By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I read an interesting post on Sunday. It was from author Pedro Barrento for Indies Unlimited and titled, “Word of Mouth—An Urban Myth?” The post engendered lively comments from other writers. Barrento states: “…word of mouth in literature is a fantasy. It simply doesn’t exist.” He clarifies that he’s not including influencers, Amazon’s recommendation algorithm, etc. as word of mouth. He’s defining it as an actual verbal recommendation. Which, considering it’s called word of mouth, makes sense. He believes that while consumers may be influenced by others’ recommendations for music, they don’t buy long-form products like books based on recommendations. Or, they’re so slow to act on recommendations (slow to purchase, slow to read, slow to pass on a recommendation to others) that word of mouth isn’t a contributing factor to the meteoric success of some of today’s most popular books.
There isn’t (naturally! This is publishing we’re talking about) hard data on how readers discovered the last book they read. So instead, I thought I’d explore what word of mouth is today. I’m thinking that, as times have changed, the way we recommend products to others and influence purchasing has changed.Continue reading