If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “this book will be a best seller!” I would probably be able to call up the folks at Orange County Choppers and commission them to build me a Fenrir.
The hard truth, though, is that not every book will be a best seller. Very few will.
Readers are very, very fickle. And the best sales tool, even in the internet age, is word of mouth.
Take the recent Twilight book series, for example. All four books have been on the New York Times best seller list. The first movie was one of the highest-grossing movies of 2008. The DVD release of the same movie is among the best selling DVDs ever. Yet until 2 months ago there were only two people at Destiny Image to have ever read the book. (And yes, one of them was me. I’m a sucker for YA fiction, and I let my wife talk me into reading the books last year.)
I know at least 5 people who only picked up the books because of what other people said about them. And you know what? This is exactly how books become best sellers.
Marketing plays a role. Art design and titling play a role. Placement in stores plays a role. Author involvement is a big part. But the thing that really makes books move is friend-to-friend recommendations.
At DI, Don Milam and I often trade book recommendations. We both like some of the same kinds of books, and passing books back and forth lets us discover new books and sparks interesting conversations. I liked Memnoch the Devil, which Don is now reading. He loved Between Noon and Three, which I also appreciated. Don recently suggested Sauron Defeated, which I have on order in dead-tree edition, and will likely devour as soon as it arrives.
Now, other aspects of books are important: Titles, subtitles, and covers initially attract people to a book. But don’t underestimate the importance and power of word-of-mouth.
And to do my part for the word-of-mouth:
Errant Story
Myst: The Book of Atrus
The Alchemist
Dear Dumb Diary 1: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
