名人读书俱乐部是许多作家通往成功的门票

名人读书俱乐部是许多作家通往成功的门票

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?

可发现性。这个词是营销和销售图书的人在谈论他们面临的最大挑战之一时使用的:每年发行数十万本图书，读者如何找到出版商希望他们购买的图书?

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

口碑营销是一个古老的方法。媒体采访发挥了很大的作用。读书俱乐部对促进销售大有裨益。

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.

这一切都始于奥普拉。1996年，当她在电视上介绍自己的读书俱乐部时，她说她想“让整个国家再次阅读”，并把以前不知名的作家列入畅销书排行榜。2012年，该俱乐部推出了一个新版本，以社交媒体为主要平台，现在有一系列由名人领导的读书俱乐部:女演员艾玛·沃特森有一个女权主义读书俱乐部。刚刚退休的美国国家橄榄球联盟（NFL）四分卫安德鲁·拉克的俱乐部旨在让年轻人阅读。《今夜秀》主持人吉米·法伦也加入了这一潮流，加入了他的夏日读书俱乐部。

"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图书行业分析师克里斯汀•麦克莱恩(Kristen McLean)表示:“在今天的媒体市场上，有很多选择。“有很多类型的媒体和娱乐正在争夺人们的注意力，”她说，“因此，让有影响力的人推荐书籍，对读者购买到图书非常有帮助。”

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. "

她举了一个最新的例子:詹娜·布什·哈格尔在《今日秀》上的读书俱乐部。她最近宣布了她八月的选择，妮可丹尼斯-本的小说Patsy，激起她的观众兴奋的欢呼。麦克莱恩说，詹娜读书俱乐部挑选的前五本书销量大增。“我们看到，与同期小说市场的其他书籍相比，这些书的表现超出了约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."

“你知道当你写作的时候，你不确定你会和谁联系，”丹尼斯-本说。“你只知道你在为自己写作。你希望有人能明白你的意思。所以当这些人有一个平台选择我们的书时，就意味着它将被广泛阅读。”

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."

威瑟斯彭的推荐帮助使一位小说家的处女作变成了一种真正的现象:迪莉娅•欧文斯的《小爬虫们的歌唱》已经卖出了130多万册，并在近两年的时间里一直占据或接近所有畅销书排行榜的榜首。就像许多被选中的书一样，这是一本女性作家的处女作，萨拉·哈登说这反映了俱乐部更大的使命。“我们的决定和里斯读书俱乐部的重点是发现并支持女性不再是配角的故事。他们在推动这个行动，他们有代理，他们复杂，他们有缺陷。这正是我们公司的重点。”

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."

那将是威瑟斯彭的公司“你好阳光”——甚至在俱乐部成立之前，她就开始寻找可以制作的书籍，最著名的是HBO的《大小谎言》。她的读书俱乐部挑选的几本书已经被选来制作成电影或电视剧，包括莱斯特·吴的《无处不在的小火》，威瑟斯彭将和克里·华盛顿一起主演这部电影。哈登说，这个节目有一大批忠实的观众，“因为我们有一群忠实的粉丝。他们喜欢莱斯特·吴，也喜欢这本书。”

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·麦克林说，如果这本书能吸引粉丝来看这部剧，那么这部剧很可能会吸引更多的读者来读这本书。“一旦这部电影上市，又会掀起另一股意识、宣传和营销的浪潮，而这本书也会再次回到畅销书排行榜上。

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

麦克莱恩称这是一个三百六十度的交易，包括名人、作家和粉丝在内的每个人都是赢家。