There is a book called The Influentials that marketers like to read, especially those of us that believe in the power of word of mouth (hint: you had better believe in it, because it is serious). Whenever I teach a marketing seminar I quote from the cover of that book:
One American in ten tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy.
This morning I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal and was reminded of this book and how there is a whole group of influentials out there in the literary world that I must get to know. The piece tells the story of how debut author Kathleen Grissom used book bloggers to propel sales of her novel The Kitchen House. The first printing of 11,500 did not garner a lot of interest when the novel hit the bookshelves 2-1/2 years ago. It might have been doomed to the loss column, but thanks to an aggressive campaign by Grissom, The Kitchen House is now in its 21st printing and has sold 254,000 hard copies and more 150,000 e-books. Grissom now has a couple of bucks in the bank.
Grissom drove sales by identifying influential book bloggers and sending them advance copies. These bloggers have a lot of pull with the book clubs. According to the WSJ article, book clubs often intersect, with members belonging to more than one club. News of a good novel travels fast through these networks and sales got hot. Grissom has spoken to a lot of book clubs, some in person and others over the phone in group calls.
As I make plans for what will happen when I publish Rules for Giving, I have thought about how important books clubs are to sales, but I was at a loss of how to reach them. The key, at least in Grissom’s experience, appears to be the book bloggers—the Influentials. I did a little searching on the internet and came across a list of influential book bloggers. These are people I need to follow and get an idea of how they operate. I’ll keep you informed.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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