Surprising Results of Last Week’s Survey on What Readers Want

Okay, the results are in on what readers want, and it's very fascinating!  There was a large response, and I've summed up the results.  Take a look:

1. Do you know the difference between sweet romance and clean?  The majority said yes, but 40% said they didn’t know.  I didn’t know for many years.  Sweet romance means there’s no bedroom scenes or offensive language.  A clean romance means no bedroom scenes but there is some level of language.
2. Do you only read one genre of romance?  80% percent said no.  The most read genre tended to be romantic suspense.
3. Do you prefer a romance book with a down-to-earth hero or a hero with money, confidence and no character flaws?  Our down-to-earth heroes won by an impressive 98%.  The comments were that these heroes were more believable, like someone you’d really meet.
4. Does a contemporary book with incorrect facts stop you from finishing the book?  35% of the readers said it did.  Add that to the 46% that said sometimes, and authors better start working harder on their research.
5. Do punctuation or grammatical errors stop you from finishing a book?  47% of the readers said that sometimes it did, but only 23% said it would definitely stop them. That’s a little better than the incorrect facts, folks.
6. Are you wary of self-published books?  The answer to this was pretty much a tie with yes slightly ahead. The general comment was that you read a lot of bad but often find a gem.
7. Do you read to escape and like happily-ever-after endings?  A resounding 64% said they did read to escape and preferred HEA because there is so much bad going on in the world.
8.  Which do you prefer: ebooks or print books? Both was clearly the winner and from the comments, both obviously have their merits.  But between ebooks and print books, readers preferred print 39% to only 9% ebooks.  Very interesting!
9. What makes you choose a book?  I have to admit, I was surprised by the results of this one. Jacket blurb took the lead at 73%.  Word-or-mouth was second at 55%. I expected cover art to be the clear winner.

There you have it!  I hope this little survey shed some light on the subject of what readers want.  It sure has for me. 

Let me know if you won the $100 Amazon Gift Card and have a great week!

Cindy A. Christiansen

Sweet Romance, Comedy, Suspense…and Dogs!

Fly into a good book today at:  http://www.dragonflyromance.com