There is a lot of information that a writer or publisher can
mine in Amazon’s “Also bought” (that line of books at the bottom of the screen
that says “People who bought this book also bought these books”, which is
sometimes referred to as the alsobot).
It’s all publicly available for anyone willing to put in the time to do
some tedious cutting and pasting and knows a thing or two about data
analysis. I am talking about a
statistical analysis here – nothing that in any way violates anyone’s
reasonable expectation of privacy.
Examining your alsobots can help a writer or publisher understand the market
that they are already reaching, and perhaps shape their books to better serve
that market.
As an example, one can use publicly available web-based
software to do simple text analytics, that report on the complexity of
writing. Some common and easy to
understand measures are word count, average sentence length, proportion of long
or hard words (i.e. more syllables or more letters). In the example below, I took a sample of about
20 books in the alsobot of Kati of Terra Book 1 (a Dodecahedron Books
publication), with an average of about 20 reviews each. I analysed their blurbs and also analysed the
reader reviews of those books. As you
can see, as the complexity of the book blurb goes up (as measured by percentage
of "hard words" with three or more syllables), the complexity of the corresponding reviews
also goes up. The correlation is fairly
high (R-Square=.43), for those who have a background in statistics. This general result holds true for a number
of the other measures of writing complexity noted above.
So, what’s likely behind this? I would hypothesize that readers judge the assumed
writing style of the book by the writing style of the blurb. Those who prefer a more complicated writing
style will purchase and read the books with more complicated blurbs. Eventually, when they review those books,
they will write in a more complex style themselves, as that’s what they are
comfortable with. Similarly for readers
on other points along this dimension.
What’s this mean for the writer or publisher? I suppose one could take one of several
lessons from it. One strategy might be
to attempt to maximize your market, by adapting the blurb style to the widest
possible audience. Of course, going
after too wide an audience might just mean you don’t appeal to those most
likely to enjoy the book. Alternatively, one could try to target a very
specific market, say readers who love complex prose, by writing a very erudite
blurb. Of course, if the blurb style seriously
misrepresents the book style, that will just lead to reader disappointment and possibly
bad reviews and returns.
Alternatively, one could simply look at these results and
conclude that readers will seek out and find the books with which they are most
comfortable, and not worry too much about the whole matter. Just be Zen about it - write in the style
that is your natural voice, and wait for readers who prefer that voice to find
you.
If you want to know where Kati of Terra fits in this
spectrum, you can read the blurb here:
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