Does "word of mouth" really work?

"Word of mouth" involves a lot more than you getting your friends and family to tell people to buy the book: it means that people read it, enjoy it, and tell their friends. It's an organic thing which really can't be manipulated or created artificially: if it could, publishers wouldn't bother with all the marketing and promotional work that they do.

I think I've pointed you towards this thread before:

How to promote your book like an intelligent human being and not an SEO Dweeb

To go along with the Old Hack said:

Have you ever bought something because of a review? So yes, word of mouth works. The entire review market is a massive word-of-mouth system. Word of mouth involved having the user tell others about the product. If your book is amazing, the readers will feel compelled to tell others.

Side note: Just having your book on Amazon, and broadcast it on Facebook and Twitter does not mean people will be seeing it. All of those things only work when readers are directed towards them--otherwise, there is no possible way that they can discover them. You need to find readers and be able to present them your product--that's what advertising is. How you do that is listed very well in the link Old Hack threw up.

Here's an example of how I get a few more sales. I've been on homebrewtalk for a few years now & have a lot of folks follow my posts as I help other brewers. I advertise my books with links in my sig there as here. Then the site owner wanted to do an interview with me with pics for a series of weekly articles called "Brew & A". He also asked about me being an author & posted cover pic of my homebrewing book with links & descriptions to both books in the interview article. Long story short, both books are in the top 100 on Kindle again. Things like that can generate sales. Anything I can think of that's free I try when it comes to promoting.

Glad these methods seem to be working for you, but the best thing to get sales is to make sure a manuscript is polished, edited, properly formatted, and readable. Solid blocks containing narrative and more than one person's dialogue are not easy to read, and the astronaut's name is Glenn, not Glen.

unionrdr said:

Here's an example of how I get a few more sales. I've been on homebrewtalk for a few years now & have a lot of folks follow my posts as I help other brewers. I advertise my books with links in my sig there as here. Then the site owner wanted to do an interview with me with pics for a series of weekly articles called "Brew & A". He also asked about me being an author & posted cover pic of my homebrewing book with links & descriptions to both books in the interview article. Long story short, both books are in the top 100 on Kindle again. Things like that can generate sales. Anything I can think of that's free I try when it comes to promoting.

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I totally function on word of mouth. I don't read reviews anymore, I've been too disappointed by them lately. I feel like I've become resistant to plain advertising, but if someone posts "I've read this and it's great" that will definitely trigger my interest

Personally, I wouldn't ask friends or family to read, praise, buy, push, or help finance my book or other personal project because I think people tend to hate that. Also, they're not your real target market so imo it's not likely to lead to much success anyway.

I like unionrdr's idea and I think that's more the way it works. He's found something to contribute to that the target market for his book wants, and some of them will go on to buy his book. He gets buyers because he brings something to the table that they want rather than only pushing what he wants (to sell his book). Most of us aren't that interested in what other people want, as I'm sure you have noticed.

I see your book is a short story collection. First, they're not in high demand, as you probably realize. So, you have to find your way to the ones who do like them. Have any of the stories been previously published? Every time you get a piece published somewhere else, those readers can click on the link in your bio and buy your book. Those readers already like and read short stories. The story itself is an ad for your book.

So, I would submit stories to other publications. Put your book link in your signature line here and anywhere else you hang out online. Also, consider making one of the stories free on Kindle to hopefully attract more short story readers to buy the whole book.

And what about the other possible target markets for your book? The collection is about Korean Americans. Who would be especially interested in that topic? And how can you reach those people? Is there a Korean American forum you can participate in, in a meaningful way, and again, include a link to your book in the signature line? Anything else? If your stories are set in a particular Californian region, there's another starting place to consider when thinking of ways to attract readers. Imo, it has to be "real" to be very effective. I wouldn't bother spending a lot of time if I wasn't truly interested in any of these things in the first place. If not, your best bet may be to just leave it there and get on to writing other things. Those other things will also serve as ads for this book if they're under the same name.

Also, you can offer free copies and request reviews, and try dropping your price, and see how that goes. Good luck.

Also, it depends on what you mean by "word of mouth." It has to be meaningful (to the potential reader) word of mouth to work, not just calling in favors from people who may not be very interested in it or going on about it like shouting from a loud speaker, "Buy my book, buy my book." There's so much of that out there and people just tune it out.

I only looked at it quickly but I noticed your book lists no previous publications for any of the stories. That says to me you may have just written a collection and put it up (when you get a collection published by a publisher, they usually want some of the stories to have been previously published).

So, my next question is, have you had the stories critiqued? In my experience, just the writer's eyes on a story is not enough. It probably wouldn't be very polished. If not, I suggest taking a step back and waiting to promote the book. First, you want it to be the best it can be. If it hasn't been done, I'd take one story at a time and post it in SYW for critique, and of course critique for others as well. When they're all done, re-publish the book. Then work on promotion. Sorry if this is obvious. As I said, I don't know where you're at with it.

Fruitbat said:

Personally, I wouldn't ask friends or family to read, praise, buy, push, or help finance my book or other personal project because I think people tend to hate that. Also, they're not your real target market so imo it's not likely to lead to much success anyway.

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I agree with this.

No one in my family has read my books. I haven't asked them and frankly due to the content I wouldn't want them to! lol

I told my friends about my books not too long ago, but never asked any to read, buy or review my books. I do know a couple who have bought & read them on their own, they emailed me to say how much they loved them & are proud of me, but they didn't leave reviews and I didn't ask them to.

As far as word of mouth, I don't think that's worked much for me. If I had to guess, I think most of my readers have found me on Goodreads. Either from promos there or my activity in groups. I've actually gotten a few readers from this site as well who have reviewed my books favorably.

My advise, make sure you have a well written, well edited book with a kick ass cover and then promote it in places where your target audience is.

When it comes to book sales, "word of mouth" doesn't come from writers getting their friends and families to say how good the book is. It comes from readers discovering the book and telling their friends and families; from media outlets writing pieces about the book because they've seen how people are reacting to it; and so on and so forth.

Osulagh said:

Have you ever bought something because of a review? So yes, word of mouth works.

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For me, honestly almost never since the internet started. I have £100’s worth of books from an etailer that has little / no customer reviews for it products.

Only once did I rely on reviews, which is why I can remember it; it was on Amazon, a kind of how to book with advice about my profession. It wasn’t until a couple of years later after doing the profession I had more insight to think: “hang on a minute” about the book realizing it was mostly fluff and filler.

TheCuriousOne said:

I totally function on word of mouth. I don't read reviews anymore, I've been too disappointed by them lately.

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I sometimes wonder how much information asymmetry (reviews that don’t reflect customers actual experience) there needs to be for the more customers to conclude the same.

This sounds promising:

http://www.smartinsights.com/ecomme...f/impact-social-proof-online-retail-purchase/

quote: ‘online sharing beat general consumer reviews and ratings across the board’

Word of mouth - works or not

For some - very few - it might. But for most of us - no. It's the same principle as you trying to sell your home. Some of us might be able to do it quite well, but most of us will opt for a real estate agent because it's their job and they do it well.

WOM works when the person talking about something is passionate about it, and they can't help but talk about it to other people, whether in person or online, having family members talk about your book to their friends will only help if those family members are passionate about the book (they don't have to be passionate about you ) for them to do this, then it will require that their friends are interested in what they have to say about it, and want to talk about it to their friends and so on...

WOM is not something that you try to start off yourself and have any influence over it, it's basically a case of if someone likes, dislikes, is excited, appalled or anything else about it, then they might start talking about it.

Getting that first book noticed (and your author name) is hard. I think I had 70 sales in my first two weeks, and that's with a little help from the publishing company and their marketing. Things didn't really get going until my debut was recommended to a review blog by a reader, then it spiralled from there. They went out of their way to not only to review, but to talk with other readers/reviewers on other reviews etc, to the point it's strange how you can look back and see where things started to spark. But through all of that, it wasn't solely down to what I said, what the publishing company advertised, or any words from friends and family (I banned them from talking about it!); it was down to stepping away and letting readers be readers, and maybe just being social enough to talk about most things but my work.

I'm at a comfortable point now where WOM has established strong connections with reviewing sites for interviews, ARCs, blog rolls etc, and also for invites to LGBT conventions to the likes of Munich. But it's taken time and patience.

Patience and looking through Old Hack's link, mostly in order to remind me on how not to act. Sometimes it gets very, very tough.