See what I did there? There's a cat in the picture...
I hear a lot of people, from authors to artists, say something like, "I want to go viral." What they mean is they want a book or project they are working on to be so awesome that it spreads like wildfire across the Internet, bringing them exponential attention and infinite income. It's understandable. You hear about viral videos, viral marketing, and big data. You see 50 Shades of Grey rocket to the top of the bestseller list and change American culture. But how can authors publishing and marketing from our living rooms have a chance at launching a viral book?
Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords, wrote a great post on his blog looking at patterns in the data that could give us some insight into how books have spread in the recent past. Notice I said "how" rather than "why," because no matter how much we want a simple answer, there is no one answer to making your book become popular. If there was, no one would be searching for it. We'd all just do it. And then to stand out we'd need to find another secret...
Highlights:
- It's sporadic: The idea that your book will start out selling slowly, then steadily grow, then explode and keep growing is not always accurate. With national press and blog reviews as part of the mix, it's much more sporadic than that. Check out Slide #31 for a look at a successful book and how its popularity actually progressed.
- Word of Mouth: When a book spreads through word of mouth, the growth is more bell-curve-like because it relies on one person telling their friends and network about a book one incidence at a time. Check out #32 for what that can look like.
- Word Count: Interestingly, word count correlates with best-sellers. People seem to like buying longer books. 20 of the 26 best sellers in his study had 80,000 words or more, and 12 of those 20 had more than 100,000. It may not be a cause, per se, but it's a common feature of an ebook bestseller. I take that to mean that people want to buy something they can sit with and be immersed in.
For more insight, check out the whole report on slideshare.
Image source: brewbooks via flickr
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