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Apr
06
Book Blogger Survey for Improving Blogger-Publisher Relations!
2010 at 8am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Today I’m thrilled to introduce a project that is intended to be the first step in a developing conversation about helping bloggers and publishers understand, communicate, and work together more effectively. Please read the full introduction and description below—it’s important to us that you know what we’re doing and why—then click the link to take the survey.
During a recent #bookmarket discussion (a weekly Twitter conversation focusing on books and marketing), the talk turned to blog tours and the role of book bloggers in publicity campaigns. Participants generally agreed that bloggers are playing an increasingly important role in raising awareness of new books, but there is, at present, no way to quantify the impact of book bloggers on publicity and sales.
In hopes of improving blogger-publisher relations, we—Rebecca Joines Schinsky of The Book Lady’s Blog and Brett Sandusky, Digital Marketing Manager at Kaplan Publishing—have created this anonymous survey intended to help establish baseline data on book bloggers’ statistics.
This information will be useful in helping facilitate more effective communication between bloggers and publishers by giving all involved a more concrete idea of what to expect and how to measure and determine successful placement of books on book blogs. We also hope it will encourage book bloggers to be more transparent about their blogs’ statistics and to provide relevant data when communicating with publishers to request or arrange reviews.
Additionally, we have included questions intended to provide feedback to publishers about how they can better meet the needs of the book bloggers they work with.
We recognize and appreciate that traffic is not the only important measure of a blog’s success and that many bloggers define the success of their blogs by the number of comments, depth of discussion, and relationships built. While those elements may be apparent to a publisher visiting a blog, how well-trafficked the blog is may not, and it is an important (and currently missing) piece of the puzzle for publishers who wish to optimize exposure of the books they are promoting.
While this survey is intended to be anonymous in order to encourage optimal participation from bloggers (thereby establishing a larger sample size and more accurate data), we have provided a space at the end for you to include your URL if you wish to be included on a list of bloggers who contributed to the survey when the results are made public.
Your responses to this survey will be kept confidential and will not be connected to your URL. All results will be reported in aggregate terms describing general trends, group means, etc.
Take the Survey!
(Please DO NOT use commas in your responses or add text to questions that ask for numerical response. The survey will reject them.)
If you believe in this project, please share it with other bloggers by posting, tweeting, and spreading the word. The survey will be open until April 20th.
For the next step in this project, we will turn things around by surveying publishers about their interactions with and expectations of bloggers. Please suggest questions you’d like to see included in that survey in the comments here.
Thanks in advance for your participation! We look forward to sharing the results with you.
No related posts.
Some notes on the survey:
You ask for “unique hits” and then “hits”. The common metric is “unique visitors” and “hits”, which are two different things.
You ask how many “hits” has my blog gotten since inception. Since 2005 we’ve gotten millions of hits, but my statistical program doesn’t give me an exact number. You should allow people to leave answers blank.
Here are some questions I would like to see on the publisher survey.
1. Are blog statistics important?
2. Are book review policies helpful?
3. Do you prefer longer or shorter reviews?
4. Do you like rating systems?
5. Which rating systems do you prefer?
6. How do you select which bloggers you pitch to?
7. Would you ever consider supplying a blogger with an ereader so they can read ebooks rather than pay for shipping of paper copies?
8. Would you rather a blogger review the book before offering a giveaway?
9. Do you offer giveaways to bloggers and their readers?
10. Would you be willing to include book trailers and other media to improve blog review posts?
Wow, Serena! These are great, and I’ll be interested in seeing responses to them in the future. Thanks for your participation!
Duly noted.
OK filled it out! That was interesting. Can’t wait to see what the results show. I also can’t wait to see what the publisher’s have to say.
Thank you! Any questions you’d like us to ask publishers when we flip the survey to them?
This is SUCH a fabulous idea. I’m so curious what people say! I run a blog (not a book blog), but I’m also a freelance book publicist. I try to personalize all my pitches and make sure the book I want reviewed is relevant, but I’d love some feedback to make it easier for author/publisher while also not making the blogger want to tear his/her hair out.
Thank you! We’ll be sharing that info when the results are published.
My blog is fairly new, but I’ve been on GoodReads for three years. I have tons of reviews on there. So a question for the publishers:
Do you consider a blogger’s other bookish social networking sites when considering who to send books to?
It’s late for me. Hopefully you understand what I’m trying to ask.
Jennifer, that’s what I included in the survey also. Most bloggers are on so many different social networks, that the publicity doesn’t stop on just the blog.
Ooh, good one.
Hey Rebecca! I love that you’re attempting to quantify the seemingly unquantifiable!!
How/where will the results be published?
I’m commenting a second time because I forgot to check the little box that would notify me of follow up comments via email. Now it’s checked.
Results will be published here, on Brett’s blog (http://publishr.tumblr.com), and will hopefully be picked up by industry outlets.
Hey, would you be willing to create a second follow up survey if there are enough questions people want added in?
Okay, questions that I’d like to see publishers/authors answer:
Do you actively link to or excerpt book blogger reviews on your website? On your social networking sites?
Have you ever used blogger reviews in promotional material such as press releases, book jackets, etc.
Would you like bloggers to follow up with links to their book reviews be it via email, twitter, etc.
What do you consider to be a well-trafficked blog in terms of unique hits, rss readers?
Are you willing to pay for advertising (independent of paying for book reviews, content, etc.) in sidebars, etc?
How many book blogs do you subscribe to? Follow on Twitter?
Do you actually read book blogs on a fairly regular basis?
Have you ever blackballed a blogger for anything that they’ve written on their blog?
How far in advance of a books publication date does marketing begin?
Do you make your authors available for guest posts and interviews?
Do you have on your website, a contact easily found for bloggers to request books?
That’s what I have for now.
We’re planning to repeat the blogger survey again in the future w/ tweaks and feedback taken into consideration, so send in those questions.
I’ve added your questions for publishers to our working draft. Thanks, Natasha!
I haven’t taken the survey yet, but am about to. I think your results could be useful material for the panel on “The Evolving Publishing Ecosystem” I’m participating in at BlogHer’10, so I’m asking permission in advance to quote/refer to them as applicable. You and Brett will be appropriately credited, of course!
I may be back after I take the survey with publisher questions. Great project, Rebecca!
You may, of course, quote us….as long as you introduce the quote with appropriately gushy descriptions of our awesomeness
I wouldn’t dream of doing any less, of course
.
Are you going to post your results?
Yes. As indicated in the post, we are going to report the results. I will post them here & they’ll appear elsewhere as well.
GREAT IDEA! Just a few thoughts …
- Like Florinda and the panel she’s on, I’d love to use your results during the Marketing Panel I’m moderating at the BBC in May. And of course I’ll say how wonderful you are!
- Q for publishers: Would it be possible to pitch books 3-6 months in advance, even if review copies are not yet available? This would allow me to put a book on my schedule way in advance and know that I’d receive a copy when it was available. That makes it more likely that I’d review it around the publication date.
Thanks for your (and Brett’s) hard work on this.
I’ve added your Q to our working draft for the next survey and would LOVE to have you discuss this at BBC.
[...] Please go here to take the survey. [...]
Fabulous, Rebecca! What an insightful project!
I hope that you can also ask bloggers if they prefer to get galleys and ARCs as downloads, or as hard copies. For cost and environmental reasons, I know many publishers are trying to move to downloads. But it would be nice to know, from a book blogger’s standpoint, if in fact this is preferable. Many authors do their own promotion as well, so this is helpful to all of us.
—Josie Brown
Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives
(Simon & Schuster/Downtown Press; Release date: June 1, 2010)
Thanks, Josie. I think the main hang-up about e-galleys is that not all book bloggers have e-readers. Those who have them, though, seem happy to accept downloads.
This survey is a great idea Rebecca I will make sure I check back to see what the publishers say! I am not sure what questions to ask, Serena kinda rocked it out up there. If I think of anything I will make sure to come back and post it!
You and Brett are surely made up of pure awesomeness!!!! Thanks for putting all this together. Between Serena & Natasha’s questions I can’t think of a single thing. But if I do I know where to find you!
What I would be interested in know is how insular is the book blogging community. We all know that we’re influenced in our book buying by blogs–but what about the average person? The person who buys a book occasionally at the supermarket or Walmart? Do we also reach them?
Not that there’s any way to find that out through this survey, of course.
If number of subscribers versus number of hits is any indication, then yes, we’re reaching WAY beyond other book bloggers. Search engine traffic is a good sign of that, too. I’ll look at a subscribers vs. hits analysis when I run the stats after the survey closes. Excellent suggestion!
Great idea, finally somebody is taking the imitative. I finished the survey and tweeted about it. Most of the questions I’d like to see in the publisher survey have been asked. Will the survey be for publishers only or pr companies as well?
I’d like to know if publishers would be willing to work with a select few bloggers in a campaign capacity. What I mean is, in the product review community sometimes companies work with bloggers continually. The blogger promotes and writes about the products many times and in return the blogger is paid money. Sometimes they are called brand ambassadors. There are a few publishers that I love so much I’d love to do something like that for them. The money would be an extra perk of course but it’s more about helping that publisher get the word out on their books. I already review as many of their books as possible and talk about them. I have plans to do more.
Thanks for doing this! It’ll be curious to see the results! There were a few things I wasn’t sure about. Being semi-new to the book blogging world I don’t know too much about statistics or even finding out how many people are subscribed to my blog. I hope I didn’t mess up the data too much by not knowing these things.
I hope that the results will be available to those of us who have book publicity firms that support the publishers’ marketing campaigns. I am a big fan of book bloggers and believe that you are an important part of a book’s publicity campaign. Sharing information with us will be helpful in our advocating for more ARCs and other materials be made available to on-line reviewers. Thank you for doing this!
[...] been going around the book blogger blogosphere today, but in case you haven’t seen it yet: Book Blogger Survey for Improving Blogger-Publisher Relations! And, since Trish did it first, I thought I’d post my stats to give you an idea of what an [...]
Results will be shared publicly on this blog and elsewhere—the goal of this project is to open up dialogue, and to do that, we want everyone who could benefit from the information to have access to it. Thanks for your support of book bloggers!
I’m sure it was fine, and thank you for participating! Your wordpress.com dashboard can show you some great stats, and you can get a rough estimate of blog subscribers by searching for your blog in Google Reader (when you search, it will show you how many people subscribe). Email me if you have any questions I can help you with, and welcome to blogging!
It’s looking like adding PR companies to the survey will be beneficial, so we’ll make the survey open to them as well….really, we’ll want to poll anyone who works at a publisher or on a publisher’s behalf to promote books with book bloggers. I’ll add in a question about potential paid blogging opportunities. Great idea.
I’m glad you liked the questions. I often feel I’m in the dark with most of this stuff.
These are great questions…thanks Natasha.
I filled out the survey as best I could. Some of the stuff will not reflect the life of the blog since I only started figuring out these statistics, etc. I hope its helpful anyway. I would really love to know what the publishers consider a well-trafficked blog.
I filled out the survey as best I could. Some of the stuff will not reflect the life of the blog since I only started figuring out these statistics, etc. I hope its helpful anyway. I would really love to know what the publishers consider a well-trafficked blog.
forgot to hit the subscribe to comments…ugh
When we do the publisher survey, we will definitely ask about what they consider to be a well-trafficked blog. My guess right now, though, is that they have no idea because there’s been so little real conversation about traffic.
Great! We can talk more about this once you have the results posted.
I’m looking forward to seeing the results of this survey and helping out from the publishers side of things!
Hi…I attempted to complete and submit the survey…but it created errors that, even after created, would not change. For instance, I had not completed one question, then did, but the error remained when trying to submit. Also, entering whole numbers for blog numbers does not work… I had at least 8 errors that were not really errors and was unable to submit my survey…Bummmerrrr!
Hmm. I haven’t heard of that happening to anyone else. If you can, please try clicking the link from a different computer later on. The survey will be open for 2 weeks, and we want everyone who wants to participate to be able to. Thanks for letting me know about this.
You are wonderful! Thank you!
Hi! I took your survey, blogged about it, and posted it on twitter as well. I love this idea. Book Blogging is new to me, and so far has been a wonderful way for me to get my name out there with authors and publishing companies. I have had nothing but great experiences!!
Welcome to the craziness!
the survey will not take blank answers (only revealed after you’ve completed it which is annoying) and among those blank answers it will not accept are questions regarding traffic – this, in a survey that has questions related to not providing marketing types with blog stats.
If you were BUYING advertising, you (might) have a right to obtaining that information. This survey does not have that right and is, I think, majorly flawed since most folks who won’t provide traffic stats to marketing types certainly won’t provide it for survey types..
This is the first time around for running a survey like this, and as with any first time, there are bugs to work out. We have received feedback about the fact that you don’t see problems until after clicking “submit,” and we’ll work on it for next time.
The survey is entirely optional; it is anonymous; and we make it clear that numbers will only be reported in terms of general trends (not individual responses). If you’re not comfortable with that, then it’s your prerogative not to participate. The goal here is to get some baseline idea of what blog activity looks like so that bloggers and publishers can move toward working together in a more standardized, more effective way.
Man, did I really just give someone my traffic stats? Embarrassing
Anyway I took the survey. It will be interesting to see what the results are.
Questions for the publishers… Hmmm, some of them mange to impact traffic for specific reviews by mentioning them on their own site (or rounding up a number of links). Maybe a question on whether they do this and why (not)?
[...] also introduced a project I’m really excited about—the Book Blogger Survey I put together with Brett Sandusky of Kaplan—and which I proceeded to promote like crazy. [...]
[...] you taken the Book Blogger Survey for Improving Blogger-Publisher Relations? If not, you have until 4/20 to do so: This information will be useful in helping facilitate more [...]
Some people have left great questions for the publisher side of this questionnaire. I’d like to add one.
1. How far in advance of a book’s publication would you like the review posted. (I’ve had one publisher tell me to hold off on posting my review because newspapers like their reviews published first.)
Hi, I only heard about the survey after it closed, but I will be interested in the results and also what publishers have to say.
I used to be the book critic for a daily newspaper until lupus forced me on disability five years ago. I started blogging three months ago and almost immediately reconnected with readers and publishers. It’s great to be back in such a personal way, and now I’m getting to know other bloggers as well. Greetings!
Nancy Pate “On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever” http://patebooks.wordpress.com
I didn’t get to take the survey because I just found out about it today, the day after it closed, from Shelf Awareness, but I would really like to have my book blog listed among the blogs that publishers might see as places of interest to their readers.
I’ve been writing book reviews on butterflybooks.blogspot.com for 5 years now, and in that time I’ve read a large number of books that I have enjoyed writing about . I’m a print reporter by trade, and I noticed that the book review section of the local newspapers are all but gone. I believe there is still a need for book reviews and good word of mouth from readers to keep the public apprised of great works that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Thanks for letting me have my say.
DeAnn
I completely agree, DeAnn. Sorry you didn’t hear about the survey until today. We’re not really sure why Shelf Awareness ran the piece after the survey closed, but c’est la vie. We’ll be running another set of data collection within the next few months, and I hope you’ll get to participate and be listed in that one.