I’ve had a (tiny) bit of experience in marketing, and they ask this kind of stuff ruthlessly. Subscription services exist that will, once you’ve plugged in a zip code, tell you what types, of 20 or so different types, of people live in that zip code and what their likes and dislikes are down to the restaurants they eat at and the magazines they read. For the entire United States.

People who consider themselves readers are a smaller group than the population of the United States. If you work off the “one thousand true fans” model, it seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out what those people like and then GIVE IT TO THEM. That’s the essence of marketing – not selling people stuff they don’t need, but figuring out who needs what and then figuring out the best way to make those people aware that you have the thing they want.

Why can’t the publishing industry do this – figure out who the “power readers” who buy tons of books are, then do the things that make them happy, from figuring out what kinds of books they like and which authors they love to what formats they want to read in (ebook, hardback, paperback)? As the 1KTF model suggests, if you give those one thousand (or in this case, probably more like ten thousand or one hundred thousand) true fans $X worth of books that they want to read, such that one thousand x $X worth of books = enough revenue to support the industry, you not only keep the industry alive, you provide benefit to (and get revenue from) a whole lot of not-”true”-but-still-cool fans.

Or is the industry already doing stuff like this? Is there a publisher out there who’s picking the brains of their readers, asking them what they want to read and how they want to read it? Or a non-publisher? Leave a comment.

I think a lot of readers know what I’m talking about: books by famous authors that have basic editing mistakes, or feel like they were written in a rush. Multiple nonfiction books on the same ripped-from-the-headlines subject. Nonfiction that reads like a 40-page essay that’s been puffed up and padded to create a 250-page book. Writers definitely know what I’m talking about: huge advances for celebrity-of-the-moment memoirs. Giant book buys for big-name authors. Fellow writers struggling to make the rent.

The problem, I think, is that publishers don’t really know what readers want.

I don’t know any publishers. I don’t have a voice in the industry. But I have a question: what do you want?

You, the person who reads a book a year or a book a week. The person who doesn’t read any books at all, but blogs and news articles. The early adopter who’s given up paper books and gone totally digital. The dedicated book collector with first editions signed by her favorite authors. The poor student. The wealthy executive. The retiree. The book club leader.

What do you want?

I don’t mean we all want the same thing. Some people like happy endings, some people like tragedy. Some people want to be swept up in a thriller, some people want to savor a literary tome. Some people want to read romance one day, and business leadership the next. The only thing we all want . . . is a good read.

I want to find out what’s in your good read. Is it short? Is it long? Did you read it in paperback or hardback or on your smartphone? Was it fast-paced or leisurely? Did a friend recommend it to you, or did you find it browsing at the bookstore? At the library?

I’m not planning on using this information to sell you anything. I don’t want to invade your privacy, either. More likely than not, it’ll just be to satisfy my own curiosity . . . but maybe, just maybe, some publisher will take a look at this information and go “huh.” And a book that you might like will end up on the shelf, instead of in a pile of unpublished manuscripts.

I’m making this up as I go. I don’t have any training in surveying, and I’m not a literary authority or publishing industry insider. I haven’t even blogged much before. So feel free to point out what I’m getting wrong, or right, or where we’d all benefit from a bit more information.

Most of all, though, I want to know this: what do you, reader, want?