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By now you have probably heard about the big uproar in regards to the WTF interview Avon did with All About Romance.
The interview was conducted mainly with the Avon Romance Editor May Chen and VP/Executive Editor Lucia Macro.
I welcome you to read the interview yourself and come to your own assumptions. But I must highlight this part that has myself and I would say other on-line review sites and blogs steaming:
May Chen: In my opinion, the online world still doesn’t have much impact on sales as, anecdotally, I’ve seen books get horrible online reviews but have done well. As far as I know, we still don’t include online reviews on our books, but that can certainly change if we see them start making a difference. Right now, the best endorsements for us still seem to be from NYT bestselling authors and from major traditional print reviewers.
Lucia Macro: Do the consumers recognize the source of the quote? I'm not sure that the vast majority of readers recognize all the online sites. When checking their rankings I'm often surprised at how little traffic they really get. We are all very plugged in, but many casual readers are just picking up a book at their local Walmart and barely have time to watch tv, much less wrestle the computer away from their kids. So an author quote might carry more weight with them.
What would happen if and when the New York Times and other possible print publications such as USA Today disappear? How revelant will that New York Times Best Selling author label be, especially if that publication is no longer in exsitence?
"Among its pluses, the Times has managed to increase its print circulation revenue over the last couple of years, no easy feat these days. It boasts more than 830,000 print subscribers who have taken the paper for two or more years, so the presses are not turning off any time soon. But the downturn and general devaluation of advertising by the Web has wreaked havoc with the cost structure of all print publications, the Times included. Newspaper analyst Craig Huber of Barclays Capital believes the company's common stock will be trading for $1 a share within a year (it is currently around $7)."
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Hey, I am just a simple blogger who doesn't have anywhere near the amount of subscribers the New York Times has, but remember, it takes only one voice to be heard. From that one voice another one will hear and will tell another and so forth. Is that enough of an impact for you? That is why the on-line community such as bloggers and other review sites are the future.
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Did we not learn anything from Amazon Rank? In a few short hours on a Sunday in April the on-line community came together and started a fire storm the likes I have never seen.
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Imagine if the same could be in promoting authors and their books?
8 comments:
They've got to be joking. The only place I EVER get recs is online. EVER. And who trusts the quotes on a book anyway??? They take a quote and manipulate it for their own purposes. Do they think we, the readers, are stupid?
Good gravy.
And then there's the question of why they were bothering to do an interview with an online entity if they don't think the internet has anything to do with sales (or am I confused and All About Romance isn't only online?).
Wow, what an outcry (and somewhat deserved, I think they should have phrased that FAR better, I didn't realize that they were discussing solely endorsements on book covers). I buy entirely on internet reviews these days. If bloggers aren't talking about it, I'm just not going to read it and I think we're moving more and more towards that. I'd never trust a blurb on the book, although sometimes I do trust the absence of them, if you know what I mean.
It feels like they're living in a bubble. I have never been influenced by book quotes--has anyone? I have, however, bought books because of buzz on the internet. It's difficult to imagine The Duke of Shadows, Broken Wing, or The Spymaster's Lady being as great sellers as they were without all the positive reviews from bloggers.
One thing I thought was very curious is that instead of focusing on the positive--i.e., these books sold more because of bloggers--they focus on the negative. No books have sold less because of bad buzz? There's a double-negative for you. Most internet reviewers prefer to write positive reviews and create positive buzz around a book.
What bugs me most is that the whole "their traffic is low" and "their ranks are low."
Our traffic is direct niche (romance novel community) related readers. How many of 830,000 people subscribing to the NY Times is a romance reader? At least those coming to our blogs are searching for romance related information.
As for rankings... Google PR is a bunch of crap but the crap it is, is easy to understand. Corporate level websites like NFL, Lottery, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook will rank at the top half of the scale because of the shit ton of people who go there.
A blogger dies happy in the 3-5 range and blows a gasket at 6 or more. The whole system is based on back links, internal links, search engine results, amount of content, seo, traffic... for a 3 to become a 4 it must be 10 times more powerful... That means a 3 to 5 is 100 times more powerful.
Ditto. I only get my book recommendations online.
THis really is surprising! Great post, though, and I agree with so many things a lot of the smart commenters above said, too. Online is important and will only grow.
Thank you for the heads up KB! I've been offline for a couple of days and so didn't know...
To be honest, I don't trust quotes...it's not like the publishers are going to put a bad quote on a book...and who is to say (as Sarah said) that they haven't been taken out of context? Saying that, some sites only seem to give good reviews, which is frustrating.
And...I get the majority of my books from the library. They do list their latest purchases, but...my best source of information is online!
*off to read the full interview*
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