The Fussy Librarian Reader Survey
Jeffrey, the guy behind The Fussy Librarian, is looking for readers to take his reader survey. If you’re not familiar with it, The Fussy Librarian is a service that emails ebook promos to people on its list. When you sign up, you indicate what genres you’re interested in. Then you receive a daily email containing promos for 5-10 books in those genres.
There are quite a few of these services. They make money in two ways: through affiliate commissions (the links in the emails are affiliate links), and from the authors who pay to have their books listed. The people behind the services aren’t hand-picking the books. Their recommendations are essentially paid advertisements.
Most of these services will only list books that have a certain number of reviews and a minimum average star rating at Amazon. I took the survey, and I think Jeffrey is trying to figure out whether he should tweak The Fussy Librarian’s requirements.
Anyway, the survey only takes 5 minutes, so if you’re so inclined, pop over. The more responses he gets, the better the sample.
The Fussy Librarian Reader Survey
(I posted this on January 16, 2015. Depending on when you’re reading this, the survey could be closed.)
The Fussy Librarian Reader Survey is a post from: Sarah Ettritch
newest »
Sarah - if you are in contact with Jeffrey, can you pass this feedback on? (I didn't see an email address or a comment box.) Question 7 asks about reading samples before deciding - the choices are "yes, I have read a sample and then bought the book", "yes I have read a sample and NOT bought the book" and "No". There was no way to indicate that the first two options both apply. (I have read samples that inspired me to buy the book AND I have read samples that made me decide it would be a waste of my money.) Incidentally, I started buying your books after reading "The Dance" for free from Smashwords.
Julia - I've passed your comments along to Jeffrey. I had the same thought when I took the survey. I think he asked the question to see how many readers use samples to make purchasing decisions, and he can still figure that out from the responses he offered. But from the survey taker's perspective, there's definitely a choice missing (or he should have allowed people to choose multiple answers for that question).I've had the same experience as you regarding samples. If a book description interests me, I always read the sample. If I get to the end and want to keep reading, I buy the book. If I bail early, or I reach the end but I'm not compelled to continue reading, I don't. Sometimes I don't have to read the entire sample to know that I want to buy the book!
Thanks for letting me know that you found my work through "The Dance". I'm toying with the idea of making the first installment of the Daros Chronicles free when there are more installments available, so I appreciate the input.
