Yesterday as I was trying to get work done and, like usual, spent more time following Twitter conversations, it suddenly hit me as to how many people were highlighting upcoming book releases. As I watched book trailers and read reviews from all of these critique sites (I'm not talking the NYT List here), I started to wonder. Who pays attention to these?
In fact, the last time I went to the book store, I didn't see anyone walking around with their copies of Romantic Times and picking books based on the reviews.
Maybe it is a lack of coffee this morning but I wanted to toss this out to all of you. Other than writers, editors and agents, how many of the regular, everyday readers pay attention to reviews and book trailers? How many of those regular, everyday readers pay attention to the book markers, or for that matter, any of those small tokens we use for book promotion, that we leave at the book store? Do these items REALLY get them to buy those books?
Off to the stables this morning then back to work.
Scott
I can't say I pay a lot of attention to written reviews. But I do pay attention to RT's top picks or books that get a 4 or 5 star review. I don't read the review but I'll look for more info about the book to see if I might be interested.
ReplyDeleteI also pay attention when folks twitter or blog about books. Again, it's a starting point. If I find I'm interested based on the book blurb, then I'll buy or borrow the book from the library.
I saw this: http://bashinginminds.com/2009/09/18/buy-jeff-strands-book-and-subdue-your-homicidal-impulses/
ReplyDeleteand it made me buy a book. I don't read newspaper reviews anywhere, but I do follow several blogs though few review-oriented blogs have caught my attention enough to make me go shopping.
I mostly just browse the shop when deciding what to buy but I have brought several books from reading reviews, I don't think it was the opinion of the reviewer that swayed me, more the story of the book was interesting and the review just drew my attention to it.
ReplyDelete