Author newsletters have been a topic of conversation here before. These newsletters let you communicate with readers, telling them about upcoming books, sales or appearances, and a variety of other fun topics you choose. However, your newsletter doesn’t have to be a one-way street. You can use it to ask readers questions that help you learn more about them, help them feel useful, and help you hone your author business.
So, what types of things should you ask your readers and how? There are generally two categories of questions to ask your readers: ones that help you get to know them better and opinion questions that help make readers feel more part of the process (and also help your author business). Continue reading “A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community”
I first used Google forms to set up the Indies Unlimited 
Being an indie author has a lot of benefits. One weakness though, is that we do not have extensive and reliable data on consumer behavior around which we can configure our marketing strategies. Most of our efforts to position our wares are based on anecdotal successes reported by other authors (i.e., here’s what I did that worked for me), or just groping about in the dark trying to find anything that works. It would be nice to have more information.