{"id":37402,"date":"2020-01-13T06:30:05","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T17:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=37402"},"modified":"2020-01-12T22:48:02","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T09:48:02","slug":"a-few-thoughts-on-word-of-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2020\/01\/13\/a-few-thoughts-on-word-of-mouth\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Thoughts On Word Of Mouth…"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Word of mouth” is one of those topics that comes up reasonably often between writers, chiefly because it’s an alchemy we all hope will bless our books, i.e. that readers will be so entranced they not only tell everyone they know, but do so with the kind of great enthusiasm that naturally engenders a snowball effect. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

\"\"Some famous examples include Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades<\/em><\/strong>, published in 1926 in the midst of the UK General Strike and as a result received no media coverage, but nonetheless became a bestseller.<\/p>\n

\"\"Probably the most famous recent example is JK Rowling’s Harry Potter<\/strong>, with the series taking off between Philosopher’s Stone<\/em> and Chamber Of Secrets<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The reason I started thinking about “word of mouth” over the break was because I saw it in action because of wine. A few years back, I read an article about Langmeil Winery<\/a> in South Australia’s Barossa region, featured in Australia’s Country Style<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n

I was interested, particularly in the history of the 1843 Freedom vineyard with its shiraz vines, believed to be among the world’s oldest, if not the<\/em> oldest. (I have my fingers crossed the vines survive the current fires.) As a result, I sought out Langmeil wines and so far have really liked all those I’ve tried.\"\"<\/p>\n

So much so that when tasked with supplying the red wines for our family get-together this past Christmas, I included two bottles of the Langmeil GSM — which proved immensely popular, with two family members (separate households) taking care to photograph the bottle.<\/p>\n

At preceding events in 2019, my contribution of a Langmeil wine on each occasion, the Hanging Snakes Shiraz (great name, eh?!) and the Blacksmith’s Cabernet Sauvignon also generated considerable enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

This, I thought, as the photos were taken at Christmas, is word-of-mouth in action! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

And yes, it does work for books, too. Aside from the famous examples above, I believe I mentioned Once Upon A River<\/em><\/strong>, very briefly here<\/a>, at the end of last year. (A fuller report is coming!)<\/p>\n

\"\"A friend recommended the book to me, and since then I have recommended it to two other people, one of whom bought it, while the other got it from the library, proof that word-of-mouth is\u00a0 a potent force for both books and wine. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I’ve heard it mooted that word-of-mouth is in fact the only real means of ensuring a book is read. Georgette Heyer took a very similar lesson from the success of These Old Shades<\/em> in 1926, thereafter shunning all publicity. Yep, apparently she never did interviews.<\/p>\n

I’m not entirely convinced by the “all you need is word-of-mouth” argument, while acknowledging that it is very important: just maybe not all<\/em> you need. After all, I discovered Langmeil wines because of the feature article in Country Style. Without it, I probably still wouldn’t have known they existed, Australia being a big country with many vineyards. Or been prompted to try the wines if and when I saw them in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

\"\"Until last year (2019) that is, when a local wine store hosted a Langmeil tasting. A tasting, though, is like a book reading: it’s another promotional mechanism for the ‘product.’ (I struggle to think of books as “products”, but of course they are.)<\/p>\n

The upshot of my musings therefore, is that every product, in order to be successful, needs some publicity and promotion in order to get the word-of-mouth snowball rolling — but once rolling, word-of-mouth is truly the bomb, whether for books or wine.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> I have no connection to Langmeil Winery,\r\nbeyond enthusiasm for their wines. ;-)<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Word of mouth” is one of those topics that comes up reasonably often between writers, chiefly because it’s an alchemy we all hope will bless our books, i.e. that readers will be so entranced they not only tell everyone they know, but do so with the kind of great enthusiasm that naturally engenders a snowball […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37402"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37414,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37402\/revisions\/37414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}