How to prevent a word of mouth epidemic
by Duncan O'Leary
I came across an article in The Times over the weekend. The headline was 'And talking of books...how word of mouth made a surprise bestseller'. The article was about how a Gladwell-esque word-of-mouth epidemic helped a book defy the conventional 'rules' of bestsellers [for example, it was translated from another language] and shoot up the list. There must be something deeply ironic, then, in the way that The Times website itself makes it incredibly difficult to link to an article once you've searched for it'
(Anyway, here's the link ' courtesy of google news, which helps you locate the right url).