Word of Mouth Goes Viral

Bestsellers have always been created by word of mouth. One reader loves a book and tells other readers. They love the book and tell more readers. In a few weeks, or months, a bestseller is born.

Publishers obviously try to influence the process. They pick out books on their lists they think have the potential to make it big and try to create a buzz with book distributors, bookstores and reviewers. Sometimes this type of promotion works, but not always. And in the past, it took a long time.

Today, bestsellers can happen in days. A popular book club blogger/influencer falls in love with a novel and recommends it. Their recommendation doesn’t go out to a few friends but thousands, sometimes hundred of thousands of followers. And a bestseller appears seemingly out of the blue.

As a fiction buyer for a public library, I read the bestseller lists every week. When I started in this job over twenty-five years ago, a surprise “dark horse” title would occasionally appear on this list. Back then, it would almost always turn out to be an Oprah Book Club pick. Only once in a while did an unknown author’s book make it on the list. (Where the Crawdads Sing is a recent example of a book reaching this pinnacle of success through a slow build.)

But things have changed in the last year or so. Unfamiliar/unknown books now pop up on the list almost every week. Suddenly, the word-of-mouth part of creating a bestseller takes only days/hours to happen. It also happens much more frequently than it did in the past. Word of mouth has, as they say, gone viral.

Usually the surprise bestsellers are in a genre, such as thrillers, that is hugely popular. But there are exceptions. Fantasy titles and women’s fiction, both genres that are hard to break into and/or that don’t have a broad audience, have also been part of this trend. So have literary novels. In the past, they seldom made the lists.

The phenomenon of the unknown author having extraordinary success make this a very exciting time to be an author. Add in the huge increase in print book sales over the past year (up over 30 percent), and it seems even more promising.

Surprise bestsellers have always a sort of lightning strikes/God smiles event. But now, like extreme weather, they happens often enough that it no longer seems extraordinary. Of course, you still have to write a really good book and have a lot of luck. (Luck is more important factor than almost anything else in finding writing success.) But the dream of great success seems more in reach for the average author than it ever has in the past. Something to keep in mind when you’re feeling discouraged. Why not dream big?