One agent recently said to me, “I believe a bestseller can be completely manufactured. All you have to do is print 250,000 copies of the book and make it your lead title and push it down readers’ throats, and they’ll buy it.” And the agent was basically right. Bestsellers often happen because (1) the author’s name is one the populace recognizes, so they buy the book without scrutiny, or (2) the book is just visible everywhere (every bookstore, in Target, Walmart, etc.), so a reader thinks, Hmmm, this book is everywhere—maybe I should see what the fuss is about, or (3) it’s a Fifty Shades of Grey situation where it takes off for any strange reason (in this case, I think, the lack of a breakout erotic mainstream book in many years and the fascination [naughtiness!] that came with that), so a reader thinks, Hmmm, this book is everywhere—maybe I should see what the fuss is about. So right there we’ve examined three possible ways for a book to become a bestseller without the writer having oodles of talent. But again, this is a massive gray area (like the book—ha), because you look at a book like Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why, and that was just another contemporary YA debut that came out and kind of piddled along sales-wise. But it was really good, and word of mouth slowly slowly slowly drove it to the bestseller list, where it has remained for years. So that is a case of a bestseller that I attribute to talent.
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