Word of Mouth
Something rather wonderful has been happening the last few days - this line from 'The Perfume Garden' is taking on a life of its own, popping up on perfumer's sites, perfume fanatics' Twitter feeds and Pinterest pages. One beautiful young French perfumer is even considering it as a tattoo. I don't know how, or why this particular line is taking hold -but it's great. I've always embraced the idea of readers making a book their own once it is out of the author's hands. To celebrate I designed this last night, using one of the gardenias currently blooming in our garden. If you like it, take it - feel free to copy the jpeg and post it wherever you like.
It's odd being so far away from home at a time like this. With the London Book Fair, and the excitement of all the deals and prizes being announced over the last week, you can feel rather ... isolated. However, a kind friend pinned this to my Facebook wall, (thank you Katie) - the first sighting of TPG in the wild at Heathrow Terminal 4.
It's a big moment - even at a distance of thousands of miles - to see this. We were talking last night about how things spread by word of mouth. Well, to be precise, I was apoplectic on behalf of the authors whose short stories I'd been looking at on Amazon, who had racked up stacks of 1* reviews from people who resented the fact that *free* stories by well known authors were short. Many of you might agree that short stories are hard - if not the hardest - fiction to write. It seems you can spend months getting them perfect only for the wrong type of word of mouth to come back at you. I said "I just don't get it. Who are these people handing out 1* reviews? What's the point? I only review something if I've loved it." "Well," the pilot said cautiously, "you're ... unusual." Which I think is the diplomatic way of echoing his lovely mother's words: 'neither of my children married normal people'.
What do you think? If you like something, do you bother to comment? The pilot tells me that when he worked as a headhunter, during one training session they were told that people are far more likely to speak up if they have a negative experience. In other words - people are hard wired to complain. Do you think that's right? Leave aside trolls and sockpuppets (my own favourite at the moment is the writer of historical fiction who has given TPG both a 1 and 2* on Google books using the same text, to bring down the overall rating as much as possible - *deep breath*). As we've said before, the best option - the only option - is to accept with good grace the good and bad reviews. So - question of the day: is there something about online reviewing that brings out the best and worst in people?
There's still time for you to win a copy of the new paperback of 'The Perfume Garden' over at Goodreads, and there are more guest posts coming this week, which I hope will introduce you to some great book blogs. There's also a giveaway widget on the blog for the copy of the audiobook which is up for grabs here - do enter before the end of the month, please spread the word :)
