What makes a bestseller?

A P.S. Literary client recently asked ‘what makes a bestseller’?

The answer is: no one knows.

What the industry can predict and learns through experience is noted below. It is the combination of the following factors and the balance of the following factors that makes it hit the charts.

• Quality Content
• Timing
• Publicity
• Placement
• Publisher added value/Production value
• Connection with readers
• Luck!

You can try to deconstruct it when it happens, but a lot of it the balance between.

Examples

St. Martin’s Navy Seals book SEAL TEAM SIX came out (and was rushed to market) after the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death by the Navy Seals. Issacson’s biography STEVE JOBS came out (and was rushed to market) after Steve lost his battle with cancer. Both saw great success.

Fiction examples are harder to come by. THE NIGHT CIRCUS is one example that using timing. It came out when publishers and readers were looking for something to follow Harry Potter. THE NIGHT CIRCUS is a new adult read for Harry Potter fans.

How are you contributing to your genre?

As an aspiring writer your goal should never be just to get your work out there, but how to get interesting media coverage, stand out in a bookstore, turn heads and have ears perk up. Each genre has tropes that are expected, but to break into mainstream publishing you also need to have your own spin.

Zone One‘s Colson Whitehead said: “If you’re writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way.” And I think this rings true for all genres. What are you trying to do that’s different? How are you contributing to your genre? How are you helping to move your genre in a new direction?

Great examples of this are Zone One, The Tipping Point, The Sisters Brothers, Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Wolf Hall, The Prague Cemetery, and The Stepford Wives.

Being An Agent in the Age of Digital Publishing: Social Media and Ebooks

Are you following me on Twitter? @carlywatters

Many agents and editors can tell you to start a blog, get a Twitter feed following, and to think about how to publicize yourself in case you don’t get much help from your publishing house. All of this on top of writing a novel, yes.

At P.S. Literary we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. I’ve had a Twitter account since early 2010, an agent blog that gets 1,000 hits a month and we’ve recently redone our website to reflect our dedication to consistent agency and author brands.

We’ve recently begun to explore the option of a freelance publicist, communications intern, and are always open to ideas from our authors on how to better support them in these changing times.

Our clients have done ebook first then print book arrangements as well as follow traditional publication models.

We aren’t going to open a digital publishing arm as there are digital publishers that already do this so well. We will continue to do what we do best: licence rights (whether print or digital), support our authors’ careers and offer guidance, negotiate contracts to best reflect the changing interest of publishers and authors, on behalf of our authors.

For my great tips on social media see this post from earlier in the year. Follow me on Twitter here.

How the publishing market is bias to author brands: ‘The personal brandification of the publishing business’

On Twitter yesterday Jane Friedman, Writer’s Digest publisher turned media professor, engaged in an interesting dialogue about how the publishing process is becoming bias to author brands (i.e. authors who can market, publicize and promote their own books).

The concept of the author brand has become more important in recent years, and one that is essential for writers entering the book biz to understand. Long gone are the one-size-fits-all marketing plans and grand publicity tours. Now, marketers need to fine-tune their research analytics to find readers that are not only interested in a certain book’s topic and theme, but also optimize online book discovery. (Self-publishing authors must take on this massive role themselves to be successful.) Agents are now using freelance publicists to cross-promote their clients and maximize book coverage. And writers are now expected to help in this entire process. The writer’s job is no longer done when the book is written.