Please take Dear Author’s ebook/reader survey
By Paul Biba
Hi all! Jane from Dear Author here. I’m privileged to be able to give a presentation at this month’s Tools of Change conference along with Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches Trashy Books and Editor Angela James from Carina Press. Our presentation is what readers want and it is based on conversations we’ve had with ebook readers for over four years on our blogs, in email and on message boards. But folks like hard numbers along with anecdotes so we’ve put together a survey and would love for you to fill it out. If you do fill it out, you’ll be entered to win $250.00 toward books or an ebook reader of your choice.
It’s an opportunity for your voice to be heard.
Editor’s Note: Let’s help Jane and Sarah out. I’ve already taken the survey and I hope you will do so also. PB
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:15 pm
I backed up a few pages to rework some of my textbox answers, found they were all blanked out and could not proceed again, because:
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There was a problem with your submission.
Sorry, but this form is limited to one submission per user.
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So I don’t know if it was submitted at all, and in any case it would have been incomplete if it had been.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
No place do they ask for your name or e-mail address before or after submitting the survey so how would you win anything? I did not mind filling it out because I feel strongly about e-books but I did resent being promised the possibility of winning something and then have it not be true.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Good luck, Jane and Sarah! Publishers need to know more about readers’ eBook experiences
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:16 pm
They do ask for your email address on the very first page of the survey.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:18 am
Yes, there is no place to enter your contact info to be entered in any drawing. The survey is interesting but it appears to have been “rushed out the door.” For example, there is one page that asks you to rate the importance of different factors, but the wording is unclear as your choices for answering are “agree”, “disagree”, etc. — not the proper wording for rating something’s importance.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:20 am
I took the survey but I have to agree with Dan that it is very poorly written. The rating section missed a neutral option and the questions about piracy were really rigged. After saying I had not stripped DRM or shared an ebook, the next question was asked assuming that I in fact had been a pirate. Sarah and crew could have used a good editor
.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:43 am
We asked only for the email address and not for contact information because we didn’t want to collect personal information that wouldn’t be necessary.
We will use the email address to contact the winner. Perhaps we should make that clearer in the instructions.
@hapalochlaena if you email me at jane at dearauthor.com, I will pull up the entries and see if yours is complete.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:01 am
I filled out the survey but I was a bit dismayed that some of the questions were assuming things that weren’t true. I’ve never read an e-book, yet some of the options just assume that I have and don’t have an option to say that I have not. Along with that, I’m going to agree with Rich Adin and complain about some of the questions just assuming the survey taker is a pirate.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:16 am
@Heidi and @Rich – We certainly don’t believe that the survey taker is a pirate which is why all those questions are optional.
Thanks for your input. We plan to run surveys in the future and will certainly be more clear in other surveys.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:23 am
I didn’t actually fill out the ones that didn’t have a “not applicable” option, but there were many that were already filled in with the first option anyway. Not trying to start anything, I think this survey is a great start. I just wanted to point something out that struck me as odd. Good luck!
February 4th, 2010 at 11:39 am
@Heidi – no, I appreciate the critical input. Without it, there is no way to improve.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
I’d love to take the survey.
It won’t let me, probably because another person in my household took it and has the same IP because we use the WiFi router.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Wow. I’m actually pretty disturbed. Many of the price questions, the “too high” or “cost too much” boxes were auto-filled, so although it let me change the auto-answer, if I’d been going too fast, I’d have easily missed.
I’d think that was an accident, except most of the other questions were NOT auto-filled.
That’s a huge problem with the survey, which has no general feedback form, either, and I’m really angry right now, because I very much feel like I just got push-polled.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
The auto-filled responses definitely seemed designed to skew results. The whole survey had the tone many have, with multiple choices that don’t cover all the options, incorrect assumptions, and more. Really, before someone writes a survey, there should be discussion to see what the questions should be. Then the designer would see much of the stuff that would otherwise be wrong or missed.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Apologies — I said there was no place to enter your contact information; I guess I’d forgotten having entered my e-mail address. Or was that field added after the survey went live?
February 9th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
I hope the survey results will be forwarded to the greedy publishers !!!!!!!!!!!