More than two thirds of Calvendo users in Germany are satisfied or even very satisfied with our self-publishing platform for calendars and poster books. Our latest user survey therefore gives us the thumbs up and makes us very happy! And since we’re about to launch Calvendo in the UK, where we hope to build a similar community of photographers and creative people, that is very good news indeed.
A few of the findings in more detail: Two thirds of the respondents enjoy publishing with Calvendo and more than 70% recommend us to family and friends. “We’re really pleased with this very positive feedback,” comments CEO Hans-Joachim Jauch, who – together with the Calvendo team – set up the platform in Germany in October 2012. “Within a short period of time we’ve managed to reach high levels of acceptance among the photography and creative community which is very encouraging for us. The Calvendo combination of providing an online layout tool, support by a jury and international marketing and sales opportunities seems to be as convincing as we hoped it would be.”
Calvendo users are surveyed at least once per year. The very positive grades for the platform’s technology and creative options it offers that we received last time were repeated in our latest survey. The feedback about our jury’s work that checks each calendar is also a very important indicator for us: Calvendo self-publishers are happy about the jury’s support and advice and respect its decisions, no matter if they were asked to modify their submissions in order to improve quality or even if their calendars were rejected. A large majority of users considers our tips how to make their product better to be useful or even very useful.
The survey also shows that users are happy about the swiftness with which they receive feedback from the jury. This dialogue between our experts and self-publishers is very important for us and an important part of the Calvendo philosophy: Good photography alone doesn’t automatically make a good calendar. In order to market and sell a product successfully, elements such as title, font and keywords used are just as important. And this is where the jury comes in: “Our jury can provide valuable support which is vital because in the end we want our self-publishers and their projects to be successful,” so Jauch.
Further aspects that make our users like Calvendo are the high print quality of our calendars and poster books, the possibility to set up an author’s profile and last but not least the money they can make when they use our platform to produce and sell their work. In order to get the complete picture, we also surveyed users who have registered with Calvendo but not published anything yet. The main reasons here are that they have either not found the time yet or that their projects submitted so far have been rejected by the jury. Nevertheless, their overall verdict about Calvendo and the service it provides is still largely positive.