Viral marketing for books

Why is it that some outstanding books peak at sales of a couple of hundred thousand (if you’re lucky) while others go on to sell many millions? The answer is less likely to do with their respective merits (insert literary witticism here) but more to do with word of mouth on a vast scale, and social pressure to keep up with the Bridget Joneses.

The key difference is that the casual readers that make up this seven-figure gap get into reading only when the books are introduced to them, and by someone they know. These millions don’t spend their time on Goodreads, and they’re not browsing staff recommendations at their local bookseller or studying the book reviews in the Culture section of the Sunday Times. They watch TV, may scan the newspapers, go to pubs and movies, probably enjoy sport, and spend a good deal of time on Facebook. Reading a book is not a habitual activity; it is most definitely not a compulsory part of their daily routines.

These people also don’t own Kindles or any other dedicated e-reading devices. They may not have entry to on-the-move, instant access that digital publishing brings. Or do they? It is estimated that about 20% of South Africans now own a smartphone (about 10 million active smartphones, compared to about 30 million smartphones in the UK, and about 1 billion worldwide and the numbers are growing fast). Mobiles went from brick-sized in the Nineties to just bigger than lego-size in the Noughties, but now the reverse is happening. With today’s smartphones, screen size is no longer a barrier to extended reading. So that’s where the biggest numbers are if we want to tap into mass digital reading. That’s all very well, but how do we make all these occasional readers actually consume more books?

The answer is good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth, or, as renamed now for the digital age, social media. Facebook is truly global, with over one billion active users a month, Twitter is not far behind, and many others such as Pinterest, LinkedIn and Tumblr are growing rapidly. At last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the buzz was that the next billion smartphone users were going to come from emerging nations. This will be the primary method for internet connectivity and, as is happening in Africa today, mobile payments will become the standard.

It would seem to be an obvious opportunity to marry the power and scale of social networks with the accessibility and quantity of smartphones to drive really serious sales of books.

Viral marketing is hard to define, although according to Marsden and Kirby (Connected Marketing, Elsevier: 2006) it describes “any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, perhaps to millions”. The key parts in this definition are exponential growth and to pass on messages to others. Furthermore, according to several marketers, viral marketing is marketing activities that generate word of mouth in the digital domain.

Harnessing the muscle of viral marketing requires two ingredients, and seems to be conditional on a third. First, credibility – there can be no hard sell here, it’s easy to poison the well if it looks corporate or like advertising. Second, security – authors and publishers need to be able to protect their IP from piracy. Third, control – a slightly counter-intuitive one this, but content owners find it difficult to let go completely and want to be able to pay out the rope a bit at a time.

Boosh, a new platform using peer recommendation, was unveiled at the Independent Publishers Guild Conference in March, and is currently in a beta-trial period ahead of an expected roll-out this June. Using peer recommendation that initially integrates with Facebook, it will aim to get the “passionate advocates” that are already out there to build the bridge to new readers. The patented format is designed for smartphones; acting as a “reader” and the once-read book deletes itself as soon as it has been read, making it as secure as possible.

The reader is then prompted to share the book with a friend, who will then become the next advocate in the expanding pipeline. This is accompanied by a recommendation to all the original readers’ other friends, who are presented with a direct, one-click opportunity to purchase the book. So for every share that hooks a new fan and activist, hundreds more are stimulated to buy a book that their friends have recommended to them. In all cases, the publisher can limit the number of shares and place a cap on the “seed” copies that they make available. The sharing of ‘used’ digital content is likely to become a growing part of the e-book marketplace. Amazon recently received a patent in the US for its used e-book marketplace

But why would one want to impose a limit? With peer recommendation and a potential one share to four purchases ratio, the sales numbers will grow exponentially. What better way to establish an author in the early stage of their career and promoting, say, their second book than by having those that enjoyed the first championing it to their receptive friends; or to sell a whole series by appealing to a new generation via discovery of the opening book – all in a single click which transcends distances. Same proven theory, new global method. It’s like letting your friends try your favourite wine rather than just telling them where they can buy it.

We all need incremental sales to grow the size of the publishing pie. The ‘incidental-reader’ mega mass market is out there, just waiting to be drawn into the next phenomenon – one that they will make themselves. It’s up to applications like “Boosh” to seek them out and give them the ammunition to do it, and do it more often.

About David Roche
Ex-CEO of Borders UK & Ireland Ltd, Group commercial director for HarperCollins Publishing, Waterstones and HMV, David is chairman of Evanidus, the company responsible for creating “Boosh”.