sam’s club as a metaphor for life
Picture this…
The setting is Sam’s Club (or Costco, or BJs or whatever your local box store is). A women in rubber gloves stands behind a cart handing out free samples to the many shoppers strolling through the aisles.
“Would you like to taste a free sample of our Spicy Mongolian Beef?” she asks a passerby.
After the shopper eats the sample, the employee hands her a pencil and form. “Would you please rate this sample on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is you didn’t like it at all and 5 is you would recommend it to all your friends?”
The shopper responds with a rating of 1 and hands the form back.
“Can you tell me why you rated the free sample of Spicy Mongolian Beef a 1?” the employee asks.
“Well, first of all it was much too small. I mean, why bother eating it at all? It’s not worth the time and effort. Then, it was spicy. I hate spicy food. And finally, it was beef. I never eat beef. I only eat chicken and pork.”
Ridiculous, you say? The shopper was clearly told it was a free sample (in other words “small”) of spicy beef, so why would she judge it so harshly based on her own personal preferences?
Surprisingly this exact scenario happens daily to myself and all of my author friends. No, we don’t moonlight at Sam’s Club as the Sample Lady, but we do give away our stories for free sometimes so readers can get a taste of what our writing is like. The hope is that through the free sampling they will find they enjoy our style or our characters and seek out more of our work to purchase.
It works. I’ve gotten lots of fan mail from people who downloaded one of my free reads, loved it, and wanted to know where to find more of my work, or simply wanted to thank me for writing it. On the other hand, check out the reader reviews of any free read on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or allromanceebooks.com and you will see dozens of reader reviews that echo the above Sam’s Club shopper’s comments almost verbatim.
“It was much too small. I mean, why bother [reading] it at all? It’s not worth the time and effort.” I’ve seen this comment for short stories where the word count is clearly marked and it is obviously a short story. And remember, it was FREE.
“It was spicy! I hate spicy food.” Substitute the words “There was sex in it! I never read erotic romance” and you’ve pretty much got what I’ve read in many reviews by readers of sweet romance who downloaded an erotic romance simply because it was free.
“It was beef. I never eat beef. I only eat chicken and pork.” You can substitute the above “erotic” scenario for this one too, but also things like “It was contemporary and I only read historical.” Or “it had vampires and I never read paranormal.” You get the picture.
The absolute most mind boggling is when they rate it a 1 and leave a review saying, “I didn’t bother reading it because of the other bad reader reviews.” Can you imagine the fall out if the NY Times food critic rated a restaurant without ever eating there? It is absolutely unimaginable, but I read that exact reader review last night on BN.com.
Why does this happen?
It’s one of the great mysteries of the literary world. In fact at my Borders Books signing last Saturday, the other 4 authors and I spent a considerable amount of time discussing the phenomenon.
Here are my theories on the subject… I think many people will take anything that’s free no matter what it is. Because of that, our work is being consumed by customers who would never and should never have been our readers normally.
I also think that when it takes some time and effort (like in the old days of snail mail) only those who feel extremely strongly about something, good or bad, will leave a review, but all those in the middle don’t bother. That said, nowadays eRetail sites are making it easy to leave a rating with just one click which results in the high number of reviews that span 1-5 with no rhyme or reason.
Let me daydream for a moment about the perfect world and rewrite the Sam’s Club scene. In my scene, the shopper writes, “I did not enjoy this free sample of Spicy Mongolian Beef. Though perhaps other might enjoy it, it was not to my taste because I don’t like spicy food and I don’t eat beef.”
Or perhaps, she shouldn’t take it and eat it in the first place? Nah, now I’m just talking crazy!
Cat
YAY, Cat! I was one of those writers who received the thumbs down on a free read. Thank so much for this post! It explains the phenomena exactly!
And may I add? It was delightful meeting you last Saturday!
Hey, Anny!
Thanks for stopping by and for commenting. Maybe we need an author support group? Hehe.
It was great meeting you at the signing Saturday as well!
Cat
[...] in knowing why my post is full of all these conditions and warnings, read my recent post on my Confessions of a Romance Writer at the Eat Something Sexy blogs. Published [...]