#PublishingReinvented 8 - Changing How We Decide What Books To Read
The Old Way’s Are Breaking - In Slow Motion.
We’ve been told what books are great for too long. The Placebo effect works for books.
We are told what to read by media firms who carry articles about books, some of which are published by a different arm of the same media company. HarperCollins and its newspaper business are one example.
The lists of great books, the hundred best books ever written or the best summer reads, all perpetuate a system for telling us what to read based on the morals of writers with feet of clay.
The Jane Austen literary model tells us about courting rituals, a safe subject, which allows us to avoid anything controversial, in the same way that Ricard Ford writes about middle-class affairs, not the elephants in the room of the American South.
That desire to focus on the personal story lingers to this day. I was told by a prominent literary agent late last year that what he is looking for is safe books. Nothing controversial.
But the uncontroversial book is not the only game in town anymore. Things are changing.
Sorry for Your Troubles, the latest short story collection by Richard Ford has 23 ratings on Amazon. The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead has over 2,000. Sales show a similar gulf.
Amazon’s reader reviews are more influential now because they are the combined assessment of many people, the wisdom of the crowd, rather than the potentially biased view of one literary reviewer.
The total affect of Amazon reader reviews:
Informs authors of what readers want to read.
Dispels the need for us only to write about safe subjects.
Encourages authors with feedback.
We hope to contribute to that process; the slow death of the “safe” book.
All paid subscribers to this newsletter can have a free month on NetGalley.com for any book - that NetGalley service has a value of $39 - at any time during 2020. All you have to do is email us the MOBI file (this video will explain how to download it from Amazon in 2 minutes) and a link to your book on Amazon.
If your book challenges conventional thinking, even better.
NetGalley is the largest reader review site in the United States and used by the largest publishers.
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Laurence O’Bryan
Author
Founder BooksGoSocial & The International Dublin Writers’ Festival