Survey on how you choose/find your next read and interest in customization

[Yves Gorat]

Dear all,

for my master thesis in my current studies I am looking at how eBook readers find and choose their next read, as well as which add-ons (Customization) they are interested in. I would be really interested in your opinion on a range of questions which should take you roughly 10 minutes to answer. If you are interested in the results, you can choose to leave your email address at the end of the survey and later on receive the statistical data.

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?s...2ijy6efz189200

Furthermore, I hope that the board administrators agree with me that this is the right location to post this topic. If not, please let me know.

Thanks for your support (highly appreciated!) and all the best,

Yves

[Krykorya]

I've taken the survey. I would have liked the employment status question to allow participants to select multiple check boxes - I'm both a student and employed.

[orlok]

Done

[CWatkinsNash]

Done.

[Lynx-lynx]

Interesting survey, especially the questions concerning being able to change character names, and other personalisations.

Those aspects don't interest me, but as the statement indicated -think of incorporation your children's names in the books. Could imagine that may have some appeal.

[mr_nihilism]

Good survey. The results should be interesting.

[jbcohen]

Good luck on your thesis from someone that spent a long time writting his Master's Thesis, mine was on State-Dependent Learning how ever choising ebooks is an interesting area to do a study on. I know writting a thesis is not a simple undertaking.

jbcohen
BS, MSs, CISSP, MCITP

[CazMar]

A pity some book publishers don't conduct similar surveys via sites such as this - I'd love the opportunity of being able to express my preferences/likes/dislikes on a variety of topics relating to ebooks. Then I might not get vampire/romance stories in my recommended reading...... oh well, I can dream on!

[Elfwreck]

I was a little lost on some questions.

"For a similar topic and make-up of an eBook, indicate by how much (in %) a self-published eBook should be more or less expensive compared to a published eBook."

Um. Self-published is published. Even changing that to publisher-published... there are a lot of tiny/indie publishers that are little more than collections of authors working together to get their books out. (That said, for an author I don't know, I'll risk less money on a self/small-indie published ebook. They tend to not edit well enough.)

Customized features: "Choice of layout versions (e.g. gothic, fairytale, modern, …)"

I have no idea what that means.

[Nyssa]

It seems to be stuck... I've been waiting for page 2 to load for a few minutes now.

I'm not experiencing any problems with any of the other tabbed pages in my browser.

[Edit]: The page just crashed.

[Elfwreck]

On the subject of "choosing what to read next"--you left off any questions about store loyalty or aversion. Some people are always going to choose something from Amazon. Some won't ever choose Amazon. This *drastically* changes how they choose.

I don't do DRM; that means I don't get Amazon or B&N ebooks--so I don't get much of a "you may also like" selection. I do read a lot of Smashwords, but it's mostly by random browsing and collecting books when they're on sale, and deciding later what to read.

Also missing from your survey: any acknowledgement that "what books do you purchase/download" might be very, very different from "what are you going to read next?" I purchase when I have money or books are on sale. I might read that book much, much later.

Not sure that's a problem; you should just be aware, when you're writing up your thesis, that your survey didn't differentiate well between acquiring books and reading them. You asked about how people acquired books; what they actually read might be very different.

How I choose what to *read* next usually involves crawling through my "purchased ebooks" folder, or heading to AO3 and downloading whatever novel-length Avengers fics have been finished recently.

[JSWolf]

Done!

[artifact]

Done as well!

Some comments:
#10 -- Price for self-pub. The question is biased in assuming I think self-published has less value and overhead than traditional publishers.

#13 -- How do I discover a new author? I go on binges and tend to do a lot of surfing using tags/categories/keywords/shelves I'm into at the moment on sites such as Goodreads or Smashwords. (e.g. 'space opera' or 'regency romance' or 'werewolf'.) I'm assuming this is going to be a common write-in and you don't have anything close.

[meeera]

More feedback (as well as echoing most of the above):

- pale grey text on medium grey is really damn hard to read.

- your list of the characteristics of ebooks that are important ignores one of my primary reasons, which is accessibility (for me, this is about the weight of device more than about the font size adjustment). I'm not sure how exhaustive your list was intended to be, but as you've included font adjustment I'm assuming you're interested in accessibility issues?

- You have radio buttons for " 11* Please indicate what you perceive is a reasonable selling price for a self-published eBook ". There is no one set price that people should charge for a novel; that's absurd. I picked a number more or less at random, because you had no "other" option.

- Not everyone is either male or female

- I picked "Retired", because "currently not working due to disability/illness" isn't an option

- "Spouse" isn't an occupation. Did you mean "homemaker"?

[HomeInMyShoes]

Done.