Goodreads Anatomy of Book Discovery: A Case Study

[charlesatan]

via http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/3...y-a-case-study

One of the major takeaways of our research is that book discovery happens in a multitude of ways, and there is no single magic bullet that will work for every book. But that doesn't mean there aren't best practices. Here is a case study of how one book reached the promised land of the New York Times best-seller list: Goodreads Author Charles Duhigg's nonfiction book, The Power of Habit.


Where on Goodreads did people discover The Power of Habit? The above graph shows what part of the site readers were browsing when they added the book. A few months before publication, most people found The Power of Habit through an advance copy giveaway (note the three spikes corresponding with the giveaway dates). Pre-publication giveaways hope to generate early buzz and seed the book page with a good number of reviews, which are crucial in helping future readers decide to add the book. The orange section of the graph shows people who added the book after seeing one of their friends add it. Notice how this starts to swell as more and more people search for the book. This is the word-of-mouth excitement that publishers and authors covet.

[elemenoP]

Interesting, I found "The Power of Habit" via the fascinating article in the New York Times about how Target figures out when women are pregnant and markets to them. The article was like an excerpt from the book (although it wasn't billed that way). I then read the book and loved it. I remember that article was at the top of the "most emailed" for a very long time, so I think I'm not the only one who discovered the book that way. The goodreads article mentions the NPR interview but not the New York Times article.

eP

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Interesting, I found "The Power of Habit" via the fascinating article in the New York Times about how Target figures out when women are pregnant and markets to them. The article was like an excerpt from the book (although it wasn't billed that way). I then read the book and loved it. I remember that article was at the top of the "most emailed" for a very long time, so I think I'm not the only one who discovered the book that way. The goodreads article mentions the NPR interview but not the New York Times article.

eP

That's something that sounds interesting. Do you have a link to the Target targeting pregnant women?

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

That's something that sounds interesting. Do you have a link to the Target targeting pregnant women?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/ma...pagewanted=all

[Soldim]

Very interesting -- and shows how publishers (or self publishing authors) can use targeted giveaways, blog posts and advertising at the right moments to gain momentum for book sales.

Also sounds like a book I might want to read -- having this article on Book Discovery will probably increase it sales a bit more

[taming]

The Goodreads folks are very, very good at what they do. They have created a force to be reckoned with as they attract a huge number of users; are the source of reader reviews for Sony, Kobo and more; and have demonstrated that a Goodreads tie-in can be valuable to publishers and authors.