Creating Bestsellers

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Family and friends will sometimes lightly tell me they’re sure that I’m going to pen a bestseller. I respond, just as lightly, that I don’t write those types of books.  I’m writing genre fiction to appeal specifically  to readers of my subgenre. Any bestseller status is in the confines of that subgenre.

Bestsellers, obviously, appeal to a broader audience. I’m not sure if I’ll ever even try to write something meant to be that  commercially successful.  But that’s not to say I’m not interested in hearing how to get there.

I received a free copy of The Bestseller Code  as a thank you from St. Martin’s publicist for promoting a contest on Twitter.

At the time, the buzz over the book hadn’t yet revved up as it has now.  There have been discussions sparked (and perhaps a bit of controversy) over the algorithms the authors Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers ran to find common threads in today’s blockbusters, regardless of genre.

From the book description:

“The Bestseller Code”  offers a new theory for why Fifty Shades of Grey sold so well. It sheds light on the current craze for dark heroines. It reveals which themes tend to sell best. And all with fascinating supporting data taken from a five-year study of twenty thousand novels.”

Generally, I do enjoy reading publishing-related data if it’s easy to understand.  I liked the way the data was presented to readers as a narrative.

This is not a how-to book. If you’re looking for a formula to follow for commercial success?  The book doesn’t lay that out for you.

That’s not to say that The Bestseller Code doesn’t have interesting insights.  I tend to mark up non-fiction books with a pen. I found that most of my marking-up occurred in chapter two.  One topic covered in those pages was theme.

The authors found that themes were very simple for bestsellers.  Archer and Jockers used John Grisham and Danielle Steel as examples.  Grisham’s theme is the legal system and Steel’s involve ‘domestic life’ or ‘time spent inside the home.’

As a side note, this was a different way for me to view theme. As an English major, I tend to think of themes as something like ‘coming of age,’ or ‘man against nature,’ or ‘lost love.’  I’m usually thinking about a lesson of sorts.  The ‘legal system’ or ‘domestic life’ themes seemed more of what I think of as hooks.  The authors labeled them themes or ‘signature topics.’

According to authors Archer and Jockers, “The authors are known for their signature topic and fans expect them to deliver it.”  Grisham and Steel spend 1/3 of all the paragraphs of all their books on these themes and the other 2/3 to “introduce the tangential topics that make each new book seem a little different.”

This made me wonder if new authors were overthinking it and trying to accomplish too much. The authors tended to agree that they may. They spoke to an agent and a writer and stated:

“Both told us that they had, through a series of painful rejections from publishing houses, come to the theory that new writers start out too ambitious. They said such writers tend to favor telling a complex situation from all angles…writers are observers, and it is natural for them to want to share all that they have observed…”

The authors go on to state that not only does the ‘signature theme’ factor make books popular with readers, it also helps with author branding.

The book gave me food for thought and a closer look at what makes a bestseller tick.

What kind of themes do your books focus on? How simple are your story motifs (and even, the plots themselves)? What do you think about data as a way to tweak our books to make them appeal more widely to readers and publishers?

And a note: if you’re in the Charlotte, NC area, join me from 12–3:30 tomorrow, Oct. 8,  at the Statesville Library in Iredell County for the inaugural Indie Author Day event!