Folks who are just writing their first novel no doubt have visions of best seller-dom dancing in their heads, either the breakout kind—in which the book arrives in the marketplace and word of mouth and a few good reviews build until it reaches critical mass—or the marketing-heavy kind, in which everywhere you look you see the book advertised and talked about. In other words, the best exposure money can buy.
Then our first-timer gets a book deal, and (probably) neither of those things happen. Why not me? the author thinks. What happened?
Literary agent Chip MacGregor recently addressed this in an article titled “How can a publisher create success?”
The process by which the leadership at Grand Central decided to pick this one book out of the pile and promote it like crazy is interesting and rare. It’s what we call in the industry a “make book” — that is, neither the author nor the project is well known, so we’re going to decide as a company to “make” the book successful. And we’re going to do that by treating it as though the author is already a bestselling writer, the story is already well known, and that big orders and big sales are expected to happen. It’s not as simple as buying their way onto the bestseller lists, as some have suggested. Instead, it’s putting the best resources of the company behind a particular project and risking that everybody else is going to buy into the vision.
It’s an interesting article, so definitely read it. Bear in mind, this is a unusual thing, what Chip’s describing. To read a more detailed account of a “make” book (Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding), read How a Book Is Born: The Making of The Art of Fielding by Keith Gessen, originally published in the October 2011 Vanity Fair, but also available from Amazon for your e-reader.
Tweet: How do you get from book deal to best seller?
Tweet: Breakout, marketing, or “make book”: how to sell a book.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”