Saturday, July 22, 2017

Can you help me with a survey?

It's so easy to get lost in the creative part of writing (you know, the part I love the best!) that I sometimes forget I need to pause and take off my writer's hat . . .






. . . and replace it with my business hat.





The days are long gone for most authors when they can spend all their time writing book after book and let someone else (like a publisher) worry about nitty-gritty things like marketing and sales.
Yeah, so I'm not so good at all those "business" parts. That's why I recently signed up for a 12 week course sponsored by my church called "Starting and Growing My Business for Self-Reliance."
The weekly lessons emphasize the importance of building our business on spiritual foundations and introduces us to some of the important basics that will help a small business venture succeed.


I'm only on our second lesson and I have an assignment to research "customers" and "business owners" in my field. I smiled when I saw that and realized, "Those are readers and other authors!" So I'm wondering if some of you would be willing to help me out with this lesson? 

If you're a reader, I've prepared a survey with a few basic questions about your book buying habits. (I know, I know, authors are readers too, but I have a separate survey for authors to fill out.)

If you're an author, I've prepared a survey with some questions about how you run your business as an author: what formats you publish in, how do you choose your prices, etc.

Can you help me out? If you're a reader please click here to take the readers survey. If you're an author, please click here to take the author survey. (Indie and traditional authors are both welcome.)

To thank you for your time, I've included a link at the end of each survey to enter a giveaway for a chance to win a $10 gift card to your choice of Amazon/B&N/iTunes, so be sure to click on the link when you finish the survey.

The only catch is, I need you to fill out the survey by 11:59 pm, Tuesday, July 25 so I can compile the results on Wednesday to take to my class on Thursday. I'll continue to leave both surveys up if you want to take them later than Tuesday, but that's when the gift card giveaway will close.

Thank you so much! I hope you have fun with the surveys and I truly appreciate your help if you can give it!