The Habsburg Empire is back! Buy now your copy of our second guidebook!
A few months ago, we sent out a survey to ask what you thought about the future of Extinguished Countries.
Over the years, this project has grown from a dream to a publishing house with two books, merchandise, and a thriving international community active online and offline. As we continue to grow further, it feels only fair to ask for your input in this growth, since the community has been one of the best parts of Extinguished Countries so far.
179 people took the time to answer ten questions about their relationship with this project and their wishes for the future. The survey gave us some interesting things to think about for our future and taught us more about what the community wants, so it felt only fair to share it here!
Part of the survey which was really interesting was learning more about who makes up our community.
If there was a sign to step up our game on social media, this is probably it—57.5% of our readers found Extinguished Countries through social media. Over 20% discovered Extinguished Countries through a friend, either because they personally know someone involved in the project or because a friend recommended it to them. So, if you like the project, tell a friend—it really makes a difference!
It makes sense that the community around Extinguished Countries is solidly international, and that’s what the survey results told us. A nearly even split of our readers follow us in English and Italian, and many are bilingual.
We know that our community is a lot more diverse than just English and Italian, with speakers of Croatian, Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages buying our books and reading our work. Our website and newsletters will stay in English and Italian for now, but stay tuned for news about potential translations of our books!
It turns out that Extinguished Countries is a company for armchair travelers. Over 80% of readers primarily read our guides at home. Our goal when starting Extinguished Countries was to help readers travel to a past that no longer exists, no matter where they are, so we’re happy to continue bringing the world to your living room. For those of our audience members who are using our guides while traveling, we hope that what we lack in gelateria recommendations, we can make up for in useful historical context.
For those of you following along without buying a book, we’re still happy to have you in the community—and buy a copy whenever you’re ready!
This project has grown from a crazy idea to a functioning indie business only thanks to the community. As we decide what to do in the future, we thought it only fair to include community feedback.
Maybe the most important question we asked in the survey was where we would travel next, the first time we asked for audience input on the subject of our next book.
One answer was a clear winner—nearly 50% of respondents want a book on the Ottoman Empire. We already started researching this book and will be sharing more updates soon, and we encourage anyone who has topic or interview suggestions related to the Ottoman Empire to reach out and share them with us.
We are also working on rebuilding our newsletter and blog, so that our audience doesn’t have to wait for our next book to hear more from us. Most respondents wanted to hear from us at least once a month.
While researching the books, we come across way more anecdotes, interesting facts, and passionate experts in their field than we can share in the books themselves. We’ll be using the blog and newsletters to share historical curiosities, long-form interviews, and other cool stories that tie into the hidden histories all around us. Stay tuned, this is just the beginning.
In our survey, we also asked what people liked about Extinguished Countries and how we can do better.
Over half of respondents said that their favorite part of Extinguished Countries is the concept. It means a lot that our unique idea, of going deep into the past to avoid typical mass tourism, resonates with so many people. We’re keeping this identity at the core of everything we’re doing going forward. Any future publications or content that we publish will stay dedicated to our goal, offering a narrative of history that is accessible to the general public while sharing interesting information that challenges nationalist views of the past.
A lot of readers also mentioned that they enjoyed some of the other collaborations that we’ve done, such as the bike tour podcast and interviews with academics and history enthusiasts. Through our books and website, we want to continue highlighting unique places as well as the people helping us learn more about them, especially those who don’t get a lot of mainstream attention. The responses for people we could collaborate with highlighted people doing interesting work, from scholars to popular YouTube channels bringing history to a wider audience.
Of course, there are also plenty of things we can do better, and we asked for feedback on that as well. The main feedback we got was actually encouraging—many readers want more Extinguished Countries! People wanted a faster publishing schedule, as well as more updates to our newsletter, blog, and social media. We are a small team operating on a rather shoestring budget, but we’re working on improving our organization so that we can communicate regularly. We hope to provide regular updates on progress for future books, especially once we launch future crowd-funding campaigns, and share more stories about this interconnected world that we love so much.
Readers also had feedback on how we can make our books better. They requested more maps, illustrations, and photos. Several respondents also wanted deeper thematic insights from the books rather than repetitive overviews. We also had several responses asking for translations in more languages. While we cannot produce more translations in-house, we are working on some exciting partnerships that can hopefully bring Extinguished Countries to more countries and languages. We cannot share details yet, but stay tuned for future announcements!
One thing is clear from this survey. Our community is our biggest asset, from buying our books to attending our events, making this project possible without institutional funding or compromising our values.
