Ever since I’ve been blogging (and from looking at my archives, I’ve been blogging since 2007 (which, wow)), the question has come up: But do book blogs even SELL books? Does anyone take that recommendation to a store and BUY a book? Book bloggers and have been pounding their fist on the table insisting, YES! Books are being bought based on OUR recommendations. Unfortunately, all of the proof has been anecdotal.

Until now.

I was reading the latest issue of Shelf Awareness (a newsletter primarily for bookstores/booksellers) when I stumbled across a survey of consumer purchasing behavior. Obviously this survey was done specifically for bookstores — information such as whether more men or women bought books, their socioeconomic standing, etc. One of the questions asked was readers’ principle ways of finding out about new titles. Personal recommendations account for 49.2%, bookstore staff recommendations account for 30.8%, and if you continue reading, it turns out that 12.1% of readers polled find out about new titles from blogs.

12.1%

That’s huge. That’s a big enough chunk of the pie to have to have a piece of the pie showing blogs as a possibility. I don’t think any blogger claimed that they had more influence than, say, a bookseller at a local bookstore, but we do, in fact, have influence.

Obviously I didn’t need proof before now since I already knew this from experience, but it’s kinda nice to have it.

You can see the whole survey here, and the Shelf Awareness article here.

And just in case you can’t get the words too legit, too legit to quit hey hey…

Title: My (not so) Storybook Life [buy the book]
Author: Elizabeth Owen [website]
Pages: 256
Genre: Memoir
Date published: October 18, 2011

Summary:

Fresh, funny, and poignant, My (not so) Storybook Life is old-fashioned humor mashed with literary spoofery. Elizabeth thinks of herself and her husband, Matt, as a modern day Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Together they’ve endured paint-color mishaps, sewage disasters, pest infestations, and a schnauzer that poops at tornado sirens. It was hardly the domestic perfection a young Liz imagined while reading Anne of Green Gables and Pride and Prejudice. Could it be that these literary stalwarts had led her astray?

Liz tells the story of her own path to happiness, along the way seeking revenge on her literary heroes: Jo March has to cope with a soul-sucking job, Elizabeth Bennett shepherds a Duggar-size brood of kids, and Anne Shirley deals with a penny-pinching husband. But every comedy is balanced by tragedy. Angela was one of Liz’s closest friends, a kindred spirit who at age of 33 was diagnosed with cancer. Before Angela, Liz was discontent. But it was the journey she took with this friend that made her realize that her house and its decorations and plumbing and dirty-clothes-covered Man Cave were not burdens to be tweaked and perfected, but blessings to be thankful for.

Why I’m Featuring It

Liz from Mabel’s House is one of my favorite bloggers. When I had a blogroll, she was on it. She recently published a book and asked if I would feature it on my blog. I couldn’t tell her yes fast enough.

I haven’t had the chance to read it, but I wanted to make sure you all knew about it. I kind of owe it to her.

Liz turned me on to Homer Laughlin Orange Tree bowls. If turning me on to beautiful vintage pottery like that doesn’t indebt me to someone, then I don’t know what does.

I think it was her who made me appreciate the wonder of turquoise paint.

Liz announced her pregnancy a month or two before I announced mine. I’ve watched her deal with post partum depression and come out on the other side. If we lived closer we’d be friends. So I absolutely wanted to tell you all about her book. If you like memoirs, why not give this one a shot?

Oh look! I remember when I used to do this.

get free booksbeing a book reviewer – Sounds cool, huh? Unfortunately, ask anyone who’s been blogging longer than 6 months: it becomes a burden. A NICE burden, but a burden nonetheless.

“olderwomen.com” trish – SCREW YOU TOO. I’m only 32, jerko.

i had emergency surgery my ex boyfriend – Uhh…you had emergency surgery BECAUSE OF your ex boyfriend or IN SPITE OF your ex boyfriend? This is where those little things called conjunctions come in handy.

why? – Because.

farts – HAHAHAHA!! Are those ever not funny? I didn’t think so.

princess bride hey lady – Yup, I can quote whole scenes from The Princess Bride.

how to cuss my parents out without them – Dude, don’t be cussing your parents out, because one day you will have an asshole kid just like yourself, and you’ll rue the day you thought cussing your parents out was a good idea.

why do people like nicholas sparks – Why do I even have to answer this question? This should be obvious. If you really don’t know why, go read the first couple chapters of any of his books, and then read the last chapter, and see if you couldn’t have predicted what would happen.

oops i peed my pants – I feel like singing! Does this make you think of Oops I Did It Again too?

summary of Geek Love – FABULOUS. That should suffice.

crack yourself up – Why yes, yes I do.

Welcome, Bloggiesta-ers! I hope you’re clearing the cobwebs, catching up on writing posts, and generally blowing the dust of ye olde blogs. Keeping up a blog is a lot of work, so dedicating some time to keeping things tidy and doing things you wouldn’t normally make time for will benefit you in the long run.

Today I’m going to talk to you about email, specifically how to organize and stay on top of your email.

On average, I receive 20 to upwards of 75 emails a day, most of which require a response. If I’m not constantly responding to or taking care of email, it gets out of control. As I write this post, I have 43 emails in my inbox, and by this weekend, I hope to have that to less than 10. My constant goal is to keep my inbox at under 20 emails, but during the week it often gets to 40 or higher.

I know what I do to keep on top of my email, but I also found some great suggestions after doing a little digging. Here’s a list of things I’ve found useful, as well as suggestions I hadn’t thought of:

1. Keep your inbox clean. You don’t have to keep it at empty, but you should be archiving any email you’ve already taken care of. How will you know what emails you need to respond to if you have 1,452 emails in your inbox?
2. Unsubscribe from anything cluttering up your inbox. I know how easy it is to subscribe to this newsletter and that email alert, but unless you really are interested or use whatever coupons you get in your inbox, UNSUBSCRIBE. I receive only a few author newsletters and absolutely no vendor advertising.
3. If you do want to receive adverts in your inbox, make use of your email’s filter. This way you can still receive notices and things but they’ll get sent directly to a special folder, keeping your inbox clean.
4. If an email comes in that can be taken care of in less than a minute or two, do it. If you’re going to have your email open at all times, you might as well take care of all those small, pesky emails that can be responded to quickly, but when stacked one on top of each other become a burden.
5. Decide who is a priority. I have a list in my head of people who, when they email me, get a response immediately. Other people can wait until I’m sitting down and specifically working on email. For example, potential/existing clients are the highest priority I have.
6. Don’t use your inbox as a place to keep tasks or to-do items. I know from experience those things can get lost if you’re dealing with a high volume of email. Instead, make use of a task list, to-do list, sticky notes, or writing on your hand.
7. Set aside time each day to clear out your inbox. While I have my email open most of the day, I send out most of my email in the evenings and on weekends.
8. Turn off Facebook alerts. Those things will clog your inbox faster than you can click to turn off the alerts.
9. Keep a message unread until you can respond to it. I’ve found this keeps me hyper aware of what’s in my inbox and nothing falls to the bottom of the pile.
10. Keep a message in your inbox if you’re waiting on a reply. I won’t archive an email until an issue is resolved. This is slightly different than #6 in that this isn’t a to-do list or task list, but rather items that are waiting on someone else’s action.
11. Don’t respond to email all day. This goes hand in hand with #5. When I’m working at home all day on the weekends, I have my email up the whole time. However, when I’m doing one task and an email comes in, I don’t immediately respond. I wait until I have some time to answer all emails that have come in in the last few hours and answer them at that time. Don’t break your work flow just to answer an email.

With all that said, I highly recommend that you use Gmail over any other email client. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. Threaded emails. If I used Outlook or Yahoo, I’d have 3-5 times more email because each email would be separate. But with threaded emails, all emails with the same subject stay in the same email, so there’s no going back and hunting for an email with the same subject.
2. Archiving. I don’t have to put an email in a particular folder, I just archive it. I still have it and I didn’t have to spend time wondering which folder it should go in to. Also, I can search all my email!
3. The ability to flag particular emails. There’s a bunch of different flag options, from a yellow star to a blue start to a red exclamation point to a green checkmark to a purple question mark. Talk about making it easy to identify important emails!
4. Spam rarely, if ever, leaks into my inbox.
5. You can have any old email accounts forward to your new and shiny gmail account. My email account from this blog goes to my main gmail account, as do about 5 other email addresses I own.

Is there anything I didn’t cover? Feel free to tell us your tips/tricks in the comments section! If you have any questions, I’ll answer them in the comments.

So! Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog is working closely with Brett Sandusky, Digital Marketing Manager at Kaplan Publishing to “help facilitate more effective communication between bloggers and publishers by giving all involved a more concrete idea of what to expect and how to measure and determine successful placement of books on book blogs.” The question of how effective book blogs are in selling books is a question that’s long been asked and to which no answer can be provided. I think we all agree that book bloggers ARE effective, but we need a way to quantify this. This survey should be a first step. Rebecca explains it a little more:

This information will be useful in helping facilitate more effective communication between bloggers and publishers by giving all involved a more concrete idea of what to expect and how to measure and determine successful placement of books on book blogs. We also hope it will encourage book bloggers to be more transparent about their blogs’ statistics and to provide relevant data when communicating with publishers to request or arrange reviews.

Additionally, we have included questions intended to provide feedback to publishers about how they can better meet the needs of the book bloggers they work with.

We recognize and appreciate that traffic is not the only important measure of a blog’s success and that many bloggers define the success of their blogs by the number of comments, depth of discussion, and relationships built.  While those elements may be apparent to a publisher visiting a blog, how well-trafficked the blog is may not, and it is an important (and currently missing) piece of the puzzle for publishers who wish to optimize exposure of the books they are promoting.

While this survey is intended to be anonymous in order to encourage optimal participation from bloggers (thereby establishing a larger sample size and more accurate data), we have provided a space at the end for you to include your URL if you wish to be included on a list of bloggers who contributed to the survey when the results are made public.

Your responses to this survey will be kept confidential and will not be connected to your URL. All results will be reported in aggregate terms describing general trends, group means, etc.

Please go here to take the survey.

One thing that Rebecca mentions is, “We also hope it will encourage book bloggers to be more transparent about their blogs’ statistics and to provide relevant data when communicating with publishers to request or arrange reviews.” Well, I’m already happy to provide my stats to publishers, and I do that without prompting when I request a book (which is rare, but has happened a few times this year already). But I don’t tell YOU, my fellow bloggers, my stats. Stats are like your income. It’s uncomfortable to talk about how much money you make, and it’s rude to ask someone how they’re compensated for their work. I wouldn’t be particularly forthcoming about stats even if you asked, but I want to break that right now. I’m especially inclined to break it because I know plenty of bloggers get more hits than I do, so I don’t feel like I’m bragging. If I knew I got the most hits of all the book bloggers, I wouldn’t disclose this information because I believe there’s no benefit in that case. I’m quite sensitive to what I consider being a braggart, and unless there’s a good reason to indicate you’re The Best, unless there’s a reason to make it obvious that no one is as good as you, I don’t see the point. I don’t even really have more than a vague idea of where I stand in comparison to others in regards to stats. My intention of giving you some of my most current stats is hopefully to make you realize you’re doing better than you thought.

• Average daily hits: 200-400
• Over the past year, I got an average of 10,000 hits a month.
• I generally average 4,000-5,000 unique hits in a 30-day period.
• You can see how many subscribers I have, and yes, I have people who unsubscribe sometimes.

I hope you see that you’re probably doing better than you thought! If my stats totally bum you out, please know that that was not my intention. If you want to know how to increase your stats, I’m happy to give you advice! You know how to reach me.