As an exclusive to this year’s Tools of Change in New York, Goodreads offered attendees the chance to gain insights from what The Economist calls “the world’s biggest book club.”
Data is essential to author marketing, but if you don’t have a direct relationship with readers, how do you find out what’s important to them? Goodreads is unique in the size of its community of readers – 11 million as of September 2012, and now up to over 15 million. That’s one heck of a powerful community of potential readers.
Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads (pictured right), shared recent survey results conducted by Goodreads of their membership. We’ve included the full slide presentation from Chandler’s TOC talk in this post, offering you plenty of facts about your potential readers!
All the statistics, especially those regarding how many people are reading on their cell phones, are enlightening. But we also want to call out one particularly interesting tidbit:
What Do You Want to Do When You Get to the End of a Book?
- 83% See What else the author has written
- 75% Find more books similar to what they’ve just read
- 69% Discuss the book with friends
- 35% Read other people’s reviews
And yet, as Otis pointed out, the last page of an ebook typically is… blank, like its more traditional print counterpart. But with so much of today’s reading occurring electronically on Kindles, tablets and smart phones, Chandler and others believe it may be time to rethink this boring space. It could well be a piece of real estate deserving a bit of attention from authors; to recommend their other work, link to their websites, provide links to reviews and/or book clubs, etc.
Think about it and share your thoughts about utilizing your back page real estate with the WWW tribe!
I’m surprised that only 35% read other people’s reviews. Considering how much time and angst are devoted to reviews, this is a bit of fresh air.
The last page…yeah, great point. I have a series, which lends itself to filling in the page. Each book is ending with the title of the next book in the series and my website link. It’s a good reminder, though for everyone.
Great, Victoria, and yes, if we take a cue from what READERS want when they finish a book, then there’s more we can do… for ourselves and authors with similar subjects to grow the whole base…
Fantastic idea!
So insightful. Making good use of the empty space at the end of an e-book can be quite powerful, especially if the author has a book series available. When a reader ends book one and has enjoyed it, he or she is likely to click the available links to buy the next book in the series…or even the whole series right then and there!
Absolutely, Kimberly and it’s all part of us beginning to think differently about today’s book “containers” – the e-edition can offer so much more with links and such – and we don’t EXPECT to see a blank page at the end as we’ve come to expect in print editions. Write on, Shari
I am with the 75% who would see out other books like the one I just read.
Thanks for always providing such informative posts. This is great.