Word of mouth

[sartorias]

Today's riff is about the power, and the problems of word of mouth.

Especially for Indie writers, who have zero budget for publicity. And I talk about current reads, and why I'm reading them.

Comments

[_profiterole_]

I do read rec lists and often find one or two books to add to my to-read list. But I feel like they're more efficient when they're not just a list, but add short summaries and/or a few thoughts on the books. Also, lgbtqreads regularly does 5-book rec lists on a particular theme, which is an interesting approach.

[sartorias]

Oh, that is an excellent approach.

Sometimes I think the 100 books or authors list is overwhelming. Five at a crack, on a theme, I think is easier to deal with.

[marycatelli]

Also it feels more sincere. It's a lot likely to really, really like five books than 100.

[serialbabbler]

I get great joy out of lists, but that's just because I find lists themselves fun. (Probably has something to do with my mildly obsessive temperament. :D )

I prefer the oddly specific reader generated lists on Goodreads over "best of" or "you should totally have read all of these books if you really want to be considered a real reader of this genre" lists, though. (I've also been known to wander around in total strangers' public wishlists on Amazon and see what they've been reading. Heh.)

[sartorias]

That makes sense, the specific rather than the general. (Which sometimes I suspect the motive behind.)

[marycatelli]

More specific recommendations are harder to fake. "Best" is subjective. "The main character of this is a mother" or "has clinical depression" will mark you out as truthful or a liar very quickly.

[whswhs]

I just last night finished The Privilege of the Sword, which I read specifically on your recommendation, and it's added to your already high credibility as someone from whom to learn about books. This isn't a case of "sartlorias said it was good, so I'll read it"'; it's more like "sartorias said it has certain specific features, and those features appeal to me, so I'll read it." And that's probably not as much help as I would like, because I'm not sure what those features were! But you somewhat regularly point out things about a book that resonate with me, and so far, when I've followed up on such a thing, I've never been disappointed

[sartorias]

Oh, that's interesting! I don't have any book sense. I've been burned badly by what I thought would be instant loves, and was totally wrong.

I'm always trying to figure out why a book worked, or when I review something I was ambivalent about, try to figure out what might work for others. Good that it sometimes is successful!

[whswhs]

(I was in the process of adding this when you replied:)

I would never bother looking at a list of a hundred books. I might look at a list of twenty, out of curiosity, but I wouldn't be expecting to follow up on it. I do need to have actual details about the book picked out, and few lists of that length can do so, and by the time I got through twenty entries I think they might all be blurring. My own imagination tends to come up with lists of three examples of something-for example, Guns of the Dawn, Too Like the Lightning, and The Traitor Baru Cormorant as three novels inspired by the French Enlightenment-but I think anything up to half a dozen is manageable.

Things I specifically liked about The Privilege of the Sword included the portrayal of training in a skill; the Little Tailor plot, as Heinlein calls it (this did not read to me as Boy Meets Girl); the "you can't go home again" scene (another Heinleinian note); the running storyline about Katherine and Artemisia finding inspiration in a romantic novel about swordsmanship and a

[anna_wing]

Word of mouth works, in the sense that I will make an effort to find an author's work, with a source whose taste I know overlaps with mine to a decent degree. I found Andrea Host through one of your posts, for which my eternal thanks. It can also work with a sufficiently specific review, whether positive or negative.

After that, whether I read the book or not depends on the random-page-reading test. If I don't immediately start re-writing the sentences in my head, I will probably give it a go.

[sartorias]

Very glad about Host!