Making Surveys Work for You

Here’s a great tip from author J.D. Petruzzi. He is using Survey Monkey to ask Civil War enthusiasts which book they would like to see next in the “Complete Guide” series, following his popular book The Complete Gettysburg Guide.

It’s a free service and easy to use. J.D. posted the link widely, on Civil War sites, his social networking accounts, and on The Complete Gettysburg Guide Amazon discussion page. The number of votes and comments have been overwhelming, sometimes surprising, and many people are taking the time to write some thoughtful suggestions for the series that J.D. and cartography Steve Stanley are taking into consideration.

Feedback is very important to us too. We appreciate every email we receive about customer service, every suggestion we get on how we could improve our monthly newsletter, and thoughts on what titles our readers want to see. Stay tuned for our first survey question in an upcoming newsletter.

Authors, what survey question could you ask around your new or upcoming book? And don’t forget to cast your vote on J.D. Petruzzi’s question.

The Maps of Chickamauga Book Trailer

This is the newest Savas Beatie book trailer, for the newest book in the Savas Beatie Military Atlas Series. We were very pleased with how it came out, and designer David Van Dusen did a great job. Producing these trailers is a great way to create an "ad" for our books that we can use again and again, for different purposes and in different ways.

We will be working with David to create a trailer for The Maps of Gettysburg (the full color, hardcover edition) next. Stay tuned for trailers for our other Spring 2010 releases in the coming months.