Category Archives: bestsellers

August 22, 2012   Stacey   bestsellers, opinion, our clients, queries, Stacey, YA  
11

Where are all the guys in YA?

Following up on Miriam’s recent post about writers’ groups being comprised of mostly women, I came upon this piece in The Atlantic about female authors dominating the YA market. It discusses how NPR Books this summer had fans choose the 100 Best-Ever Teen Books and of the 235 books being considered for the list, 147 (63%) were written by women.

Certainly there are many bestselling male authors across all categories, but I think it’s fair to say that the YA market is dominated by female authors. We all know that many of the biggest books and series of the past decade were written by women, including, as the piece points out: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and the Twilight books. Each of these series went on to attract a large fan base that included boys and girls, and women and men, one of the reasons they were able to achieve such huge success. The movies didn’t hurt either.

In our own DGLM stable, we have a handful of male YA authors, including the bestselling James Dashner, Geoff Herbach, Andrew Smith, Danny Marks, and Shandy Lawson, but collectively the majority of our other YA authors are women (all of mine are), which confirms the theory based at least on our small sampling. And when I think about the queries I receive for YA, they are usually from women.

So I’m curious why this is. Is it that women read more YA fiction? Is there, as some suggest, the element of nostalgia for women remembering their teen years? Would you like to see more YA fiction from men? Or does it not make a difference who’s writing the books you read? Share your thoughts, and I’d love to start seeing more YA queries from men! (ps-this is my last post until after Labor Day, so enjoy the last few days of summer!)

June 13, 2012   Stacey   bestsellers, first draft, fun, Stacey, writing  
4

How do you draft?

I’m reading John Irving’s new novel for our next DGLM book club, and I noticed this piece about it in last week’s NY Times. What struck me was his admission that he does all his drafting longhand! He doesn’t read electronically and he doesn’t write electronically. I found this factoid pretty interesting. In a culture that is so reliant on technology, it’s refreshing if surprising to hear about one of our most important authors using this very old-fashioned and slow-paced approach to the writing process.

I take notes on my phone and find it very useful when I’m on the go (and when I remember to go back to them), but I still have my spiral notebook that serves as my lifeline to manage my personal and professional life. My best days are the ones when I get to go through my line items and cross off everything on the list! Obviously I’m not talking about creative writing, but it is a process just the same and a way of organizing thoughts and ideas.

It got me to wondering how our readers draft their manuscripts. What’s your most effective and productive writing style? Has it changed over time? Do you prefer digital or longhand? Let us know how you choose to draft your master works.

May 03, 2012   Jessica   bestsellers, Jessica, marketing/publicity  
2

Formula for Success

 

Because blockbuster bestsellers—the books that sell in the millions of copies—are rarely as well written as they are widely read, there is a popular notion among writers and non-writers (and occasionally, trained monkeys with typewriters) that “anyone could write one.”  I’m skeptical.

The mysterious X factor that causes a book to catch fire is neither easily predicted nor replicated, much as publishers try. Bestsellers cannot reliably be manufactured, not even (as many people suspect) by outsize marketing and promotion budgets.  I worked for the house that published scores of bestsellers, including The Bridges of Madison County and the Notebook, but that same house also rolled out the red carpet for seemingly commercial novels that vanished, taking their marketing dollars and NYT ads with them.

 

Laura Miller’s column in Salon http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/recipe_for_a_bestselling_book/singleton/ looks at Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Biggest Bestsellers. In it, novelist James Hall attempts to isolate the winning formulas of “twentieth century megasellers.” He considers a list of twelve: Gone With the Wind, Peyton Place, To Kill a Mockingbird, Valley of the Dolls, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, The Dead Zone, The Hunt for Red October, The Firm, The Bridges of Madison County and The Da Vinci Code.

I’m keen to read his analysis, but I just don’t believe that it can yield much insight into the black box of blockbuster bestseller-dom. What do you think? Can reading taste be quantified in any meaningful way?

 

 

April 11, 2012   Miriam   bestsellers, book club, buzz, fun, Miriam, opinion  
25

50 Shades of Dumb?*

As those of you who read our rambling posts might remember, I belong to a neighborhood book club (because, yes, I don’t have enough reading in my work life).   Ordinarily, the choices we make for said club are solid—sometimes challenging, sometimes brilliant, sometimes just okay, but solid.

I am struggling with our latest pick, however, and not in the usual, I-have-no-time-to-read-for-fun-when-I-have-3,000-manuscript-pages-staring-at-me-balefully-from-the-piles-on-my-floor way.

This month, we’re reading 50 Shades of Grey (as you deduced from the title above) and initially I was excited to find out what all the buzz was about.  Certainly, this is one of the biggest publishing stories of the year and my colleagues and I like to keep up with what’s selling and why.  I’ve  also been hearing about this book at the supermarket, the library, the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office…so here, I thought, was the perfect opportunity to satisfy my curiosity and have something intelligent to say when someone asks me about this runaway bestseller.

Sadly, this story does not have a happy ending.  Oh, I don’t mean the Grey series.  I have no idea how that ends and I suspect I won’t find out first-hand.  I mean the story of my reading the first book in the trilogy, which ended badly almost as soon as it began.  I think this is a dumb book [she ducks under her desk].  No, I’m not offended by the mind-numbingly repetitive sex (there’s a lot of it).  I am bemused by the success of a book whose female protagonist has the personality of a moody fruit fly, whose hero is a creepy stalker, and which features a relationship that’s supposed to embody passion and mystery but that seems to have sprung from the feverish imaginings of a hormonal 15-year-old.   To me the book is a hot mess—emphasis on mess.

So, how has it become such a phenomenon?  Is it the kinky sex?  The innocent-virgin-seduced-by-the-tormented-cute-guy premise?  The money porn elements (the hero is filthy rich)?  Is this really a collective female fantasy or just really clever marketing?

I’m not a snob about commercial fiction (really!).  I didn’t think Twilight was particularly well written or plotted but I enjoyed it and I got it.  This, I don’t really get.

The last time I felt so out of sync about a book was when The Bridges of Madison County was tearing up the bestseller lists.  I found myself giggling through most of that heartfelt narrative until it hit me that it wasn’t meant to be funny.  So, can you guys explain this latest phenomenon to me?  Why is it working?  Are there shades of grey I’m missing here?

 

*Apologies in advance to all of those who love, love, love this book.

March 14, 2012   Miriam   bestsellers, buzz, covers, digital publishing, e-books, fun, Miriam, reading, romance  
8

Naughty books

A few weeks ago, someone who saw me reading on my Kindle while my son had his karate class asked me if I’d heard of a book called Fifty Shades of Grey.  As I usually am when anyone asks me if I’ve heard of a book and I haven’t, I was a little embarrassed (never mind that with a gazillion books published every year, it’s not possible to know about every last one of them or that my memory for titles and authors’ names is shockingly poor for someone who, well, works with titles and authors—do I sound a little defensive?).  I asked her what it was about and she told me it was a romance that she was trying to get a copy of without success.  I suggested Amazon and promptly forgot all about the discussion.

Of course, I now know that Fifty Shades of Grey is the latest publishing phenom (an allegedly not very well written kinky sex fest for Twilight fans who thought the vampire saga was too squeaky clean, according to Jezebel) and that Vintage has plopped down a ton of money for the print rights to a book that is currently selling like hotcakes…online.

Which raises a number of interesting questions.

As the Wall Street Journal  points out in a piece about the rise in sales of books that women have traditionally been embarrassed to be seen reading in public, e-readers have made sales of romance and erotica skyrocket precisely because of the privacy they afford.  So, how wise is a seven-figure investment for print rights to a book that people may not want others to see them reading?

And, does all of this mean that books in these categories will go exclusively digital in the near future?  I know lots of smart, professional women with a weakness for what we used to call “bodice rippers” in the good old days (before Kindles and romance branding) who didn’t want to be caught dead on the subway behind a cover of some buxom lass being ravished by a half-naked Fabio type.  I can also imagine all the soccer moms who don’t want their kids to know what kinds of books they’re devouring while they extol the virtues of Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter.

Personally, I do think that e-readers are liberating in that way.  In my line of work, I occasionally have to read things that may be a little hard to explain to casual acquaintances or even my six-year-old.  What about you guys?  Do you find yourselves sneaking around reading naughty things on your e-readers?  And, do you think this is one of the “intangibles” that publishing people have overlooked when trying to figure out the value of e-books vs. print books?

January 18, 2012   Stacey   advice, bestsellers, editing, marketing/publicity, selling, Stacey  
11

An editor and publisher who gets the job done right.

Some of you might know Amy Einhorn by name, especially if you work in book publishing. But even if you don’t, you certainly know some of the books she’s helped to bring to market. Most notably and successfully The Help, a compelling but challenging first novel by Kathryn Stockett that was famously (and embarrassingly in retrospect) rejected by 60 agents and publishers. The book has gone on to sell over 10 million copies! It was the first novel ever published by Amy Einhorn Books.

This interview with Amy from a recent New York Observer gets to the heart of why she’s so good at what she does. And I think there’s something to be taken away from her approach to publishing. She doesn’t just tell her authors to market and promote their books. She does it too. She takes each of her books and pushes them gently into the market, overseeing all aspects of editorial, production, design, marketing and publicity.

While it’s an impossible business to master, and there is no question that luck and timing play a big role in an author’s success, there is definitely some strategy at work here too.

Amy’s imprint has more hits than misses, and reading about how she does it you can understand why. She has a small, eponymous imprint with the resources of a big house behind her. It’s that rare combination of little gal and big gun that has the potential turn books into bestsellers. That combined with her good instincts and loving touch makes for each book to get its share of support and attention. It’s like raising kids. You have to treat each one differently and play to their strengths. There is no one size fits all model for parenting, and that same can be said for selling books. It makes me think about how many good books are out there that don’t get the right kind of support to nurture them along and wind up selling poorly.

I love the anecdote in the piece about a manuscript full of Post-its — this is so old-school, and I also admire writer Emily Witt’s observation about Einhorn’s “commitment to thorough editing and a lot of exuberant salesmanship.” These are things that still matter. A lot.

I know Amy personally (we have 7 daughters between us!) and professionally (we had a book together when she was at Warner, and I would so love to sell her something for Amy Einhorn Books), and I like her very much. I think it would be hard to not like Amy. She’s got that kind of personality that just bubbles with positive enthusiasm and it’s infectious. She’s genuinely curious, interested, engaged, and she makes you feel like you could talk with her endlessly. Come to think of it, with her gift of the gab, she would have been a good agent too!

So, while there is a lot of talk about publishers getting things wrong, I think this piece about a really smart and savvy publisher is worth a read and offers a bit of inspiration to start the year. Good things can happen in book publishing, and with the help (just caught the pun!) of people like Amy Einhorn, sometimes they even do.

October 19, 2011   Miriam   Amazon, authors, bestsellers, competition, controversy, digital publishing, e-books, Miriam, self-publishing, selling  
9

Moneyball, Amazon and the end of publishing as we know it

In this week’s death watch, the publishing business is going the way of the Edsel.  E-books have won.  Traditional publishers don’t know what to do with themselves or their lists.  Agents are unnecessary.  Anarchy reigns among authors.   And, oh, yeah, Amazon is getting closer to world domination (tricky bastards).  There is no leadership.  The darkness is encroaching.  The center cannot hold!

Let’s see, that about covers it, I think.  Except, does it?

The afore-linked-to New York Times article contains a quote from Russ Grandinetti (whom we’ve met a few times at Amazon seminars we’ve attended and whom the Times refers to as “one of Amazon’s top executives,” leading me to believe they don’t know exactly what he does) which I actually loved: “It’s always the end of the world. You could set your watch on it arriving.”  It also mentions some other shady (unnamed) Amazon characters twirling their mustaches while claiming that “publishers [are] in love with their own demise.”  As wary as  my colleagues and I are about Amazon and their plans to expand into publishing, I tend to agree with their assessment that traditional publishers can come across as a self-indulgent, hand wringing bunch who’d rather blame the big bad corporate entity for poaching their authors and re-drawing the battle lines than take effective steps to compete and prosper.

Enough, already.  If the model is broken or the times have changed and there’s a new model out there, then learn it, adapt your systems, and make it work for you.  Publishers are sitting on gold mines of backlists.  They seem to be unable or unwilling to competitively price and promote the e-books  they are putting out.  They’re still paying too much for that “sure thing” Jane was talking about earlier this week.  Most of all, they are loath to innovate at the speed the new paradigm requires.

Gerry Howard writes movingly in this week’s PW about how you really can’t apply the principles of Moneyball to publishing because you’d be ripping out its heart and doing away with all that wonderful serendipity that made The Bridges of Madison County, Tuesdays with Morrie, The DaVinci Code and countless other “small” buys into huge bestsellers.  I agree.  But, the thing I take away from Moneyball (the book and the film) is that you’ve got to look at your game differently if you are up against a rich behemoth who outpitches, outhits, and outfields you because they can buy all the talent out there.  Whether you’re talking about the Yankees or Amazon, I think the lesson is the same:  you can win playing smart small ball too.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Angry rebuttals?

October 13, 2011   Jessica   awards, bestsellers, blog chat, buzz  
5

Spinach?

When the nominees for the National Book Award were announced this week, I was embarrassed to note that I’d read not one of the fiction shortlist, not even Tea Obrecht’s  widely praised Tiger’s Wife. I was pleased to see that small presses (Bellevue, University of North Carolina Press) were represented among the nominees, and I looked forward to the pleasant possibility–dim though it may be, given my to-read pile– of getting hold of these novels. Thus, it was with dismay that I read Laura Millers piece in Salon in which she accuses the National Book Award of being “irrelevant” on the grounds of its “esoteric” choices. Miller argues that the NBA should instead help the people “who can find time for only two or three new novels per year read something significant.”

While I don’t dispute her claim that most of the nation neither knows nor cares about publishing industry buzz, I would submit that the reading public—whether pointy-headed out-of-touch intellectuals or occasional book buyers in search of a good read–has little difficulty encountering the season’s Big Books. Geoffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, one of the novels she singles out for having been passed over, is everywhere. The same was doubly true of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (cover of Time Magazine, anyone?).

Miller might dispute the judges’ choices on the basis of merit (having read none of them, I can’t comment on their worthiness) but to be categorically dismissive of these selections, which she likens to the “literary equivalent of spinach,” seems not only unfair, but absurd.  We all know that book promotion and review coverage are in short supply, so if the NBA sets out to cast a wider net than what the media serves up, how is that a bad thing?

What do you think?

October 06, 2011   Michael   audience, bestsellers, genre, marketing/publicity, Uncategorized  
5

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I’m here in New York this week, experiencing the lovely weather.  It doesn’t quite feel like fall at the moment, but it’s nice to see some trees changing, and the nights are a bit brisk.

It seems fitting that our book club meeting tonight is all about women’s fiction, which we read over the summer.  Women’s fiction, during the summer, at least, seems to be all about the beach.  The book I read involves four friends in their thirties renting a beach house, where they drink wine and share secrets, leading to better understandings of one another–and themselves.  I think a few of the books that other people read have similar set ups. Though I didn’t like my book (for a number of reasons), I do have to say that I enjoy a good beach read during the summer, as I know many people do.  Summer books seem to be lighter, more easily digestible, but perhaps a bit disposable.  They’re like the summer flings: enjoyable but fleeting.

But now comes fall and the “serious” books.  For our next book club, we’re all reading a heralded literary novel, one with stellar reviews and blurbs.  This book is quieter and slower, and will not be read in an afternoon.  Maybe it’ll feel a bit like going back to school.  My own reading patterns tend to follow the seasons, though I wonder if that has to do with my mood or what publishers are releasing.  Do I read the lighter books over the summer because I’m feeling light, or because that’s what’s dominating the shelves?  Now that I live in the land of eternal sunshine, I’m beginning to think it’s the latter!

What about you?  Do you read different types of books depending on the season?  Or are you able to ignore the marketing?

July 20, 2011   Stacey   bestsellers, book to film, children's books, Stacey  
8

Harry Potter to the Rescue

Like most, I’m a Harry Potter fan. More than what the books offer readers, which is a lot, I’m amazed by how the series changed the way kids read. This has been discussed for years already, and I can’t believe the last film has just been released!

I found this recent Wall Street Journal piece entertaining, and illuminating. The writer, Norman Lebrecht, shares some insider information about HP that I wasn’t aware of. For example, the first book was published on June 30, my wedding anniversary. And the first print run of the first edition was 500 copies, most of which went into libraries. 500 copies, of Harry Potter! And the book has been printed in more languages than any other book in history apart from the Bible. These are some staggering stats.

I knew Rowling got a small advance from the UK, and that Scholastic and Arthur Levine, whose middle name might as well be “Harry Potter” in book publishing circles, paid a hefty sum for the rights in the US. But I didn’t realize they paid $105,000, which he describes as a record advance for a children’s book. It’s funny to think that back then that was a record advance. In today’s market, there are authors writing for children who can generate seven figure advances, usually for a series, but still. The stakes have gone way higher, and much of it has to do with the unprecedented success of Harry Potter.

But beyond all the business-side stuff, which I love, the piece compares Harry’s escapades to other classic characters in literature, like Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist, and it speaks to the public’s wide embrace of this fictionalized boy and his amazing adventures. In all our cynicism over the book industry and its woes, articles like this always remind me why I love what I do. Especially now that I have 4 little girls at home, girls who I hope will grow up to be big readers, and of course, big fans of books like Harry Potter.

Just curious, at what age do you think it’s appropriate to start reading HP? My oldest is 6, middle 4, and twins are 2. Judging from their active and sometimes fearful imaginations, I think we’ll need to wait a couple of years before we get started down that road. Somehow, I think they’ll still be in print by then.
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