名人讀書俱樂部是許多作家通往成功的門票

名人讀書俱樂部是許多作家通往成功的門票

Discoverability. It's a word that people who market and sell books use when talking about one of their biggest challenges: With hundreds of thousands of titles released each year, how do readers find the books that publishers want them to buy?

可發(fā)現(xiàn)性。這個(gè)詞是營銷和銷售圖書的人在談?wù)撍麄兠媾R的最大挑戰(zhàn)之一時(shí)使用的:每年發(fā)行數(shù)十萬本圖書，讀者如何找到出版商希望他們購買的圖書?

Word of mouth is the old standby. Media interviews are a big help. Book clubs can go a long way to boosting sales.

口碑營銷是一個(gè)古老的方法。媒體采訪發(fā)揮了很大的作用。讀書俱樂部對促進(jìn)銷售大有裨益。

It all began with Oprah, who said she wanted to "get the whole country reading again" when she introduced her on-air book club back in 1996 — and launching previously unknown authors onto the bestseller lists. A new version of the club started in 2012, using social media as the main platform, and now there's a whole range of book clubs led by celebrities: Actress Emma Watson has a feminist book club. Just-retired NFL quarterback Andrew Luck's clubis aimed at getting young people to read. Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon jumped on the bandwagon too, with his Summer Reads book club.

這一切都始于奧普拉。1996年，當(dāng)她在電視上介紹自己的讀書俱樂部時(shí)，她說她想“讓整個(gè)國家再次閱讀”，并把以前不知名的作家列入暢銷書排行榜。2012年，該俱樂部推出了一個(gè)新版本，以社交媒體為主要平臺，現(xiàn)在有一系列由名人領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的讀書俱樂部:女演員艾瑪·沃特森有一個(gè)女權(quán)主義讀書俱樂部。剛剛退休的美國國家橄欖球聯(lián)盟（NFL）四分衛(wèi)安德魯·拉克的俱樂部旨在讓年輕人閱讀。《今夜秀》主持人吉米·法倫也加入了這一潮流，加入了他的夏日讀書俱樂部。

"In today's media market there are lots of options," says Kristen McLean, a book industry analyst with NPD BookScan. "There's a lot of types of media and entertainment that are competing for people's attention," she says, "and so having prominent influencers recommend books is very helpful to those books reaching their audience."

NPD BookScan圖書行業(yè)分析師克里斯汀•麥克萊恩(Kristen McLean)表示:“在今天的媒體市場上，有很多選擇。“有很多類型的媒體和娛樂正在爭奪人們的注意力，”她說，“因此，讓有影響力的人推薦書籍，對讀者購買到圖書非常有幫助。”

She points to one of the latest entries as an example: Jenna Bush Hager's book club on The Today Show. She recently announced her August pick, Nicole Dennis-Benn's novel Patsy, to excited cheers from her audience. McLean says the first five books chosen by the "Read with Jenna" book club saw a significant boost in their sales. "We've seen these books overperform about 500% compared to the rest of the market for fiction during that time. "

她舉了一個(gè)最新的例子:詹娜·布什·哈格爾在《今日秀》上的讀書俱樂部。她最近宣布了她八月的選擇，妮可丹尼斯-本的小說Patsy，激起她的觀眾興奮的歡呼。麥克萊恩說，詹娜讀書俱樂部挑選的前五本書銷量大增。“我們看到，與同期小說市場的其他書籍相比，這些書的表現(xiàn)超出了約500%。”

"You know when you're writing, you're not sure who you're gonna be connecting to," Dennis-Benn says. "You just know that you're writing for yourself. And you're hoping that somebody gets the message. And so when these people who have a platform pick our books, it means it's gonna be read widely."

“你知道當(dāng)你寫作的時(shí)候，你不確定你會和誰聯(lián)系，”丹尼斯-本說。“你只知道你在為自己寫作。你希望有人能明白你的意思。所以當(dāng)這些人有一個(gè)平臺選擇我們的書時(shí)，就意味著它將被廣泛閱讀。”

Witherspoon's recommendation helped turn one debut novelist's book into a genuine phenomenon: Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Singhas sold more than 1.3 million copies and has been sitting at — or near the top of — all the bestseller lists for almost two years. Like many of the books chosen, it is a debut novel written by a woman — which Sarah Harden says reflects the club's larger mission. "Our decision and our focus with Reese's book club is to the find and champion narratives where women are not the side characters. They're driving the action, they have agency, they're complex, they're flawed. And that's just the focus of our company."

威瑟斯彭的推薦幫助使一位小說家的處女作變成了一種真正的現(xiàn)象:迪莉婭•歐文斯的《小爬蟲們的歌唱》已經(jīng)賣出了130多萬冊，并在近兩年的時(shí)間里一直占據(jù)或接近所有暢銷書排行榜的榜首。就像許多被選中的書一樣，這是一本女性作家的處女作，薩拉·哈登說這反映了俱樂部更大的使命。“我們的決定和里斯讀書俱樂部的重點(diǎn)是發(fā)現(xiàn)并支持女性不再是配角的故事。他們在推動這個(gè)行動，他們有代理，他們復(fù)雜，他們有缺陷。這正是我們公司的重點(diǎn)。”

That would be Witherspoon's company Hello Sunshine — even before before the club started, she looked to books for properties to produce, most notably HBO's Big Little Lies. Several of her book club picks have already been optioned for film or TV, including Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, which Witherspoon will star in along with Kerry Washington. Harden says the show has a built in audience, "because we've got a following of dedicated fans. They love Celeste Ng and they love this book."

那將是威瑟斯彭的公司“你好陽光”——甚至在俱樂部成立之前，她就開始尋找可以制作的書籍，最著名的是HBO的《大小謊言》。她的讀書俱樂部挑選的幾本書已經(jīng)被選來制作成電影或電視劇，包括萊斯特·吳的《無處不在的小火》，威瑟斯彭將和克里·華盛頓一起主演這部電影。哈登說，這個(gè)節(jié)目有一大批忠實(shí)的觀眾，“因?yàn)槲覀冇幸蝗褐覍?shí)的粉絲。他們喜歡萊斯特·吳，也喜歡這本書。”

And if the book brings fans to the show, the show is very likely to bring more readers to the book, says BookScan's Kristen McLean. "Once that film project hits the market, there's a whole other wave again of awareness and promotion and marketing, and the book, again, will come right back onto the bestseller list.

BookScan的克里斯汀·麥克林說，如果這本書能吸引粉絲來看這部劇，那么這部劇很可能會吸引更多的讀者來讀這本書。“一旦這部電影上市，又會掀起另一股意識、宣傳和營銷的浪潮，而這本書也會再次回到暢銷書排行榜上。

McLean calls it a 360 degree deal where everybody wins — celebrity, author and fans.

麥克萊恩稱這是一個(gè)三百六十度的交易，包括名人、作家和粉絲在內(nèi)的每個(gè)人都是贏家。