Peer-to-peer book reviews fill a niche
Social-networking websites that connect people through their taste in literature are gaining in popularity – and publishers are starting to take notice.
from the June 15, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Random House doesn't view the site's members as a focus group. "We're not necessarily looking for them to reinforce what we already know – which is that the book is great," says Avideh Bashirrad, who works in the publisher's marketing department. "We're hoping they'll help us generate early word-of-mouth buzz for these books."
Ms. Bashirrad first read about LibraryThing in the newspaper. She was struck by the potential the site's algorithms had to place Random House books in the hands of readers who might genuinely enjoy them – "that ability to match people with books based on the what books they have read," she says.
One of the biggest challenges publishers face is targeting their product. "Why send a science-fiction book to someone who never reads that and doesn't like it," asks Bashirrad.
"What we know that no one else does," explains LibraryThing librarian Abby Blachly, "is every other book in a person's library."
Bashirrad is careful to say that the arrangement is experimental and that she doesn't expect this – or literary blogs, for that matter – to replace traditional book reviews. Perhaps not, but bibliophiles are still looking for their next great read and the decline in news pages devoted to books means it is harder to get new titles out to them. It's a vacuum that social-networking book sites are happy to fill.
At the same time, publishers are facing a public that's spending less time with books. In 1999, the average American adult spent 119 hours per year reading books for recreation. This year, according to a 2007 Census Bureau study, that number is projected to drop to 106 hours.
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