How do Readers Feel About Supporting Authors?

Long-time readers of this blog will know that the impetus for Author Advantage came from self-reflection about my purchasing habits. I have always been a lover of used books. My bookshelf is filled with yellow pages and creased spines. One day when aligning the spines of my bookshelf, a truly Sisyphean task, I started to reckon with the fact that despite my frequent purchases of books I was not supporting any of the writers whose work lined my shelf.

For whatever reason I have two copies of The Fall of Hyperion on my bookshelf. Duplicates do make it into my bag more often than I would like to admit. Including the double copy I have 5 books written by Dan Simmons nestled above my reading chair. Every copy was bought used. I have even read 4 of them which is not a guarantee after purchase. In total I have spent 20+ hours reading his work and I liked it so much that I read his famous Hyperion trilogy and then branched out to his less well known work.

Bought new this would have meant that I would have paid Dan in the range of $8-15. As a reader of a used copy I am getting the exact same experience as the reader of the new book. In the relationship between writer and reader both the new and used reader get the same benefits. If we look at the inversion however a different picture emerges. A writer is rewarded for their work in a sale to the reader of the new copy. A writer is ignored entirely when a reader purchases a used copy. This is fundamentally an abuse of the creators.

When creating a solution I worked from my own conviction that others would feel the same. Importantly we have now completed some opinion surveys to measure the general sentiment around readers feelings toward supporting authors. What I found is that 74% of readers believe that authors should receive payment for every copy of their work that is read. This reinforces the resonance that the idea of author support has in the reading community.

This is a very encouraging result for any bookseller looking for a competitive angle when selling used books. 74% is a significant basis of support for targeting customers. Additionally, the respondents in the no category are a very small portion of the overall population. A 5:1 ratio of positive sentiment ensures that for every reader who feels that second hand sales should not result in any renumeration for a writer there are five that would be in full support of a seller.

In order to dig a little deeper on motivations a subsequent question asked, "Would knowing that your purchase supports authors make you more likely to buy used books from participating bookstores or platforms?". This reframing of the core idea drives at the commercial value of author support. In effect it serves to make readers reflect on the power of the proposition. Will readers change their purchasing habits if there is an option to support writers.

I know that if I could purchase my used books from a store where the authors were being supported I would go out of my way to purchase from that seller. If there were two book stores next to each other while I walked down the street and one supported writers and the other did not I know that I would step into the one that put money into the hands of the storytellers driving my purchase. In buying the book I have made the decision to spend my money for a few hours of entertainment. In selling the book the seller benefits from the fact that they carried the book that I am interested in. Critically however without the writer I would not be spending anything at the bookstore as there would be nothing to buy.

In this I have found that I am also not alone. As expected there is a drop in yes responses to whether or not people will change their behavior. This drops still shows several significant trends. If asked whether or not readers would be more likely to shop with sellers that supported writers 63% responded yes.

What I think is really cool about this result is that despite the 10% decrease in yes responses the shift is not from yes to no but from yes to maybe. The survey design was very simple and there was no information given about Author Advantage, mechanisms for distribution or partnership structures. What this resulted in was comments primarily about how things would work, the difficulty of implementation and whether or not a legal framework would define the relationship of parties. I think that this result shows a logical consistency to the first response. Also a 4:1 ratio of positive sentiment is still a strong indicator of preference.

Keen eyed observers have noticed the color grading of the above graphs. In designing the survey I wanted to analyze the preferences of readers across different volumes. Looking again at myself I thought that individuals who read more would be more likely to want to support writers. This seemed like a logical connection. If reading is your primary leisure activity then you are exposed to more and more writers and you develop deep connection to the worlds, stories and characters that occupy your waking days. In developing this deep connection there is an increased value on the work and therefore the creator.

In our results we found that the majority of respondents read 0-5 books a year. The amounts of readers follows a relatively accurate exponential decay and the highest amount of books read per year that we recorded was 130. What this means is that there are lots of readers reading few books and few readers reading lots of books. For a bookseller of course the important number is amount of books sold per year and not amount of customers. To view the impact of customer sentiment across different groups I used the self described number of books read per year to develop a weighted average of sentiment.

If readers who read more were more positive about author support then this would be more impactful on overall theoretical sales sentiment. If a seller can convince a reader that reads 100 book per year to shop at their store then that is at least as impactful as convincing 100 readers of a single book and at a result of far less effort. Through this method I was able to turn the 250 responses into a projected 3,600 book purchases per year. A visualization of this process is seen below.

Looking at the above graph there is a clear correlation between number of books read and preference for booksellers that support writers. The more that someone reads the more the proposition of author support rings as a differentiator. This means that supporting authors is a targeted strategy for attracting readers who will buy the most books from your store.

The final component of the survey revolved around the cost of this author support. By asking this question respondents were asked not only to change their purchasing behavior but also accepting an additional cost in order to align their preferences with an aligned seller. What I loved about this question is two things. First it showed how disconnected normal readers are from author compensation. This makes total sense and the complex algebra of royalty statements is beyond the interest of most. I got some great responses along the lines of, "Authors should get 60% of the sale price". What a different world this would be if that was the case. I also got 20 responses that suggested €10+.

Excluding these outliers I got an average value of €1.38 and a median of €0.50. Author Advantage's core partnership is €0.50 per book already so we are right in the sweet spot of customer preference.

The last interesting point that we analyzed was format preference. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that one out of every four books sold in France is a used copy. In our cohort of respondents we found a very similar percentage of reader preference reinforcing this overall trend.