Wossy Book Club

There are two reasons that I liked what I read about the Wossy book club – started by Jonathan Ross on twitter, apparently as a response to the end of Richard and Judy`s (in)famous book club – the first being the new and clever use of twitter, and the second being the innovative response of publishers Pan Macmillan.

The announcement of #wossybookclub, and the naming of Men Who Stare At Goats as the first featured book have resulted in:

• Sales of the book on amazon increasing from by 7,000%
• Pan Macmillan allowing free access to the ebook of Men Who Stare At Goats for the duration of the book club
• An unofficial site being set up for the club at www.wossybookclub.com

Macmillan allowed free access to the ebook for one hour on the site Exact Editions, as well as a preview of the first chapter which is still available.

I did not attend the book club – which has now had its second week I believe – and have no idea how well twitter could facilitate any kind of sensible discussion, but I thought it was brilliant that (according to netimperative) twitterers were able to reference their tweets with links to individual pages of the book.

“This is the first time that a trade publisher has made a fiction title freely available to facilitate a live online discussion.”

This is a real nice example of how a simple idea can make huge waves through social media (though in this case it did rely on a high-profile name), and of how a business can respond quickly to offer people something for free to facilitate a movement that is sure to benefit them hugely.