Doing a Survey Using Google Forms

GoogleDrive create formIn a previous post I discussed various methods of conducting a survey on your website and a different post even conducted an extensive survey. Finally, here is the promised tutorial on how to do your own survey using Google Forms, the same method as was used in the survey we conducted.

While you can do this by the seat of your pants, if the survey you’re planning is going to have a lot of questions, especially if the answer to some questions is going to determine whether or not to ask follow up questions, it might make sense to rough out the survey, either on paper (maybe index cards) or in a word processor where you can easily rearrange. However, we’re going to fly by the seat of our pants today. Continue reading “Doing a Survey Using Google Forms”

IU Reader Poll: What Makes You Say “Yes”

People choose the books they read for a reason. Multiple factors can be involved in that decision-making, but that doesn’t mean we give equal weight to all those factors.

More often than not, we use one consideration of many in reaching the decision to buy or pass on a book. Of all the things any given book has going on to lure you to choose it above others, what do you feel most often influences your choice?

When deciding to purchase a book, which single factor carries the most weight with you?

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IU Poll: Buying Bestseller Status

If you’ve read the story about authors using a marketing firm to buy their way onto the New York Times bestseller list, we’d like to know your opinion. Is this just a clever marketing stratagem? Is it unethical? Should changes be made to prevent this statistical vulnerability from being exploited? Tell us what you think:

Should a marketing firm be able to get its clients on the NYT bestseller list in the manner described in the article?

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IU Survey: Do Reviews Belong in the Book Preview?

We get a lot of requests to feature books here on Indies Unlimited. As time allows, we like to preview those books before we commit to showcasing them here for a couple of reasons: If there is an obvious mistake (such as a typo in the book description or even the title), we can let the author know and give them an opportunity to fix it; and,
Since we don’t cover all genres of writing, we like to make sure the submission is a good fit for our site.
Lately, we have noticed a lot of authors seem to be using a large percentage of the front matter that makes up the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon. In some few instances, there was so much front matter, that none of the actual story was included in the preview.

You end up with a preview that consists of a title page, a page of boilerplate copyright info, an acknowledgements page, a dedication page, a list of other titles by this author, a poem, song lyric, or quote that author likes, a couple of pages of excerpts from pre-release reviews and then you’re out of space.

Is this a clever use of yet one more space to deploy marketing, or does it deprive the prospective buyer of the promised sample? Is it a deliberate attempt by the author to hide a weak start to an otherwise good book? In short, WTF?

We’d like to know your thoughts.

Is including reviews in the preview section of your book a good idea?

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