Or: How The Stolen Child Gets to Ride Around in the Amazon.com Shopping Cart

When I reviewed Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child a couple of weeks ago, I was blithely unaware of the Amazon.com brouhaha surrounding the novel, having, I suppose, buried my head in a book literally and figuratively. But it turns out that the online purveyor of books has played an integral role in the book’s success, to the dismay of those who normally fancy themselves integral to a book’s success. Not only that, but Amazon has announced further plans to become Godparent to The Stolen Child by optioning the film rights and is now attempting to peddle the project to a studio and filmmaker.

Amazon.com’s involvement with the novel began with its decision to send free copies to the website’s top customer reviewers, in return for which the recipients would post summaries and their opinions online. The significance of this? The Stolen Child made it to the number one fiction seller on the website, despite being ignored by many major reviewers in professional publications. Furthermore, this form of solicited word-of-mouth propelled Mr. Donohue’s work to the Top 25 of the New York Times bestsellers list.

I enjoyed the book, and think its popularity is deserved, but the situation provokes some thought. An NPR broadcast, available as a podcast at NPR.org wonders what an age of consumer reviews will do to those for whom reviewing is a profession. Critics contend that those who are paid to read the book have the ability to lend weighty thought to its issues and societal contriubtion in addition to its capacity for entertainment. Meanwhile, on Fashiontribes.com, Lesley Scott asserts that “whether the traditional media likes it or not…a new generation of critics is on the rise.”

Following (one might guess) the success of its first campaign, Amazon.com purchased the film option for The Stolen Child. As far as I could discover, no partners for the film have yet been nailed down. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that Amazon is not offering to co-finance the film; its contribution would take the form of advertising and promotion on its existing website. This is, perhaps, a smart decision for the company’s first project outside of the (sizeable) world of its own website, but it may not contribute much added clout. After all, as the Variety article points out, Starbucks’ promotion of ‘Akeelah and the Bee’ apparently did little for the film.

On the other hand, it may simply be part of Amazon’s current attempts to broaden its horizons, culminating in an announcement this month that it will offer TV programmes and films as part of its Amazon Unbox service. This follows on the heels of its expanding web TV programming, which has at its forefront the Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher, a weekly interview with artists and authors. In fact, Keith Donohue’s interview on the show apparently spawned a lot of the interest that led to the decision to option the film. “We are always trying to innovate, based on listening to customers and the things they’re passionate about,” explained Laura Porco, Amazon director of merchandising. “This was a book we passed around to our editorial and merchandising teams. Everybody was excited by Keith’s voice and felt this could be a great movie.”

Isabel Wang comments sagely on Amazon.com’s marketing strategy at her blog isabel says. Meanwhile, Keith Donohue talks about appearing on the ‘Fishbowl’ and his opinions on making the book into a film at ‘Underground Writing’ on the book’s website; any blog post about optioning a film that ends with discussion of Samuel Beckett’s Molloy is a blog post that has won my respect and admiration.