The Internet era has been keeping tabs on your favorite author a viable proposition. It was not too long ago that the only way to correspond with an author was to mail them a letter or send to off their agent and hope they would respond. If you had a big name like Stephen King there were official fan clubs that would send out newsletters with details on what they were up too and what new books they had planned. These days authors keep their own blogs or are active on social media. We wanted to know the most popular ways readers interact with authors and how authors were marketing themselves and 410 people took part in our latest data report.
Over the last four weeks we conducted a study to look into the most popular ways people kept in touch with authors. 19.66% of readers used Twitter to stay abreast of the latest happenings and to DM them directly. I think the great thing about Twitter is that the average author is just being themselves with no hidden agenda. They aren’t using Twitter to spam hashtags like #buymybook, but they are talking about their life, world events or just being interesting.
17.2% of the population stated that they continue to regularly visit the authors personal website and 12.04% visited the authors blog. These are two distinctive things. A website is primarily used to hype the authors latest books and provides buying links to where you can buy them in bookstores or online. The blog, is most often the authors own personal voice where they write articles musings.
16.46% of users stated they use Facebook to visit authors official Pages. The readers enjoy more personal interaction between themselves and the author. Posting on the wall or replying to established threads is more documented and easy to follow.
9.05% of readers subscribe to the authors newsletter, 7.33% check their Amazon profile, 5.13% visit their Instagram and less than 2% listen to an authors podcast, if one exists.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
