Debut best selling authors: Good promotion or good writing?

NiaR said:

Unsure where this thread belongs but....
I'm curious.

Lately I have seen many debut authors hit the NYT Bestseller list on the first week out. Usually I have seen a lot of promotion with these books from publisher/author/bloggers/book reviewers/you name it.
How does a book debut as a bestseller if there is no time for word of mouth to be very effective, no big excerpts have been given from the novel, and the writer has no previous work for the buyer to base interest off of? Is it faith that the writing is good and the story is interesting? Or is all the hype (marketing, blurbs my best selling authors, jacket copy snippet) enough to go off of? Has the hype convinced MANY consumers to give the book a try?

I wonder.

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I've never see a book debut without all sorts of chances for readers to get a look, including big excerpts. Or ones that are big enough. In fact, pre-publication sales make a huge diffrence with most books that debut high.

But it's usually sales numbers, pure and simple. NYT is based on sales in a given week, and sometimes a complete unknown can simply start a fire.

And are you sure these are all debut writers? I haven't noticed many at all debut near teh top in recent months.

Debuting farther down the list usually just means teh writer has a book that lots of readers are talking about.

I think it must be a combination of factors - the books must be good enough for the publishers to go out on a financial marketing limb, but good promotion is really a key.

I'd like a full page ad in The New Yorker, but that's unlikely - however, if I see one, I know the publisher is pretty certain of the appeal of the book. I might take a $20 chance on it, especially if the story sounds interesting from the blurbs.

Some hype is very convincing - PW & LJ will convince librarians - there's a 40,000 run right there if you convince a boatload of them to buy for collection (or get them on McNaughton services.)

And hype isn't always untrue blather - it can be one way of helping a consumer like me decide what to buy.

promotion helps, writing helps a bit less. Resonance I think is perhaps the biggest thing.

Twilight, Bridges of Madison County, The Firm even--none were exceptional books (especially the first two) but they resonated with a large audience. Whiny teenage girls and wistful soccer moms flocked to hear Bella's self-important, melodramatic whining. Middle-aged women bought truckloads of paperbacks to see, in terribly-written and over-earnest prose that almost made the eyes want to bleed, if Francesca would run off with the photographer or remain in her rural Iowa rut.

Promotion only goes so far; to hit it big, your book needs to strike a chord with a large buying public. It helps to have a promotional push, and to be well-written never hurts, but I think the resonance bit is perhaps the biggest issue for "superstardom" imho

It's mostly promotion, IMO. Two recent examples:

Look at over-hyped, mediocre novels like Justin Cronin's THE PASSAGE, which earned the author about $6 million for the advance (on a trilogy) and film rights after he'd only written the first third of the book. You bet your ass they're going to promote it to high heaven to recoup costs.

Or how about the ridiculous media frenzy over Jonathan Franzen's overrated FREEDOM? For the past two months, I haven't been able to open my RSS feed without seeing some inanely meta article covering the coverage of the book.

(Franzen isn't a debut novelist, but this is his first novel in ten years. And Cronin was an unknown writing quiet literary fiction until he busted on the thriller scene.)

Full page ads in the press rarely produce bestseller sales.

What produces bestsellers is word-of-mouth recommendations. Not very glamourous, but this is an ol' fashioned business.

gothicangel said:

What produces bestsellers is word-of-mouth recommendations. Not very glamourous, but this is an ol' fashioned business.

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This. Except that word-of-mouth took the leap to online in the past few years. If a publisher wants to build buzz for a particular book, they give away lots of ARCs to well-known book bloggers, or through sites like Goodreads.

eqb said:

This. Except that word-of-mouth took the leap to online in the past few years. If a publisher wants to build buzz for a particular book, they give away lots of ARCs to well-known book bloggers, or through sites like Goodreads.

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Definitely.

It's a whole lot of foot work. There's not much point at throwing thousands at media advertising. A fan of an author's work goes
out of their way to find ou the release date of the next book. A new reader will pick up a new author based on recommendation. Otherwise it's a case of bookstore browsing. I've never bought a book because of an ad. Author interview, article, book review pages yes; ad? Never.

Today [for example] I bought my first Dexter book. I've never seen the tv show, and bought it purely down to the rave reviews on AW.

If a book debuts and it hits NYT in the first week, here's what happened:

Editor was really excited about book. They told the sales team "this is our next bestseller." Sales team convinces promotion to print up LOTS of galleys months and months early and send them out to everybody who does reviews in the country, plus their dogs. Reviewers either like it or hate it but they'll review it and post it up. Likely some will rave about it each way. Sales will take the good raves and as much good as they can drag out of the bad raves and pump up the book to the book buyers and distributors. They'll insist it's "the next big thing" and they're throwing lots of promotion and discount/co-op dollars at the thing for shelf placement.

The buyers and distributors order insane amounts of the book so they're ready to have lots of them for the reader rush. Readers hear about the book through a thousand channels (because the publisher is throwing lots of promotion at it) and will pick up a copy when it hits the shelf because either 1) it sounded interesting; or 2) surely it can't be as bad as the reviews say.

The COMBINATION of the pump and the early sales hit the NYT. The NYT list is based on "stated interest" in the book, buzz in stores from customers, early pre-orders and such. But it's not a "point of sale" list like USA Today. It's interesting to see what hits the top of the NYT and doesn't even hit the top 150 of USA Today, in the same week.

Such was the case with a recent debut, "I Just Want You To Know" by reality star Kate Gosselin. It had every advantage: lots of galleys, lots of promotion, platform through the show and #11 on NYT out of the box, but . . . pretty dismal sales and lots of returns. Since April, it's only sold something like 11,000 copies. Ouch!

So it is all about word of mouth to make the NYT list, but not so much to make the point of sale lists. Then it's all all about the sales, but the NYT lives on after your name forever (as does USAT and PW and others.)

All the stuff that Cathy C said. And notice....*that* kind of promotion isn't something the writer can do. Only a publisher can generate the kind of energy that puts a book on the NYT bestseller list in its debut week.

It's exactly what Cathy C and Terie say. The publishers pick which books they will heavily promote at BEA and ALA meetings. They pass out lots of ARCs and often bring in those authors to sign them. There is a lot of effort that goes into generating the buzz.

@NiaR I've noticed this too with YA paranormal books lately and I've been curious as well.

NYT bestseller Jennifer Crusie said in a workshop she gave one time "Do not ask me how to become a bestseller. Your publisher votes on that and makes it happen. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning that doing it yourself."

It's a calculated business decision. If you have a topic that sales thinks is hot and they can generate enough buzz for it, then they blast the media with promo stuff.

Ref: Publisher decides NYT bestseller

I've heard this from several sources over the years. Occasionally a good book, (I mean a truly good book) makes the list, but with so many 'manufactured' to make the list, I've lost my enthusiasm for bestsellers.

I'll stick to reading back cover blurbs and excerpts and make that decision on my own.

Yes, the publisher really does decide, but not necessarily through media promo, general 'buzz' or manipulation of lists.

I debuted this year, and went in at Number 20 in the Sunday Times bestseller list - which is worked out entirely on sales. A week later I was at 10. (I should add, btw, that this isn't as impressive as it sounds, as the UK is a lot smaller than the US!)

I'd LOVE to say it was because my book is awesome, but it certainly wasn't my writing that got it that status. Those people hadn't read it before they bought it, and there wasn't time for the word-of-mouth to have built.
Neither was it the 'buzz', as there wasn't much at all - and no pre-pub reviews. Nor was it through putting a lot of extracts out there - there was only one paragraph included with the blurb, and not (in my opinion) a particularly good one.

The only way the success was down to me was the nature and setting of the story, which a later reviewer described as 'a banker' - and a title that appeals to the kind of people who like this kind of book.

The rest was down to the publisher, and consisted of three crucial things:

1. A fantastic cover, with the title in gold foil. No-one knows me, so my name was in tiny writing at the bottom.

2. A very low price for a beautifully produced hardback.

3. And more than anything in the world - PLACEMENT. My publishers worked like stink to get a big sell-in (and in that sense, yes, Cathy and Terie are both absolutely right about in-the-industry-buzz). I wasn't big enough front-list to justify a 3-for-2 or front table placement, but I got good frontage at Waterstones - and crucially I got into the supermarkets.

Most of those early sales did not come through Amazon. They were bought in bookshops and supermarkets, places where people go - and where they could see that picture, that title, and read that blurb.

It's horrible really. I don't feel like going 'Yay, I'm a bestseller', because I know it's not really my doing. I'm terrified of what's going to happen when the sequel comes out next year - because if it bombs I'll know it was never anything to do with me, and people who actually bought the book this time round decided not to bother again.

Very scary.

Louise

Swordswoman's right. A good sell-in can do a lot for a book even if there isn't much promotion done for it. (A good sell-in means getting plenty of books out into bookshops, supermarkets, etc.) If potential readers have a good chance of finding a copy in front of them, they're more likely to pick it up and take a look; if they don't find it at the bookshops they are very unlikely to even know about it, let alone buy it.