Blog: Online Buzz

Spikes in Blog Chatter Can Predict Book Sales

There is certainly no shortage of stories of bloggers taking down politicians (Trent Lott, Mark Foley) or other public figures (Dan Rather) by keeping stories alive that then eventually work their way back into the traditional media. But do blogs also cause stories to reach the mainstream media in the first place, stories that otherwise may not have?

Conventional wisdom led me to believe this was the case, but I was curious to find out if there was any documented proof of this correlation. So I did some digging. And although I didn’t find any research specifically on the correlation of blog spikes to traditional media coverage, I did find some interesting research that shows that blog chatter actually does create bumps in online sales (specifically in Amazon.com sales rank and online music sales). This is pretty good proof that this chatter is also having an impact elsewhere as well.

One article (Gruhl, et al, this is an academic paper so you may need to recruit a student to access it) explains that a study found that a spike in online chatter about a particular book title or author tended to predict a spike in that book’s Amazon sales rank about half the time. This graph shows the curve in blog chatter about Lance Armstrong or the Tour de France compared to the sales rank of his book. 

In this particular case, it took about a two-day lead time for blog chatter to impact the book’s sales rank. However in other examples the lead time varied as far ahead as two weeks. 

If increases in blog chatter about a certain topic or individual increase sales, it’s safe to say that this chatter piques an interest in people. It’s pretty safe to assume that the impact of this greater interest is much more far flung than simply online sales – in many cases it’s bound to reach into offline sales, traditional media hits, and in the case of nonprofits and advocacy groups, more action.