Word of Mouth
The saying goes Don’t judge a book by its cover. Of course, we all do. It’s one of the ways books sell. Readers also tend to buy what’s familiar. But there’s another powerful force in selling books and that’s the strength of word-of-mouth recommendations.
We’ve all experienced this, acting on the trusted recommendation of a friend. Sometimes the word-of-mouth sales cycle is a long one. About fifteen years ago a friend and co-worker recommended Michael Connelly’s books. Every once in a while this would come up, and each time I passed. Then, while on vacation, I picked up City of Bones. I blazed through that book, burned through every other Harry Bosch tale, then the stand-alones. All initially triggered by a word-of-mouth recommendation.
E-books and the Information Age have altered publishing drastically, but Amazon’s algorithms are essentially a sophisticated statement of word-of-mouth recommendations, and sites like Goodreads are very much word-of-mouth.
Recently, a friend sent me a text asking if I had heard of the Matt Royal mystery series by H. Terrell Griffin. You’d like them, my friend said, the protagonist lives by the water down in Florida. I checked-out the Matt Royal books. I hadn’t heard of Terry Griffin, but I figured I’d try one and I ordered Blood Island.
There was a great deal to enjoy. Excellent pacing, a number of plot reversals, and strong depictions of the Florida Gulf Coast and the Keys. It turns out that Mike Jastrzebski and Christine Kling know Terry, and perhaps I even once met him at a Sleuthfest writers conference. Still, for me it was a new find courtesy of a word-of-mouth recommendation. I was glad to make the purchase, find someone new, and I’ll be happy to buy some more Matt Royal books.
The Matt Royal character lives on Longboat Key, not far from Siesta Key where John MacDonald wrote. As I thought about the comparisons between Matt Royal and MacDonald’s Travis McGee, I did some searching on the Internet. In the process, I saw a comparison between Travis McGee and Donald Hamilton’s protagonist Matt Helm.
Hamilton’s series ran from 1960 to 1993, very close in time to the Travis McGee books. Helm is government agent trained as an assassin. Several books were made into movies featuring Dean Martin, and a Matt Helm TV series ran in the mid-70s.
I had forgotten all of this, but the magic of the Kindle made for an easy purchase. The story I read was written in 1964 – 50 years ago for those keeping count. Hamilton is an amazingly even writer who is able to maintain suspense without having to amp up the action through peaks and valleys. If you enjoy spy or crime fiction, you might want to give Hamilton a try.
And if you find that you like Griffin’s Matt Royal or Hamilton’s Matt Helm, don’t keep it to yourself. Tell a friend, pass it along word-of-mouth.
by John Urban
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