Word of Mouth: Does it Still Sell Books? by Maggie King
Renowned agent Donald Maass is a
firm believer in word of mouth: “There are only TWO things that sell books…a
good book and word of mouth. Period.”
If you ask mystery author and
blogger Anne
R. Allen how people discover books in the
digital age, she’ll respond without hesitation: “The old fashioned way: word of
mouth.”
Word of mouth turned me into a
mystery reader. Like many young girls I was a huge fan of Nancy Drew and the
Dana Girls. I’ll never forget the day my mother brought home The Hidden Staircase after a trip to the
P.M. Bookshop in Plainfield, New Jersey. My friends and I started swapping tales
of those intrepid girl detectives like mad.
But I put mysteries aside until
my late twenties. A bout of flu kept me home for several days and my mother
arrived on my doorstep with chicken soup and a stack of Agatha Christies. I started with Thirteen at Dinner (British title is Lord Edgware Dies) and quickly became a Christie addict. For several
years I read and re-read Dame Agatha’s accounts of the indomitable Hercule
Poirot and Miss Marple. Again friends and I exchanged and recommended our
favorites.
But it wasn’t until 1993 that I branched out to other
mystery authors. I had no idea there were so many! I joined an AAUW mystery
group in Santa Clarita, California. This group picked books based on theme
rather than specific titles; when we met each member discussed her selection—no
spoilers allowed! We did have someone who routinely violated the spoiler rule—I
guess there’s one in every crowd. The first year we read by setting location, the
second year by the sleuth’s profession; one year we even read according to the first
letter of the author’s last name.
The Santa Clarita group introduced me to authors who I
read to this day: Susan Wittig Albert, Lilian Jackson Braun, Jill Churchill,
Mary Daheim, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Gillian Roberts, and many more. Mostly
cozies. I don’t remember anyone using that term, but the members frowned on the
more violent mysteries. We exchanged the books we read and spent time recommending
others.
The Murder on Tour group in Murder at the Book Group is modeled after the Santa Clarita one, but
embellished with a little murder. Needless to say, even a hint of murder in the
real group would have set me on the run.
In 1996 I said good bye to my
favorite book group when I relocated to Virginia. Here I’ve been in many
groups, some devoted to mysteries and some to literary fiction. Mystery Lovers
is a Richmond group led by Lelia Taylor, who runs the popular blog Buried Under Books. The groups here are traditional and discuss one book
per meeting, but, as in the Santa Clarita group, we share and recommend the books
we love.
I continue to discover new
authors. While I still love cozies I also enjoy the Private Investigator and
Police Procedural sub-genres. Michael Connelly, Robert Crais. Raymond Chandler,
Dianne Emley, Naomi Hirahara, Sebastien Japrisot, Gabrielle Kraft, Rochelle
Krich, Marilyn Meredith, Ann Perry, Joan Smith, and many, many more are on my fast-swelling
TBR list. And I often return to the Queen of Crime herself: Dame Agatha.
Notice the word of mouth principal
at work here? Word of mouth absolutely reigns as the best way to learn about
new mystery authors. Or any authors.
The Internet has made word of
mouth more important and easier than ever. Online I stumble across authors
while web surfing. There’s the Stop, You’re Killing Me! website, a personal favorite; Facebook groups; Goodreads;
message boards; online book groups. There are sites devoted to Golden Age
mysteries, bibliomysteries, mysteries of the ancient world … if you have a
special interest in mysteries you’ll find a site devoted to it.
In closing I have to tell you
about a book I discovered while watching an episode of Midsomer Murders titled “Blue Herrings.” A character was reading The Widow’s Cruise by Nicholas Blake. I
looked it up online and a reviewer compared it to an Agatha Christie story.
Another entry on my TBR list! Word of mouth? Or word of eye?
***
Readers, how do you learn about
new authors and titles?
Did someone in your life
influence your reading choices? As you saw in the preceding, my mother was my earliest
influence. Later, it was friends and book groups.
Nothing
can kill a good book group discussion like cold-blooded murder. Especially when
the victim is one of the group’s own. Cyanide is the topic du jour for the
mystery fanatics of Murder on Tour, but for their poor hostess, Carlene Arness—who
just published her own whodunit—it makes for a surprise ending. One minute,
Carlene is speaking animatedly about featuring the poison in her new book. The
next, she’s slumped over in a chair, dead from a sip of tea. Did the writer
take her research too far? Or did one of the group’s members take a love of
true crime to the extreme?
Founding member Hazel Rose is
rounding up suspects. Any of her fellow bibliophiles could be the killer. And
she soon discovers that almost all of them had a motive. Even Hazel herself,
whose ex-husband married Carlene, could be accused of harboring jealousy. The
truth is, Carlene wasn’t just hard to read, she was also hard to like—and the
scandalous secrets Hazel unearths would make Carlene’s idol, Agatha Christie,
turn over in her grave.
Bio:
Maggie King is the author of Murder at the Book
Group, published in 2014 by Simon and Schuster. She contributed the short
story, “A Not So Genteel Murder,” to the Sisters in Crime anthology Virginia
is for Mysteries. Maggie is a member of Sisters in Crime and the American
Association of University Women. She has worked as a software developer, retail
sales manager, and customer service supervisor.
Visit Maggie at www.maggieking.com, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/maggie.e.king, and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MaggieKingAuthr.
Comments
I agree that word of mouth is still the best seller of books. Isn't that what we do via Facebook & Twitter?