In Search of the Long Tail: Crowdsourcing the Book Review Process

Today I received an amusing e-mail:

Dear Mr.Howe, How are you today? I hope you are doing great! I just saw a copy of your book at Barnes & Noble. I read the inside cover and thought you’re really onto something and would like to buy it, however I’m getting laid off at the end of the week. I was wondering if you had an extra copy you don’t need that you can mail me one to my house. I would really appreciate it a lot. I hope to find a job soon. Signed, Christopher Aguirre

My initial thought was, "Sorry about your job buddy, but actually, well, no. I sell these books of mine. It’s how my publisher makes money." But as it happens, I just received a few dozen copies of the crowdsourcing Book on Tape. These come on top of a few dozen copies of the U.K. edition of the book, which arrived on top of my stack of unused galley copies and finished hardbacks of the U.S. edition. In other words, I’m swimming in copies of a book bound for the pulping machine. Which gave me an idea.

The whole point of giving away advance copies is to generate buzz and, ideally, press. We identify individual writers and bloggers we think will be interested in reviewing the book. Then we send them a book, unbidden, and hope for the best. But if you think about it, this is a pretty antiquated system, and neglects the long, long tail of reader-bloggers that are really responsible for driving a book’s popularity. Why not turn this equation on its head, and ask the crowd whether they’d like to review the book?

So that’s what I’m going to do. While supplies last, I’ll send you a copy of the U.S., U.K. or audio version of Crowdsourcing. All you need to do is post a comment (or send me an email) containing your address, a link to your website and your good faith testament that you do intend to read and review the book, and I’ll zip one off to you. UPDATE: You must provide an URL to an existing blog, or otherwise specify what forum in which you’d like to review the book. We’re crowdsourcing the book review process, not the book reading process, which is, if you think about it, pretty crowdsourcey already.

And yes, I did send a book to Christopher. Let’s all wish him luck with his job search.

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry. In June 2006 he published "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" in Wired. He covers the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com. His book, Crowdsourcing was published in July 2008.