Market research

In my day job, I am a market researcher. “What?” you are asking. “Nina Kentsis, the amazing novelist and screenwriter, has a day job? She does not make enough money from her writing?” Ha ha, I reply to that. I just received a check for $17.08 for the books I sold in December.

I find market research very interesting because you are always asking for the “why” behind the answer. You prefer the blue version over the green version? Tell me more about that. You find it difficult to log into our website? Let’s go through that process step by step. Sometimes people ask me, Why would I want to do market research? And I say, Do you have a question about something business-related? Anything? Oh, well, then you should do market research to help answer that question.

When I was ready to self-publish Acts of Lovingkindness, I did two types of market research. The first thing I did was have many people read the book. You might call them “beta readers.” I also call them “friends and family.” They are thanked at the back of the book. They helped me shape the narrative and gave me ideas for how to improve the story and make it more appealing without losing the core of the book.

The other type of market research I did was to field a short survey for cover testing. I tested these two versions of the cover, both of which I designed myself:

People liked the blue background on the left-hand side, but they couldn’t always tell that those were cassette tapes. They liked the colorful cassette tapes on the right-hand side, but the rainbow aspect made them think there would be LGBTQ+ content in the book, which there isn’t.

So, with a little help from Adobe Illustrator, I came up with the final cover:

It made sense to have only one cassette tape and pull my name out to the bottom. It also left more room for the quote from Kirkus Reviews. I submitted my book to them as part of their Indie Reviews program, thinking that a good review would be helpful as I tried to find a literary agent. Instead, it was helpful for marketing and I think it was ultimately helpful for getting my book into the NYPL (I don’t know where they got their cover image—the blue is different, the author line is different; sometimes, the Internet is a mystery!).

I’m currently getting feedback from my “beta readers” for my second novel, and their notes have already been extremely helpful for sharpening the focus of the book. Maybe this time around, I will find a literary agent, but if I don’t, expect to see another survey for cover testing the book. I already have ideas.