authors-to-self-publish/

  • Suw Charman-Anderson Suw Charman-Anderson, Contributor 1 year ago

    I think that not understanding or mentioning the limitations of your survey is not a massive issue if it’s just a blog post for a relatively small community that you’re writing for, but if you’re selling a report you have a duty to be clear about your research methodology and its limitations. To do anything else is just unprofessional.
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