A tweet from Stephen Fry appears to have sent a book about the afterlife from the murky depths of the book sales lists to the dazzling heights of number two. The online retailer Amazon yesterday reported a 6,000% rise in sales for Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman. It went from number 3,629 to number two and the only discernible reason is this tweet from Fry: “You will not read a more dazzling book this year than David Eagleman’s Sum. If you read it and aren’t enchanted I will eat 40 hats.” The tweet was retweeted by Fry followers – hence the dramatic rise.
link: Tweet smell of success for book backed by Stephen Fry | Media | The Guardian
By anyone’s terms Mr Stephen Fry is a popular figure in British culture but he’s also a twitter star. And if you’ve been following him for any length of time you’ve have noticed something I can only call The Fry Effect – usually it involves the following events: Mr Fry wants to mention a weblink, he then checks to see if they can cope with the increase in traffic, they say they can, he posts the link and then the website crashes as numerous amounts of his followers all check out his recommendation as well as ReTweeting his post for others to do the same.
So it’s great to see that same Fry Effect being applied to the book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman by Canongate. And it looks like he’s caused a more than healthy increase in sales.
Incidentally, I mentioned the same book ages ago and Simon A reviewed it around the same time on BookGeeks.co.uk and gave it a great review. Not that Mr Fry would recommend a dub or anything 
I've had this on my book swap wishlists for a while, possibly because of your mention. Looks like I'll be waiting a while to grab a copy now. Great to hear about a relatively unknown book getting good sales though.
Is Stephen Fry someone famous? I'm from America and I've never heard of him
@Jem – yeah the trouble with so much choice is that books constantly get swamped! Great to see this one going up stream.
@reader – He's famous for so much. You might know him from his guest spots on Bones, he used to work with Hugh Laurie form House. He's an intelligent, funny, humble (in a way), fascinating and a good egg all round.
Now this is what I call instant effect… It's amazing what twitter can accomplish, when the right person with the right following states an opinion.