Book-marketing guru Sandra Beckwith writes a terrific blog and offers a must-read e-newsletter. In her most-recent, she breaks down a few statistics gleaned from Dan Zarrella’s book The Science of Marketing: When to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog, and Other Proven Strategies. Zarella “wants you to toss out much of what you’ve heard about social media marketing and focus on what his research tells you instead.”
As Beckwith parses out the data, she comes to some interesting conclusions. Of the 1,000 American adults surveyed, all of whom own a computer or e-reader and have a job paying $70,000 or more:
- About 65 percent said they read e-books at least once a month.
- Nearly half said they read fiction e-books.
- Women were more likely to read fiction e-books than men, while men were more likely to read business e-books than women.
And what about pushing widgets? What can Zarella’s book tell us about how to put our own book in front of readers? The author also asked people how they heard about e-books they read. He learned that:
- 45 percent learned about them directly from Amazon (more women than men).
- About 35 percent said “recommendations from friends†(more women than men).
- The third most common way readers heard about e-books was through search engines (more men than women).
Beckwith concludes that word-of-mouth marketing is essential, and authors must make their books available as e-pubs. And while it’s great to have your book listed in as many outlets as possible, for better or worse Amazon still rules.