Comprehensive Self-Publishing Survey – Please Participate!

[cecilia_writer]

Thanks for posting this link, David - I got a pleasant surprise when I added up my total sales - they were much higher in most cases than I had expected! (no I didn't include freebies)
I am not selling large quantities compared with some others but certainly enough to feel cautiously encouraged (we Scots don't like to be over-optimistic as it is tempting Fate).

[JRTomlin]

It insisted on an answer to how much I earned traditionally in 2011 and since one is highly unlikely to have received royalty statements from 2011 for the entire year (unlikely being putting it mildly), this wasn't a very realistic question.

I understood them to mean sales as opposed to freebies and I never see people "squee" about freebies as paid sales, but then I don't read "squee" threads either. A couple of the marketing questions didn't really make sense to me though.

[Feenix]

Done!

And it was relatively painless!

One problem though: I've sold more books face-to-face via ordering copies via Createspace than via Amazon's webpage and I didn't see where I could give my input about those sales on the survey,

Dave King

[LisaGraceBooks]

Did the survey.

[EveLanglais]

Of course I do.  How many times have we seen threads here on KB where people squee about getting hundreds of sales, and then you open the thread and discover they are talking about free downloads?  Now because I have a publishing background, I don't include free downloads as sales in any of my reports.  But I know plenty of people who do and have had plenty of arguments with them over it.

And if they include freebies it's going to make the average $ per unit sold really tank. I didn't include the one promo I did that gave away one book for a day on AllRomance, but that question should probably specify as Julie is right, some people don't differentiate.

[Bakari]

Finished...

I wished it would have included a Sports category (all I saw was "Fitness") for genre. However, as a researcher, I know that you can't please everyone and sometimes anyone.

[JRTomlin]

Also it doesn't have a historical fiction category. I rather reluctantly marked history, but that implies non-fiction. It would have been a good idea to have all the major categories of fiction.

[Doomed Muse]

Also, question 39 about withdrawing books for KDP Select, the "no" answer implies with its "books were only on Kindle" part that the books were kindle exclusive to start. I have only tested Select with NEW work, so I did not withdraw anything, but my books aren't all exclusive, either, just the new works I put up after Select became an option.

There are also a lot of questions that assume I do any marketing at all. Questions that forced me to allocate effectiveness of things I don't bother doing, etc.

It's cool that people are trying to get data, but the questions could use some streamlining.  

[Rex Jameson]

I have a feeling many of those questions are going to give misleading results, especially in regards to ranking what marketing methodologies helped. Although N/A was available on some of them, it was mutually exclusive, so you couldn't specify that you didn't use 2+ methods in your marketing plans. The ranking on these is arbitrary. Hopefully, no one tries to extrapolate on them.

Regardless, I entered my info.

[JTCochrane]

I am always looking for more places to sell or promote my books.  Thanks to the survey, I know about smashwords. lol
Usually hate surveys but glad I took this one.

[CoraBuhlert]

Also it doesn't have a historical fiction category. I rather reluctantly marked history, but that implies non-fiction. It would have been a good idea to have all the major categories of fiction.

There was one, because I checked it. You probably miss it.

Though I agree that some of the questions were a bit strange, e.g. do magazine publications count as traditional publishing or not? And when ranking the marketing efforts, I couldn't check N/A for all of the things I don't do. 

[Sophrosyne]

Did the survey, just 'cause it was David who was doing the asking on the thread.  

I think people will include free, just because they can be difficult to separate out, unless you check your numbers compulsively. But the bigger marker will be in the amount of royalties vs. numbers. That's a truer indication than download numbers alone.

[Dara England]

I got about halfway through the survey but there were just too many questions where my answer was Not Applicable or where a further explanation was required and the form didn't always allow that option. I figured selecting a random, incorrect response in order to move on to the next section would be more unhelpful than just not finishing.

Also, there are some things I think it'd help to define for the purposes of the survey. For example, there were a lot of questions for those traditionally published as well as self-published and I'd have liked to see either a definition of "traditionally published" at the start or some acknowledgement that many writers taking the survey may have previously been with small or digital-first presses or vanity or subsidy publishers. That seems pretty important because their experiences won't be at all the same as someone published with a big 6 publisher or even a midsized publisher. Also, it'd be nice if the questions pertaining to traditional publishing adding something like, "Have you been traditionally published in the last five years?" Because sales numbers or royalties from a decade ago don't seem relevant. In short, I felt the lack of definition on these things left room for individual interpretation which is likely to render the results on those questions useless.

Then there were spots where we were supposed to rank things like promotional efforts in order of effectiveness and the survey required us to rank every option, even those most of us probably haven't tried, like booksignings or readings. Then some of us don't even know what Google+ is.   Another spot where an N/A option would've been nice.

I'm sorry if my post seems like one long complaint but hopefully others will be less confused than me and you'll get some useful data anyway.

[dgaughran]

Thanks to everyone who has taken part (or attempted to).

There appear to be a few problems. One thing that has come up: entering a dollar sign, anything other than a whole number, or the number zero in any of the fields triggers an area.

Aside from that, there seem to be a few issues on the phrasing of questions and the choices available. There has been a lot of feedback here, on my blog and on Steven's blog. I'll make sure he reads the comments here too. I think they are already planning to make some changes for next year (I think this will be an annual affair), so any other complaints/comments/queries/feedback, keep them coming, and it will help Steven run a better survey next time (and help with interpreting the results this time).

Thanks again, the response in the last 24 hours has been phenomenal.

[RuthNestvold]

As I noted on your blog, I had to stop the survey in the middle when I noticed all the sales data that was being collected was for 2011. Ok, I had one novella up for Kindle last year, but I didn't promote it at all, and it sold about 4 copies. But all the questions I'd already answered about promotion etc. were for the books I've put up this year, not my one little experiment I did just to see how it worked. If I'd finished the survey, the results would have been totally skewed. Maybe something the author of the survey might also want to address. If the survey were to start with sales figures for 2011, it would become immediately obvious to newer selfpub authors like me that we're still a bit too new to contribute.

[dgaughran]

Thanks Ruth, I think there are quite a few areas where they will be seeking to improve the survey. If I get asked again next year to consult on the questions, I have a list of things I would like to change myself.

Thanks everyone for all the responses. 24 hours ago, there were around 60 responses. They are up to 500 now, which is fantastic!

[Consuelo Saah Baehr]

I took the survey.  It's straightforward and doesn't take much time.

[N. Gemini Sasson]

Thanks for pointing the survey out, David. I agree the first step to getting a more realistic sense of where things are at for self-publishers is to gather data. It's difficult with any survey to be succinct enough that people can get through it in a reasonable amount of time and finish it (ever get one of those survey calls at home where they go on and on and on?), while still being thorough enough to provide an accurate assessment.

Any voluntary survey, as opposed to a random survey, is going to be skewed in one direction. How much and which way is impossible to answer. We can speculate that this survey would get a sample that was slightly more skewed towards the successful SP authors ('successful' being a relative term), since it's reaching those who loiter here and read blogs about SP, thus missing that entire segment of authors who just fling a book up on KDP, sit back and wait for readers to magically appear. We could also speculate that it's missing some of the most successful ones, since, hmmm, they're too busy writing and marketing, maybe? But this is a great beginning to gathering info. and thanks to Steven for taking the time to put it together.

[marshacanham]

Well I tried to participate but on one page it kept asking me for a *positive number* for reporting sales in $$ as well as numbers and I tried listing it as many ways as I could think of, with a comma, without, with a .00 at the end, without, with a $, without...kept asking for a positive number so I gave up.

A lot of the questions up to that point did not differentiate between free downloads and paid sales or 4.99 sales or .99 sales...so....not sure the results are going to show anything, unless of course those specific questions happened after the *positive number* fiasco and I just couldn't get to them.

[Andrew Ashling]

I took the survey.  It's straightforward and doesn't take much time.

Ditto.

[dgaughran]

Well I tried to participate but on one page it kept asking me for a *positive number* for reporting sales in $$ as well as numbers and I tried listing it as many ways as I could think of, with a comma, without, with a .00 at the end, without, with a $, without...kept asking for a positive number so I gave up.

It seems you need to enter positive integers i.e. not zero, any symbol like a comma or dollar sign, or any decimals or fractions or negatives.

[Kpfowler]

Done. It was quick and painless... it also made me aware of what areas I've been skimping on, promo-wise. Can't wait to see the results!

[Beatriz]

Well I tried to participate but on one page it kept asking me for a *positive number* for reporting sales in $$ as well as numbers and I tried listing it as many ways as I could think of, with a comma, without, with a .00 at the end, without, with a $, without...kept asking for a positive number so I gave up.

A lot of the questions up to that point did not differentiate between free downloads and paid sales or 4.99 sales or .99 sales...so....not sure the results are going to show anything, unless of course those specific questions happened after the *positive number* fiasco and I just couldn't get to them.

The same happened to me twice so I gave up.  This survey is not too friendly.

[LadyHawk]

sent mine in last night. I'm interested to see the results.

[psychotick]

Hi,

Did it and looking forwards to seeing the results. I also posted a note on Facebook, Sci Fi and Fantasy Authors page.

I found the survey fairly straight forwards. Like others I encounted the error message about positive numbers, but simply changing the number so that it had no decimal point seemed to fix that. Also like others with the question about ranking your different promotional methods effectiveness, I had problems. Half of those I've never used, so had to randomly sort of assign numbers from 6 to 10 for them. They should all have been zero or blank.

Cheers, Greg.