The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

208 Pages·2016·1.69 MB·English

by  Jodie Archer

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Table of Contents
About the Authors
Copyright Page
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For Andrew, a father, and Angela, a wife
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are the types to call someone up and take them for a glass of wine to say
thanks, or even stop by their place with a bottle. But writing this book has taught
us that there are many unspoken duties of any respectable author, and not
fulfilling them is just not a good idea. The formal acknowledgments page is
likely one of them. So, to Don Fehr and his support team at Trident Media
Group, thank you. Daniela Rapp and the team at St. Martin’s Press in New York,
thank you. Laura Stickney and the team at Penguin Press in London, thank you.
Thanks to Aaron Dominguez and Emelie Harstad at the University of Nebraska.
Thanks to Andrea Lunsford, Ramon Saldivar, and Sianne Ngai at Stanford
University. Thanks to Gabi Kirilloff, Yeojin Kim, and Mark Bessen. Thanks to
Bridget Flynn, Janet Warham, Matthew A. and Audrey Jockers. Rob McDonald,
thank you. Stephen and Jenny Whitehead, thank you. Elizabeth Wood and Dan
Powers, thank you. Bodi Mack, thank you, too.
You can all claim your glass of wine from us anytime (except for the kids).
1
THE BESTSELLER-OMETER, OR, HOW TEXT
MINING MIGHT CHANGE PUBLISHING
Back in the spring of 2010, Stieg Larsson’s agent was having a good day. On
June 13, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest—third in the series from a
previously unknown author—debuted at number one in hardback in the New
York Times. You can imagine the lists would have been a pleasing sight over
morning coffee. Hornets’ Nest straight in at the top, Dragon Tattoo at number
one in two paperback formats, and The Girl Who Played with Fire a roundly
satisfying number two. This had been going on for forty-nine weeks in the U.S.,
and for three solid years in Europe. It would have been hard not to be smug.
The following month Amazon would announce Larsson was the first author
ever to sell a million copies on the Kindle, and over the next two years sales in
all editions would top seventy-five million. Not bad for an unknown political
activist–turned-novelist from a little Scandinavian country, especially one who
had chosen a rather uncharming title in Swedish and had written some brutal
scenes of rape and torture. Men Who Hate Women—or The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo as it was renamed in English—was the sensation book of the year in more
than thirty countries.
The press didn’t understand the success. Major newspapers commissioned
opinion pieces on what on earth was going on in the book world. Why this book?
Why the frenzy? What was the secret? Who could have known?
Answers were lackluster. Reviewers scratched their heads about it. They
found fault with the novel’s structure, style, plotting, and character. They
groaned over the translations. They complained about the stupidity of the
reading public. But still copies sold as fast as they were printed—whether you
were in the UK, the U.S., in Japan, or in Germany; whether you were male,
female, old, young, black, white, straight, or gay. Whoever you were, practically
anywhere, you knew people who were reading those books.
That doesn’t happen very often in the book world. The industry might enjoy a
phenomenon breakout like Larsson once a year, if that. E. L. James has been the
biggest breakout since, with Fifty Shades of Grey, and unlike Larsson she was
available for a big publicity tour. Larsson had died before publication. The level
of sales his trilogy achieved without even the backing of its author was
supposedly just unfathomable. Freakish. Unpredictable.
Let’s consider some numbers. A company in Delaware called Bowker is the
global leader in bibliographic information and the exclusive provider for unique
identification numbers (ISBN) for books in the U.S. Their annual report states
that approximately fifty to fifty-five thousand new works of fiction are published
every year. Given the increasing number of self-published ebooks that carry no
ISBN, this is a conservative number. In the U.S., about two hundred to two
hundred twenty novels make the New York Times bestseller lists every year.
Even with conservative numbers, that’s less than half a percent of works of
fiction published. Of that half a percent, even fewer hit the bestseller lists and
stay there week after week to become what the industry calls a “double-digit”
book. Only handfuls of authors manage those ten or more weeks on the list, and
of those maybe just three or four will sell a million copies of a single title in the
U.S. in one year. Why those books?
Traditionally, it is believed that there are certain skills a novelist needs to
master in order to win readers: a sense of plot, compelling characters, more than
basic competence with grammar. Writers with big fan bases have mastered