Talking about Talking

In the comments of this post Jennifer Jeffrey asks the very good (and very difficult) question, how do we influence word-of-mouth?

A few years ago, word of mouth was something that simply happened - the books business is full of stories about bestsellers that took publishing companies completely by surprise. Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a prime example of a book that hardly received any significant push from its publisher with word-of-mouth pushing it to the top of the charts for several months. And for years this was the model that, occasionally, worked. When a publisher found itself shifting shedloads of a surprise hit we shrugged our shoulders, raised a glass of bubbly and put the book's success down to a smile in our direction from the gods of publishing fortune.

Then, in 2000, The Cluetrain Manifesto was published, and I think that publishers (along with many other businesses) are only now beginning to appreciate the importance of the central tenet of the manifesto which I paste in full here. 'A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter — and getting smarter faster than most companies.'

Nowadays word of mouth happens everywhere, simultaneously and with incredible pace. Opinions are shared globally with the click of a mouse button, a mention in a popular blog can instantly send a book soaring up the Amazon Hot 100 and a bad marketing slogan can be ridiculed by thousands minutes after it is unveiled. The good news, for us as publishers and marketers of books, is that more people are talking about more stuff than ever before - the number of channels for conversation has multiplied dramatically thanks to the internet - so the challenge is to get people talking about our stuff!

How do we do this? Well, the main thing is to publish great books interestingly - hopefully then people will talk about them without too much prompting from us. Then, we can talk about them and start conversations about them, here on our blog, on our websites, on our podcast. We can try get our books and authors into places where people like to have conversations and share things they have found - on the social internet in places like youtube, myspace and secondlife. And we increasingly spend time looking for the places where conversations about books and about particular topics relevant to our books and authors are happening and try to talk to those conversationalists and share our news with them, though as this thread from uber-conversationalist Russell Davies shows, this can have mixed effects ;-)

So, Jennifer, there is no easy answer to your question and it is a subject that many of us at Penguin spend lots of time trying to figure out. Ultimately, we're very lucky to be working in the books business because books and authors are something that people are passionate about and talk passionately about and these conversations are ones we need to be and enjoy taking part in.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS In case you haven't heard enough of my wittering about books and digital marketing, I'll be speaking on this same subject at PSFK's London Conference on June 1st.

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Comments

[beeker]

i was approached in an email by one of your marketing execs with an enormous press release for a book. with an offer hidden at the end to send a copy, if i was interested. which i absolutely was. good targeting, and lovely to hear from Penguin (my all time favourite publisher). but then the book never came. a more personal email might have been nice. it's never good to feel like you're part of an enormous marketing list. and it would have been good to receive the book.

[Jennifer Jeffrey]

Thanks for responding! I can imagine that "cracking the code" must be quite a puzzle. The fact that people are talking - or twittering - more is definitely a boon for word-of-mouth. I love that more authors are blogging, and therefore becoming more fully realized to their readers. The ones who are having fun with it are compelling to read.

I've noticed more cross-marketing lately - i.e., books in shoe stores and other odd places. Nice.