Heads and Tails and Book Sales
Barbara Fister has written an interesting post that stems from a discussion about the tendency to follow trends, read buzz books, watch hyped movies, etc. I don’t want to steal her thunder, because her post is excellent, so I’m just linking to it and adding a few thoughts and questions.
Barbara raises the question of how she decides what to read. I’ve always had a bit of an aversion to over-hyped things, which may be part of the reason why I fall outside the mainstream, but I also had the experience of someone passing on a book to me that they admittedly bought “just to see what was on the bestseller lists these days”. I loathed the book and it drove a key point home: Just because it was selling well didn’t mean it wasn’t total crap.
Ultimately, I’ve reached the same conclusion Barbara has about referrals. What about you? How do you decide what to read next? Do you think more people are reading the blockbusters, or has the internet expanded our access to more obscure titles?
Tags: Barbara Fister, bestseller lists, Book Sales, marketing
July 7th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Thanks for the props, Sandra!
On a discussion list Jim Huang made an interesting point about the articles. He thinks there’s a lot of potential in the long tail concept, and he thought the HBR article was flawed in its methodology - using percentages just doesn’t work. But to realize the potential of the long tail, publishers need to totally rethink how to approach marketing. It’s not about creating bestsellers.
Unfortunately, a lot of authors define their own success, their own identities that way, and that’s partly why things are so confused. All of us - not just publishers - have lots of rethinking to do if we’re going to have the kind of diversity that the long tail concept celebrates and that it enables.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
And in part, I think the internet runs counter to encouraging authors to take the long-term view. We see more and more writers posting unpublished material at least in part for the instant gratification of getting compliments via the blogs. E-mails from readers, comments on forums from fans. Too much time spent looking for validation instead of focusing on craft and what’s really important.
I have no idea how sales are going, other than the fact that my editor is asking after the next book. I take that as a good sign and haven’t lost a single moment’s sleep over trying to find out more details. Eyes forward, focus on the next book.