Wossy's Twitter book club sends first title's sales up 7000%

The purchasing power of a tweet revealed

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22 May 2009 17:01 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Following news that a t-shirt's comedic "reviews" on Amazon going viral upped sales of the garment by 2300%, the etailer has apparently seen an even more meteoric rise of a book's sales, thanks to the power of a Twittering celeb.

Jonathan Ross decided to start an impromptu book club on Twitter, naming Jon Ronson's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" as the inaugural book up for micro-discussion.

In 140 characters or less, and proving the power of such media, Ross wrote: "I have a great idea! Let's start a book club on Twitter! One a week and we all post mini-reviews!"

Next was: "So if you want to join informal book club read Jon Ronson Men Who Stare at Goats by next weekend & we will chat about it".

Reports suggest within 24 hours, enough of Ross' 270,000 followers bought the book on Amazon alone that its sales shot up by 7000%.

Amazon won't confirm the figures, but searching for title on the site brings up "Exit Wounds" by Rutu Modan and "Foreskin's Lament" by Shalom Auslander as related searches - as these are the next book club titles named by Wossy, it seems clear that Amazon has seen some serious sales activity.