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Enthusiastic, unprovoked word of mouth from our sales reps
By Jennifer 8. Lee | October 30, 2007
My editor forwarded me some nice comments from the sales reps, who are now reading the book to gear up to sell to independent bookstores.
As it was explained to me, two things move books: national media and word of mouth. Word of mouth works best when the sales reps get excited, pass that enthusiasm to the booksellers, who then pass that enthusiasm to the readers (a.k.a. normal people) through a process in the industry known as “handselling.”
Word of mouth tends can have amazing effects in paperback fiction, igniting books that never made the hardcover fiction list like The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and The Kite Runner, as noted by Motoko Rich in the New York Times.
Here are three comments from a chat thread…
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is everything that booksellers enjoy aggressively handselling – fun, informative, and well-written. I’m returning to buyers to discuss increasing their initial buys.
Don’t you love the story about how all those Powerball winners got their statistically anomalous numbers from fortune cookies? I’m really enjoying this book.
I’ve done that, too, used the fortune cookie numbers for Lotto, alas, not that week………..Yes, really great book.
(yay)
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