Is There a Formula for Writing a Best-seller?

Have you ever wondered if there is a shortcut, or at least a pattern, to getting your book on the NY Times best-seller list?
More than 100,000 new books are published each year, but only about 400 of those will become best-sellers.
Albert-László Barabási, a data scientist, analyzed the sales patterns of the 2,468 fiction and 2,025 nonfiction titles that made The New York Times best-seller list for hardcovers over the last ten years.  
Here are some quick facts:
  • Half of the best-selling non-fiction titles were memoirs or biographies.
    • Only 1.1% were about science
  • 67% of the fiction titles were genre fiction like mystery, action, or romance (think Danielle Steele or James Patterson, who has had 51 best-sellers in the last decade)
  • 85% of best-selling fiction authors have had more than one book on the list.  
    • Only 14% of non-fiction authors hold this distinction.
  • You don't have to sell as many books as you think – a book can make the non-fiction list by selling as few as 5000 copies.
  • Most  best-sellers spend less than a month on the list, and only 8% make the #1 spot.

It matters what time of the year you publish in - Barabási identified a universal sales curve that could help optimize your sales, depending on whether you are an unknown or established author. 
Now that  you know you have a shot at writing a best-seller, it's time to stop procrastinating and finish that book!  No matter what, don’t give up hope – only 14% of the novelists made the list with their first book!
If you need pointers on writing, or are having trouble getting started, I recommend the following:
Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott
Solid, compassionate advice on everything from characters, to dialogue, to getting off your ass and actually writing something. A classic.
Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose
A very enlightening book on the art of writing which exposed me to a lot of new writers, and showed me how to look for nuance and style in other's writing, as well as my own.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
A superb guide to winning - or at least breaking even on - the daily struggle to create something.  Pressfield provides practical, actionable advice on how to break through resistance to become a creator.
Trust the Process by Shaun McNiff
Another book on digging in and letting go so you can let your creations out.
I got most of the information for this post from The Conversation, a wonderful free news service.  Their articles never fail to educate, amuse, and surprise me, and all of them are copy-left, meaning you can republish and share them freely, as long as you attribute the source. Sign up to get great news in your inbox at https://theconversation.com!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Formulating Links (1987)

I've been connecting with a lot of allies who are geographically distant.  During a recent conversation, some of us discussed whether it is  feasibile to send messages psychically or astrally, and I remembered this little gem I wrote back in 1987.  Although I stand by most of what I wrote then, I would have taken a very different position on much of this had I written it today, but think it still stands on its own merits, both as a basic how-to, and as a historical document. I've cleaned it a bit and added a couple of asides for context and currency, but have preserved my original exuberance and perhaps naiveté .   FORMULATING LINKS Suppose you want to communicate with an ally but they are too far away for you to speak to or see in person. How do you communicate with them across the seemingly unbridgeable gulf that separates you? In those dark days before the Internet, magical links were one of the only alternatives.  A magical link is a means of ...
Read more

Radiation, Recovery, Resilience, and The Petty Tyrant

Image
  Two years ago today, I completed the radiation therapy for my glioblastoma.  The treatment itself lasted about twenty minutes per day, five days a week, for six weeks.  I also took a relatively low dose of temozolomide, an oral chemotherapy medicine, daily for the six weeks. I started taking it a week before the treatment started and it wasn't too bad - just made me a little tired. I would check in at the desk, then wait a few minutes to be called and then a team member would escort me to a control booth  and then take me to the actual treatment room.  I’d lie on my back on a plastic platform that was cut out in a grid pattern, and they would fit the plastic mask to my head and then snap it to the platform to immobilize my head as much as possible to ensure the radiation was applied to the correct area.  The technicians would go back to the control booth and spend a few moments running test sans to make sure I was positioned properly and calibrate the mac...
Read more

From Eternity to Her: Remembering Anita

Image
   I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen     the mirror crashes against my face and bursts into a thousand suns   all over the city flags crackle and bang   fog horns scream in the harbor   the wind hurricanes through the window   and I begin to dance the dance of the Kurd Shepherds Harry Crosby, Assassin Anita Lane has left the stage. Although her moments in the limelight were fleeting, and her body of work is quite small, she cast a long shadow on the Melbourne music scene and beyond, for which I believe she received far too little recognition.  I do not claim to have known Ms. Lane, but I was cast into her orbit once, many years ago backstage at a Birthday Party show in Denver.  Mercury Cafe, April Fools Day of 1983.  It was the Birthday Party's first foray (Note: Mick Harvey corrected me on this - the band had done a brief tour in 1981, playing the Northeast and Chicago) into the US, and, as it turned out,...
Read more